Don’t forget to buy a ‘Showbag’ S.D.U. 
My mate Brian from Kingaroy in country Queensland, used to love ‘bring your calf to school day’ back in the fifties and it wasn’t anything to do with the end of term barbie.
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OF, I haven’t been to the Show for forty years.
Post by wheel_nut [Jun 2005]
(Old Trucking tales! - #37 by wheel_nut)
The beginning of my downfall
A very long read and forgive the loss of memory in places
After several years of dodging about, sailing close to the wind with the law and customs of various East European countries. I decided to have a clean break and go legal, as we had some decent contracts with blue chip companies.
I had run my old Saviem, and a 141 to destruction, I did one trip in a F10 which used more oil then fuel and My Transcontinental had been repossessed by the finance company. 
I managed to blag my way into the bank managers good books and put a deposit down on a DAF 2800 FTG.
Part of the early learning curve of transitting the commie bloc was learning all the fiddles and twists that made things easier & cheaper.
Apart from the diesel checks in France and Germany, life was fairly straightforward until you got to the Czech border, here you were met by frightened looking boy soldiers as border guards, savage looking women in customs uniform and vicious dogs it was forbidden to feed. There was a rather pointless TIR diversion around Bratislava which took you over one of the hardest twisty climbs in Bohemia, It took 45 minutes to drive through the city, but it could take you 2 or 3 hours to “go over the mountain”. 
In Hungary they had a 10 tonne axle weight limit, whether that was the front axle, trailer axle or drive axle. (remember this) Romania had a strict 4.0 metre height limit as you left the country. Bulgaria made you drive through some disinfectant as you left, then Turkey would try and charge you for washing the wheels.
Anyway, I digress.
This trip was one I had done many times, Load in Perkins in Peterborough for BMC trucks in Izmit. This was at the start of Just in Time deliveries and Perkins would want to know when you would arrive, so they could plan the next load. I loaded my trailer and shipped out to Belgium where I had to fill my tanks with Red Diesel, it was even cheaper than the UK. That saw me over to Geiselwynd for the last full meal before attempting the Czech border the next morning. This was Thursday night, I was planning to be tipping Izmit on the following Wednesday allowing for any delays at the borders.
Friday saw me through the border at Waidhaus, a steady ride through Czech into Hungary and parked at Gyor for the evening. Now another history lesson, when I first started going through Hungary, I got caught out very badly with the availability of Fuel. foreigners were not allowed to buy fuel without government vouchers which were charged at the same price per litre as German Fuel, no vouchers no fuel, or you could risk getting yourself and the garage owner locked up for buying black market diesel.
I had found a couple of places willing to take the risk, and even when the voucher scheme was lifted, I continued to use them.
So on Saturday morning I woke up after a good Goulash meal and loads too much beer in the evening. I went to see my favourite garage owner and filled the tank, In Hungary there were 2 grades of fuel, one was red diesel for agriculture and machinery, the other was poor quality road fuel. I opted for the cheap fuel, even though I had been warned it knackered engines. I had used it for 6 months and even that morning there was a brand new 480 Turbostar filling up with it.
From there it took me about 3 to 4 hours to the Romanian border, the way things were going, I may even tip Tuesday at this rate. After a couple of hours, the sun was shining, I was listening to the many repeats of how to speak English, on Voice of America.
DISASTER
As I drove towards the border, I heard a noise I hadnt heard before, a slight knock or ticking, not loud but continuos, I drove a bit further getting slightly worried. the noise didnt seem to get any worse, but I couldnt make it dissapear either. About 3 or 4 kilometers from the border I pulled into a layby to investigate, it was actually a bus stop. I could get this noise whenever I let the engine die after revving it, it did it on start up and it did it when I pushed the exhauster to stop the engine.
Well as I had been using these routes long enough to know that a breakdown in Romania was not really an option, I was still in relative civilised countryside. I decided to investigate further. oil ok, water ok, nothing lose or hanging off, still running on 6 cylinders and actually pulling quite well, but an annoying knock.
So as you do in these circumstances, I got my toolbox out and drained the oil, nothing untoward in the oil, so I removed the sump. well it was a sunny saturday afternoon, still nothing obvious.
I continued a little deeper and firstly removed one big end cap, furthest from the oil pump, no wear, there, I checked another couple of big ends, no serious wear, so i rebuilt the engine refitted the sump and changed the oil filter. About 2 kilometres further back I had passed a small garage, so I walked back and bought 25 litres of new engine oil, I had a couple of gallon spare with me so I had enough. Just an oil change in a bus stop, nothing unusual there then.
I walked back with the can on my shoulder and refilled the engine, I started it up and the noise was still there, no surprise really, but I was happy there was no damage found within the engine, the oil pressure was good, especially for a DAF.
As the engine was ticking over the noise was there, as I took off my oily clothes and put on some other oily clothes…
Suddenly there was such a loud crack, the cab tilted over and the engine stopped with a dull thud. I walked around, to find my last 2 hours labour, the walk to garage and my fresh oil running into the gutter.
As I looked underneath there was a horrible sight, there was a hole the size of my head in the engine block, the starter motor was laid on the front axle and the bellhousing was broken…
Cameraderie starts here, first a couple of cockanese drivers turn up and put the kettle on, various suggestions are dismissed, but swan vestas were the main ingredient of the best one, I cannot remember who these drivers were but Im sure they were working for Roy Bradford, the trucks seemed a little new though, a couple of newish SK Mercs.
Shortly afterwards another truck pulled up, and after leaving me with a supply of fresh water and teabags, we decided there is nothing they can do. Someone suggested I get the truck recovered to a local workshop,so I got a lift towards the border and was taken into a RABA / DAF dealer.
We managed to explain that the truck was not going anywhere and pointed at the RABA wrecker in the yard. I waved goodbye to my new found friends as they wanted to get through the border before it was too dark.
I then went back to my truck with a Hungarian mechanic who spoke no English, when he saw the engine, his German became quite good, he kept saying “das ist kaput”
Maybe because of the drugs,(joke) I didnt seem to be worrying much, it was my truck paid for on a bank loan, with a blown up engine, in Hungary with no one in the world to help me. All I could do was laugh with the mechanic as he coupled his wrecker to my truck and then towed me to his garage.
When we got back, all the mechanics came out and joined in the chorus, “das ist Kaput” The foreman came out and wondered who was going to pay for the recovery and the new engine!!!
I gave him the adress of my agent in Budapest and got through to him that he could speak to her on Monday, this made him happier and he showed me the showers and washrooms.
That evening after a decent shower and some muddy coffee, the foreman said HOTEL? I was happy in the truck, but he said no because he wanted to put the truck and trailer in the compound. I had to agree, but was worried about the cost of a hotel, even in Hungary. I had left home with my running money of £600 and filled my trailer tank and running tanks already.
I need not have worried though as the foreman took me in his own car into the town, and drove into a beautiful tree lined avenue and pulled up outside this huge stone building. This hotel was a girls school run by nuns or something, the girls were on holiday because it was some religious festival, and I was to stay there till Monday, they told me that there would be breakfast in the morning , but tonight I would have to find something to eat in the town.
I had managed to retrieve a couple of bits of clean clothing and got changed when i was at the garage, so i went out to explore the sights. not really, just looking for a PTT (telephone office) I managed to get hold of my mate who told me to fire the truck in the garage and fly home before Monday. I didnt, although i didnt know what to do by then. I eventually managed to contact the office of my boss in England, he was on holiday but a driver picked the phone up. He told me that Joe was coming in to get him sone running money and that I had to ring back in an hour.
Within an hour and a half, the cavalry were on their way, Jogger John Roberts had just returned to the yard, he was almost living in the truck in those days, and he volunteered to come and rescue, if not me, at least the load of Perkins engines and the trailer. He would leave Birmingham before 9 pm and would get to Dover in the early hours.
John who is a well respected ex middle eastern driver drove almost non stop, or I believe he did because by Tuesday evening he was coupled up to my trailer and as an afterthough, asked if I wanted to come along for the ride. I hardly had a choice, did I?
Monday had been spent with the foreman on the phone to Budapest, and payment for recovery and the nuns hotel was settled by them, on account of course. The wordhad got round from variuos drivers that there was a brit stuck in the RABA garage and I got several food parcels and Cigs during the monday and tuesday. I was even famous for 15 minutes with the Hungarian drivers coming to look at my engine. The border crossing I was planning to use was Nadilac which is to the south, most of the trucks in those days were using Varsand but this was my favourite route.
We were on our way and with 2 drivers in a 111 cab with our worldly goods there isnt a lot of room. a couple of hours later saw us through the Romanian border to run down the Eastern side, every driver had his favourite routes, and mine would have been through Ruse into Bulgaria. John preferred using the Calafat ferry so after some discussion we decided that I was along for the ride, he was now in charge. the next thing that happened after stopping for some meat and bread was the clutch was playing up with the Scania. as always you have to fend for yourself and we discovered a leaking pipe to the slave cylinder. soon after we managed to repair the leaking pipe with a couple of copper washers, but we had no brake fluid. John disappeared on foot and within half an hour he was back in a Dacia car driven by one of the locals. In Romania they have absolutely nothing, except John had managed to find someone with a car and a gallon of brake fluid. It could have been olive oil, but it worked and we were soon on our way again.
Remember the height and weight limits? In Hungary there is a 10tonne axle limit and in Romania there is a strict 4.0 height limit which is only variable by paying vast amounts of money to someone. I had loaded my trailer with my 3 axle tractor, John had appeared in a 2 axle unit on leaf springs. He was too heavy for Hungary and overheight for Romania, but here we were heading south. There are two well used crossings of the Danube here, the Calafat ferry into Bulgaria or the Dam across into Serbia. we had heard that due to a lack of water in the river the ferry was not running or that the ramp was too steep to board the ferry!
We opted for the Dam but the problem with our then overheight trailer was discovered, after a lot of arguments and shouting from the romanians, we had 3 choices, Go to Ruse, where there was a low canopy, no good, use the ferry or go back to Hungary, either of these solutions would have cost more money than we both had with us, Hungary would weigh the axle as we entered the border and charge us more money, it was in the wrong direction anyway, We had to opt for the cheapest easiest option, which saw John being whisked off into a private room and being relieved of some money in exchange for our passports.
We then had to drive over the Dam into Yugoslavia and then cross back into Bulgaria if we had any chance of delivering these engines to BMC. Eventually we were on our way again and decided that the last 2 days had taken their toll on JR and we needed a decent meal and a good sleep before the next days drive across Bulgaria and to the border with Turkey at Kapikule.
We found a brilliant little restaurant bar in a nice village, this was before any of the fighting between Serbs and Muslims etc. the people were very friendly and we managed to have a laugh over a few beers and beef steak.
So the next morning bright eyed and bushy tailed we set off and made it into Bulgaria where we met the main route for drivers who had come the long way round in Yugo and we stopped for a coffee and some breakfast with 3 or 4 other British drivers. swapping tales takes ages and we had lunch there too, in the afternoon we then all left and within about an hour another disaster. as we turned around a corner on the TIR route,there was a lady pushing a pram, suddenly in slow motion a wheel with a tyre passed us, followed by another, we had stopped as a scania with 2 wheels missing soon comes to a halt. Incredibly these wheels bounced and went away from the lady and child, the strain of the heavy trailer had been too much for this fairly tired old 111.
The lady was comforted and sent on her way after a few kind words and a few spare Deutschemarks and we set about jacking the truck up and trying to fix the wheel studs. one of the british drivers was running a 112 with a tag axle so we nicked a couple of wheel studs from each side, and managed to nick a couple from our other hub to fit the wheels back on. Tony who was driving the Scania suggested swapping trailers, at least until the border as he was only running light.
Before the turkish border we swapped the trailers back as the TIR Carnets were made out and any invoices with one number change was bad enough, trying to get through Turkish customs with the wrong paperwork was just silly. Kapikule or Kapik could take anything from 5 hours to 5 days to cross depending on the attitude of the driver, the chef, the staff and the amount of Marlboro baksheesh you gave as presents. I hated giving bribes unless it was absolutely neccessary, john was in the same mind, and without much problem we were through the border in about 4 hours along with our new found friends.
That evening was spent at the border hotel which is also called Londra Kamping and we met a few drivers going home, some who were still there after cancelling a day. some needed spare parts, some needed a mechanic, most just needed money.
In the morning we made our way down into Istanbul, parking at Oktay which had a bar /restaurant, showers, truckshop and mechanics working there, Even Oktay makes our truckstops and service areas look as inadequate as they are. John arranged to have a towing hitch made for the trailer and a tow bar made up for the return leg when we would collect my truck from Hungary. He had the wheel studs replaced and he also helped Tony repair his truck where he had broken some small studs in the lift axle pulling my loaded trailer with the tag up. Normally I would have taken a taxi to the agent and started the customs clearance, instead as BMC had their own customs we could just drive their after having our carnet checked by the agent who came to the truckstop to meet us.
After tipping the trailer the next day we returned to Oktay and had a couple of days on the beer before heading back to Hungary with our tow bar. We had a guaranteed load which was very light, actually light bulbs for Ring Lamp in Gildersome. This time we returned through Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and into Hungary after stopping in the Hotel National in Belgrade, a famous stopping place for middle east trucks.
The reload was about 250 km from where my truck had expired so we decided to drop the trailer at the factory and go and recover the Daf unit and park it at our agents in Budapest before reloading. on the high speed ride towards budapest with me in my own truck for the first time in over a week, I was not in control and could only follow JR. on the way into Budapest the bar John had got made decided that it had had enough and broke in two, the final 2 or 3 miles being towed on a chain with no brakes.
John went to reload and I stayed with my truck as we were begining to hate the sight and smell of one another. I stayed in the agents office and she managed to sort me out with a proper tow bar, the kind you see fitted to all Belgian trucks. John came back and as we had been apart for a day, everything was fine again.
The next 4 days were horrendous, I was on a bar within 6 feet of the rear of my own trailer, no heater when it was cold, no cooling when it was hot. I had to stop when John stopped or if I could attract his attention as we went round a corner, he checked to see if i was still there.
We drove back through Hungary, the Czech Republik and Eastern Germany before hitting civilisation in the West, we never had any problems at all except stiff aching arms with no power steering and one awkward Polizei man who decided we were illegal with our push me pull you type of truck. This was within 3 km of the Dutch border at Heerlen (Aachen) and he asked how far we had travelled like that. John said from Hungary and he replied that maybe we had enough problems without giving us a fine. 
I last saw JR as he dropped my unit and me off at North Sea Ferries in Zeebrugge for its last journey home to Hull, He went P & O Dover and delivered the load for me, and I had to pay his wages and fuel bill to his boss, everyone was almost happy.
My DAF was back on the road within 6 weeks as I managed to borrow an engine from a mate who owed me 1000 quid, the block was porous though, and I could not keep water in the engine. I scrapped the truck and sold it for bits and pieces although most of it went to rebuild a pals truck who had had an accident. 
After sending bits of my old engine away for analysis, it was decided that DAF were not at fault and the poor quality fuel I had been using caused the problems. The fuel had probably got too much paraffin in it which has less lubrication, It detonates with a bigger bang and actually split the conrod from the little end right down the oilway. It then split like a banana skin. unfortunate, yes, unavoidable, not really, who knows what quality cheap diesel has, and a risk anyone buying fuel from strangers at the road side had to put up with :[/url]
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A great tale, Steve, but this made me chuckle
the clutch was playing up with the Scania. as always you have to fend for yourself and we discovered a leaking pipe to the slave cylinder.
because my own mechanical knowledge is close to zero. Once when I was heading outbound towards the Blanc in the dark the alternator packed up on my 89 but I was able to keep going as long as I kept the revs up. When I got to Savona I found a bloke in a little back street garage who sold me a new one which I managed to fit myself. You wouldn’t believe how proud I felt with the job. 
Much later with an AEC Regent coach in Iran a rear spring broke. We jacked it up and stuffed a lump of wood into the space and then felt so chuffed with ourselves that we had a party at the side of the road before continuing. We later got a local mechanic to do a proper job but a row ensued over the price. We gave him what we thought it was worth and skedaddled up the road. He overtook us in the back of his mate’s pickup and fired rocks at us before he ran out of ammo.
Years earlier in my Kew Dodge loaded out of Newcastle I smashed both batteries to pieces with the corner of the trailer. I got it all the way home to Nottingham by not switching off and keeping the revs up to maintain the lights.
I aleays carry spanners, but they are somewat alien to me. 
2 Likes
Thank you for reposting Wheelnut’s account, Opalfinder. I met John Roberts on many occasions - brilliant bloke to run with. He was a proper pro, alas no longer with us.
Ro
Don’t we miss the input and the banter from people like Wheel Nut, Chris Webb and Harry Gill etc. but it’s good to know that Malc is back with Mrs Nut.
As Malc and Ro mentioned John Roberts, I wonder if he was the same guy from Manchester who I worked with at Dow Freight in the 80’s. I know that John was also an owner driver at one time and I remember ‘best booties’ saying that he and John worked together at Chapman and Ball in the seventies and maybe Jenkinson’s from Salford.
If it is the same John Roberts, then he made a couple of posts on Trucknet using the username ‘Spare Tyre’ about ten years ago.
I know there was another John Roberts on long-haul work so it might be easy to confuse stories but Wheelnut did refer to him as Jogger John, and it was Jogger I knew. And Jogger did work for Dow and later RJ International (Dow’s ‘pheonix’). Also, he was an owner driver with a DAF 2600 I remember him telling me that in '74 he did a Pakistan in it. He said he asked a policeman at the border which side of the road he should drive on (just to make certain) and the copper replied, ‘Drive in the middle and if anything comes towards you pull over to the left.’ From what I remember of travelling in Pakistan, that would be about right!
I first encountered him in Romania and again later in North Africa.
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Me too, but more recently I asked my son who lived and worked in Bangkok for over 6 years and rode a cafe racer moto there ‘don’t they drive on the left there too?’, and his reply was ‘I think so’
Despite, or maybe because of, that he loves Bangkok and will return there once his present contract is finished in Macao, where he teaches at a Canadian school there. He is there every weekend though, a round trip by air, just to be with his beautiful girl friend. I thought I was a traveller, but that is ridiculous.
Had to look that up, 2hr30 on a plane each way, plus time to’n’fro airports.
Yes, and I think he said it costs him the equivalent €200, not sure if that is return or not though. Wouldn’t do for me, the highest I want to allow my feet off the round is to climb in the cab of a lorry.
My first flight was from Delhi after I finished my overland trip from London. That was in a Boeing 707 and I was seated by the wing. I saw it flapping up and down like a bird and thought, ‘that cannot be right’. Only a couple of flights since and there will be no more. But it’s a control thing, and not being in control, I hate being a passenger in anything. 
With today’s chronic congestion in the south-east, it’d be equivalent to living in Kent and having a girlfriend in London
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This was as cold as it got; a rescue trip and reload that showed just what it was like.
Fred had sub-contracted a trailer load of diesel engines to a small London-based haulage company. A month after crossing the North Sea to Belgium, the goods still had not arrived in Istanbul. News had just come through that the company had folded, with the trailer-load of diesel engines stranded on the Hungarian-Romanian boarder. Fred had no option but to send someone down to Nadlac to finish the job. With only Ron Carrick and myself to choose from, Fred gave the job to me. To help cover the costs. Fred arranged to me to take an unaccompanied Bulgarian trailer as far as the Czechoslovakian border. I shipped out of Felixstowe bound for Europort on the Sunday evening.
The Bulgarian registered trailer was destined for Tehran and was loaded with bandages, a frequent export to war-torn Iran. Willi Betz BV organised the loads carried by the state owned Bulgarian trucks — it was one of the communist country’s biggest hard currency earners. First thing Tuesday morning, I dropped the trailer off at Willi Betz’s depot, just east of Amberg. From there, I set off across Czechoslovakia and Hungary with just the tractor unit. All the border officials took great delight in pointing out that I had lost my trailer en route, but the guys on duty at Nadlac, on the Romanian border, knew just what I had come for.
The Archer trailer stood over to one side, still within the frontier compound, so it had not suffered any pilfering and even the Customs’ seal was in tact. At the front of the trailer was a ten year old Seddon Atkinson unit that had seen better days. Eight of the ten wheel studs on the offside drive axle hub were broken and the wheels had been pushed under the unit. The Romanian guards referred to the Sed-Atki driver as Dave; they spoke of him as a good friend. Dave had obviously got to know every one pretty well during the ten days that he sat with his crippled unit, before returning to the UK with a homeward bound British truck.
I put one wheel back on the Seddon Atkinson, but I could not get the engine to start, even with jump leads. In the end, I dragged the unit out from under the trailer with my Mercedes. The Romanians were keen to know what I was going to do with the broken down Seddon, as it was obvious I could not take it with me. I told them to look after it for me and that I would return, once I had an empty trailer, in order to take it back to Britain. There was not much chance of that happening as the non-runner was not even Fred Archer’s property, but my explanation kept the Customs officials happy. After getting the vehicle registration numbers changed on the paperwork for the load, I went round and doled out ten packets of Kent cigarettes to the border guards, in my gratitude for the way they had watched over the trailer. By midday on Wednesday, I was crossing Romania.
The tension between the Bulgarians and the Turks had been steadily rising during the first months of 1986. Things had come to a head during the time of my passage through the two countries. The Bulgarians were trying to force the ethnic Turks in south-east Bulgaria to take on Cyrillic names and renounce their Turkish heritage. While Turkey had given citizenship to an Olympic standard Bulgarian weightlifter who had recently defected. To aggravate matters, the Turkish prime minister had adopted the teenage strongman as his son, which had brought the situation dangerously close to conflict.
There was a great deal of military presence at the border, but the circumstances worked in my favour, as no Bulgarians were crossing into Turkey and no Turks were coming the other way. Mine was the only lorry at the tense, but normally busy, crossing point that had on one occasion taken me four days to negotiate. This time it took four hours. I was in Istanbul by midday Friday.
Just how desperate the truck factory was to receive their engines was shown when the shipping agent implored me to get over to Izmit that afternoon, for Customs’ clearance. He was grateful that I knew where to go and what to do, but it took me some time before I made him understand that I had only left England on the Sunday evening. When the agent realised I had come out to recover the trailer, only then did he stop blaming me personally for the late delivery. Three workers stayed on late at the truck plant and I was tipped on the Friday evening, which just goes to show how Turkish bureaucracy could be quickened up when it suited them. Even Fred was impressed with the speed in which I had done the job - it was the first time I had heard him say “thanks”.
With all the cold weather in late December and January, I had expected it to have warmed up a bit in Romania; but, if anything, it was colder still, as I made my way up the main road from Bucharest to the Soviet border. Just how cold it could get in the middle of February was shown to me one night when the Mercedes’ engine died, just north of the town of Roman. The German made anti-freeze fuel additive called “Long Drive” said on the bottle that it was good for minus 24 degrees centigrade. I could only presume that it was minus 25 when the diesel in the fuel lines froze and I came to a halt in the snowy wastes of the windswept Romanian plains. That night, I went to bed fully clothed, inside two sleeping bags, with my sheepskin coat over my head and I still shivered.
In the morning, I turned the engine over, but it would not fire. Careful not to run down the batteries, I left it and hoped the sun would warm things up. The sun never came through the clouds all day, so I had to resort to filling empty food tins with near solid diesel and lighting little fires under the lorry. At the end of the day, the motor still would not start, plus my camping gas bottle in the cab would not light because it, too, was frozen. Back on the bottom bunk, I shivered through another night, after chewing on a couple of rock hard Mars bars.
Day two was much the same as day one, with only the arrival of a couple of Bulgarian trucks, on their way back to Sofia from Kiev, to relieve the monotony. The drivers obviously thought there might be some handy bits and pieces to be had from an abandoned British truck, but they left empty-handed after boiling me some water for a coffee. The Bulgarians also gave me a swig from a spirit bottle that reminded me of Eau de Vie, as it burnt its way down my throat and into my stomach. My only other visitors were an old couple in a horse drawn sled. I swapped 20 cigarettes for a loaf of bread, but declined the offer to go back to their place. The little fire in the baked bean cans burnt for about three hours at a time, but had no noticeable effect on the frozen engine.
On the morning of the third day, I figured that the wind blowing underneath the lorry was taking most of the heat away from where it was supposed to go. To stop this, I got out the world’s most travelled shovel and built a wall of snow against the front and sides of the tractor unit. With the addition of a couple of extra cans, whose contents I had consumed cold, the little fires started to give off some perceptible warmth. When it was getting dark, the battery spun the starter for the umpteenth time, but with success, as the vee-eight came to life for the first time in 72 hours.
The fourth night was just as cold as the previous three, so I kept the engine running, the fires burning and the snow walls in place. From now on, I would only run in day light when temperatures were, hopefully, higher. It took over a week to go from Istanbul to Radauti. It was the best part of another week before the barbecues were ready to load. By the time I got back to the UK, I had been away for the best part of a month. What had started out with my quickest ever run down to Istanbul, finished up as my slowest ever round trip. As Fred Archer only paid you for the trip and not the time it took, I would have been better off staying at home
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FIRST TRIP TO POLAND.
First thing Wednesday morning, I was at an old RAF airfield, near Royston in Hertfordshire. The aeroplanes had long gone but the buildings were still used by the Ministry of Defence for storage. The people who were paying for the lorry to go to Poland was a Charity called “Medical Aid for Poland”, who raised money to buy hospital equipment, which it then shipped out to the Communist state. Fred Archer had done some work for them before and, this time, the charity had purchased a load of nurses’ uniforms from Government Surplus. One of the security guards at the store reckoned the stuff was from the Second World War, and had been kept at Royston for longer than he had worked there. The thousands of brown paper parcels containing the uniforms were all neatly ■■■■■■■ with string, but the two car loads of charity workers got stuck into loading and passed the parcels into the trailer, loading it to the roof, from front to back. All the helpers were Polish or sons of Poles who lived in Britain. I wondered which one was going to be my ■■■■■■. It came as a shock when Mr Bronsky, the top man, told me my ■■■■■■ wasn’t at Royston, but that she would meet me at Dover.
When the trailer was loaded, I was given instructions that the vehicle was booked on that evening’s Dover to Ostend ferry. The arrangements gave me plenty of time, so I took it easy, plodding down to the Channel port. On the A2 dual carriageway, a silver Cortina came alongside, flashing its headlights and blowing its hooter. The passenger was gesticulating that I should pull over. Thinking that there was something wrong with the trailer, I pulled in at the first opportunity, which happened to be a transport café. The young guy from the Cortina came running over to ask if I was going to Poland. It then clicked that my ■■■■■■ had seen the Archer lorry and thought it would save time if they could get me to stop.
My ■■■■■■ was the passenger of the car, not at all what I had been expecting. Irena was well over 60 years old. Over a cup of tea, I found out the lady had been born in Poland, but had lived in Britain since the end of the Second World War. The car driver was her grandson. This was Irena’s fourth trip as an ■■■■■■ for “Medical Aid for Poland” and she seemed quite at ease with the prospect of sleeping in a lorry cab. My ■■■■■■ was keen to spend Saturday and Sunday with old friends in Warsaw, so she was pleased to hear I wasn’t in any particular hurry to complete the trip — visiting friends was the only perk from the unpaid ■■■■■■’s job.
It was an uneventful Channel crossing, which disembarked at just after midnight. I parked on the quay at Ostend for the night. As I had slept in my cabin during the voyage, I was up early and across Belgium before dawn. Transiting Holland did not take long either, as we made our way east, entering Germany at the border town of Venlo. The Mercedes truck made good time across the flat terrain. The nurses’ uniforms did not weigh much, which suited the 260 horsepower v-eight engine. It looked as if we would just have enough driving time to cross into East Germany on the first full day. Even with a complete vehicle search at the East-West German border, my plan looked to be on schedule; but, when I came to stop for the night, Irena was most upset.
“You cannot stop here, not in Germany. I hate the Germans. You must continue to Poland. I will not sleep a night in Germany, especially East Germany,” exclaimed Irena.
“But I have driven my permitted hours. We have to stop for nine hours,” I explained, taken aback by the strength of the lady’s protest.
“You do not understand. I was in Auschwitz concentration camp during the war. I cannot stay in Germany longer than necessary,” continued Irena, in the same distraught tone.
“Okay. We’ll have a coffee and then push on to the Polish border,” I replied.
“Thank you,” sighed Irena.
You have a have a pretty good excuse to break the tachograph laws. The situation would take a lot of explaining, if I was caught; but this was good enough for me. The last thing I wanted, was to argue with Irena and after what she had said, going against her wishes was unthinkable. During the evening, as we drove on towards Poland, Irena told me about Auschwitz and how she went there as a Jewish teenager, from Warsaw. The only reason Irena had survived was because she spoke German and was used as a translator. The ■■■■■■ trips on behalf of the “Medical Aid for Poland” charity were the first time since the war that Irena had been to Germany, or spoken German. The way Irena had been able to rise above the hatred and do something positive for the people of her homeland was remarkable. That night, I felt humble to be in the company of someone who had been through so much and was still willing to do her bit for a country she had left 40 years ago.
Fortunately, East Germany was not a wide country and was crossed in a few hours. Although the state of the road from Berlin, eastwards, to Frankfurt am der Oder was terrible, the concrete slabs that made up the dual carriageway all seemed to have subsided at one end, which gave the lorry a back-jarring jolt every two lengths that it travelled. At the Polish border, the East German formalities were quick and easy, as it seemed the authorities did not expect anyone would be trying to escape into Poland. However, it was a different story two hundred years up the road, on the Polish side. Irena took charge of things so, as she went off with the paperwork, I thought I would catch up on some sleep. But I was soon woken up and told to drive into a Customs’ examination shed. It seemed that a charity truck from Holland had been caught trying to smuggle in a printing press and, since then, every aid shipment was completely unloaded for a thorough check. It looked like a squad of young Polish soldiers had been especially roused for the job. They did not look very happy. Irena told me to get some rest, while she kept an eye on things to make sure none of the nurses’ uniform went missing.
I slept well, as I was tired enough not to notice the rocking of the trailer, but I woke to find Irena was still supervising the Polish army, as they tried to get all the packages back on the vehicle. Why they needed more space than the loaders at Royston, I do not know. When the boy soldiers had finished, the canvas canopy of the trailer looked like a sack of spuds. We got underway as soon as possible after the examination. The sun was coming up, as Irena reclined on the passenger seat, to get some well-earned rest. The lady slept all morning, as I drove eastwards, on the poorly surfaced, single carriageway. There was no need for maps, as Warsaw was sign posted all the way from the frontier. Traffic was light, tractors and trailers shared the road with local Polish trucks. There was the occasional west-bound, Russian registered TIR outfit, but not many cars. Most Polish cars seemed to be 124 Fiat look-a-likes that spent most of their life parked beside blocks of flats in drab Polish towns. Progress was steady, rather than spectacular, while I soon learned to slow down to a walking pace when negotiating level crossings. They were anything but level, with sections of wooden sleepers between the tracks often missing. With just one stop for lunch, it was still after dark when we reached the outskirts of Warsaw. I had not expected it to take so long; but on taking a second look at the map of Poland in my European road atlas, I realised, not only was Warsaw three-quarters of the way across the country, but the Polish map was drawn to a smaller scale than that of Germany and the rest of Western Europe
Irena then produced a street map of Warsaw from her handbag and, while telling me the story of how she had acquired this rare item, she showed me our final destination. It was a Catholic church, on the banks of the river, opposite the zoo, upstream from the third road bridge. I found it with no trouble. The church was at the centre of a complex that included a convent, a school and a meeting hall. There was just enough room to reverse into the playground beside the school. The unloading of the trailer had been arranged for the Saturday morning so, while Irena went off to stay with her friends, I was given room in the convent. It was smartly furnished with a bed, wardrobe and desk. A decorative star-shaped light-fitting illuminated the room. There were places for five bulbs, only one of the three worked. That summed up Poland perfectly.
An enthusiastic crew of helpers turned up in the morning to unload the uniforms. Great fun was had by all, throwing the brown paper parcels off the trailer and into the church hall, through an open window. I did not know Poland had so many talented Rugby players. In the afternoon, I wandered around the city. It was overcast and cold: the weather was the same. Warsaw seemed to have little to offer, or was I in the wrong part of town? Dressed in an old bomber jacket and jeans, I thought I would blend in with the crowd, but so many people stopped me, to ask if I wanted to exchange any dollars for zlotys, I took off my jacket to check if someone had chalked USA on the back.
My meals at the convent were brought to my room by the nuns - big portions of meat and vegetables that I knew they would not be having themselves. It was a difficult situation. I wanted to tell them I did not want special treatment, that they should not give all their rations to me, but I did not want to seem ungrateful or waste anything. I tried to make the nuns feel happy, by eating everything up and thanking them profusely. The fact was, I had three weeks’ worth of food in the lorry and had not been expecting a bed, let alone full board.
When I was washing the lorry on the Sunday morning, Irena came to see me, in order to discuss our departure time. She talked me into staying the Sunday night so she could see more of her friends. The couple drove Irena round to the church in their beat-up old Polish Fiat. The old man had fought with the RAF during the war and could have stayed on to live in Britain, but had chosen to return to his native Poland. He was a nice bloke, who spoke perfect English. He could have certainly done better for himself than a rusty Lada clone if he had been like Irena and so many other Poles who settled in Britain after 1945. My three friends were pleased to hear that I did not intend to move out until Monday morning. I figured that I could drive to the East German border by Monday night and cross, first thing Tuesday, load in West Germany in the afternoon and the get across, into Holland, by the end of the day. This plan, I hoped, would keep Irena happy: in and out of both East and West German in one day. It was not a plan of which Fred Archer would have approved, as it did not make for good economic transport operations, but sitting about on a Sunday was the least I could do for someone like Irena. As it was, the plan worked perfectly, even with a hiccup of a broken fuel pipe. German efficiency in repairing the engine and in loading the trailer at Hanover meant that we were able to catch the midnight fright ferry from Zeebrugge to Dover.
When I got back to Ipswich, after tipping in Leicester, Fred asked why I had taken so long. I told him about the Dutch printing press and the full turnout at the border, which seemed to satisfy his curiosity.
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FIRST TRIP TO ROMANIA. 1983.
Romania was my next destination, with 54 drums of insecticide used for spraying fruit trees. Fred Archer had another load of the same drums going to another town nearby, so he instructed the driver to show me the way. I met up with Jock ■■■■■■■■ on the quay at Felixstowe, as we waited to drive onto the Sunday afternoon ferry to Zeebrugge. Jock was in his late 40s, with about ten years; experience of Middle-Eastern and Commie-bloc work. He knew just about all there was to know about the job and had worked for nearly every East Anglian company doing continental haulage. However, Jock made it clear that it was my responsibility to keep up with him. If I was at the borders with him, then he would show me what to do — otherwise I was on my own.
I got little encouragement from Jock’s attitude, as he was driving a brand new Scania 112 and I was still with an old Mercedes. It turned out that keeping up with Jock was not a problem as he was not in a hurry and his main priority was to make sure he found somewhere to have a drink in the evening. Jock knew every truck stop on the route; he even stopped to buy supplies at a village shop in Bavaria. The exceptional thing about it was that it was 10.00 o’clock at night and the shop was well and truly closed. The old lady seemed to know Jock well. She opened up and put all the lights on; Jock encouraged me to buy something, saying that I never knew when I might want to shop there again.
The next morning, when we crossed into Czechoslovakia, I found out about Jock’s other great passion, besides drink: women. It seemed that Jock’s ideal trip was to get drunk every night and have a woman in each country, on the way through. Jock knew every watering hole in every country, but I do not think Fred wanted him to stop at them all, when he asked the Scotsman to show me the way. We went from the Motorest at Pilzen, to the Motel Rokycany, and then to the services at Brno. At each place Jock showed me how to change Deutsche Marks on the black market, how to buy diesel fuel for Marks and where to find the best looking women.
After Prague, the motorway to Bratislava made our journey easier and we were soon in Hungary. Once again, we stopped at the places traditionally frequented by British drivers. These included the Hotel Wein in Budapest and the Windmill, a restaurant in the countryside, south of the capital. The old Mill had been converted into a smart eatery: it was not only popular for its good food, but also for the shower block built in the truck park. Jock thought there was a better class of girl at the Windmill, too. He recommended Erica, who he reckoned was every British driver’s favourite Commie-block ■■■■■. Sadly, she was having a night off when we were there.
First thing next morning we crossed into Romania, where Jock certainly knew all about the paperwork. It took half a day, but Jock managed to clear Customs, get the TIR carnets stamped and buy our visas with 200 Marlboro, a jar of Nescafe and some Wrigley’s chewing gum - it was the normal procedure when delivering in Romania, which allowed us to go straight to our destinations without dealing with further bureaucracy.
It was also Jock’s birthday, and to celebrate it, he wanted a woman. When we left the border, it soon became clear how he was going to get one: Jock stopped at every bus stop, in every town and village, to ask any waiting females if they wanted a ride. As he did not seem to be having much luck, I soon got fed up pulling up behind him every few minutes. Eventually, I pulled round him and made steady progress on my own. But on leaving the next town, there was a girl hitchhiker. This was the very thing Jock was looking for, so I stopped to pick her up. She was tall and slim with long black hair to go with her olive-brown complexion. If it were not for her brown teeth, you would have said she was a ‘ten’. The teenage Romanian was bubbly and full of life. As we went along, she tried on my sunglasses and went through my cassette collection, pleading with me to let her keep one of my Dire Straits’ tapes.
I drove on for a few miles, before stopping in a picnic area for coffee and to wait for Jock. Minutes later, he swung into the car park and pulled up with his driver’s door next to mine.
“Where the hell did you get her from?” raged Jock, as he peered across at my passenger.
“Two towns back. Had any luck?” I asked, although I could see he was alone.
“No, I haven’t. You jammy git,” replied Jock.
“She’s yours then — my birthday present to you. Take her,” I offered.
“No. No, you found her. You can have her,” shouted Jock, as he slammed the Scania into gear and roared out onto the road, showering everywhere with gravel.
We made love on the bottom bunk of the Mercedes, as the afternoon sunshine shone warmly through the gaps in the hurriedly drawn curtains. I soon saw what a perfect body my passenger had, once she had taken off the shapeless nylon tracksuit that all Romanians seemed to wear. My good looking lover was also good between the sheets, where she took control in an unexpected performance that belied her youthful appearance. Afterwards, she told me her name was Paula and she gave me her address in Arad, telling me in sign language to call on my way back… I dropped Paula off in the next town, but not before she climbed across the cab for one last kiss.
“Marks, you give me marks?” asked Paula, as she ran her hands across my pockets, feeling for my wallet.
“Ten out of ten, very good,” I could not resist saying, but Paula did not understand why I was laughing — although she was well pleased with the ten Mark note that I gave her.
By this time, the daylight was fading; also, I had no idea where Jock planned to stop for the night. It was not that I needed his expertise anymore, I just wanted to be sociable. Jock had warned me of the dangers of night driving in Romania, with the common hazard of unlit horse and carts, so I took it slowly, driving defensively. I avoided the horses with their dozing drivers, while keeping half an eye out for Jock’s Scania. I found him — parked in a big lay-by on the outskirts of Carensebes. Jock had not found a woman to share his birthday celebrations, so he had drowned his sorrows by drinking his bottle of duty free Johnnie Walker. When I arrived, he was asleep at the wheel, with the whisky bottle lying smashed beside the cab.
At 5.00 o’clock the next morning, incredibly, Jock was banging on my cab door, raring to go. We motored down to Craiova, where Jock stopped outside my delivery address, where he had unloaded on a previous trip. My tutor gave me some final instructions on how to find out about a return load, before setting off for the town of Alexandria and a similar government store to the one in Craiova. The trailer was unloaded and I had the paperwork signed by midday.
The only way to telephone out of Rumania is by using the services of the international tourist hotels. These are very helpful places with plenty of English-speaking staff, but they are expensive. You not only pay for out-going telephone calls, but also have to pay to receive a call. Two calls of less than two minutes each cost over £20, but the quick chats with Fred in England did give me my re-load address. A load of knitwear for London, from a Romanian textile factory in Piatra Nment and a similar factory in Suceava: two towns in the north of Romania — a good day’s worth of driving from Craiova.
Romania is a vast country, with no motorway system. The single carriageway roads were usually poorly surfaced, although relatively traffic free. The speed limit for TIR lorries was 50 kilometres per hour or 30 mph, which left the Mercedes pottering along with four unused high gears in the 12 speed gearbox. For fuel economy reasons, I wanted to run in to gear. This inevitably brought me trouble with the police, who pulled up foreign lorries as a matter of routine. The standard payment for speeding was 20 king-sized cigarettes; the favoured brand in Romania, for some unknown reason, was Kent — practically unheard of elsewhere. Marlboro would get you out of any trouble anywhere else in Eastern Europe, but it was Kent in Romania. I was thankful for Jock’s recommendation to buy 400 at the border duty free shop. Hardly a day went by without a speeding fine.
At Piatra Nment, I arrived, 60 cigarettes lighter, but could not find the textile factory anywhere. A helpful receptionist at the tourist hotel telephoned the head office in Bucharest, to find out the name of the factory for me. The girl wanted me to take a room as well, but I told her I could not afford one, after paying the exorbitant cost of the telephone call. With her directions, I found the factory with ease, but was told that my goods were not ready for loading. I was advised to come back in two days. I went to a parking area on the shore of a lake that I had noticed when driving into town. It was a quiet place to park, so I rested all the next day, but was surprised when the manager of the knitwear factory turned up in the evening and told me my load was ready to load first thing in the morning. I had not told anyone where I was going to park, plus, you could not see the lorry from the road: but somehow, they knew where I was.
The workers hand-balled the cartons of knitwear onto the trailer in the morning and, armed with a hand-drawn map of where to find the Suceava factory, I headed north. This time, the exports were ready. I was loaded, with the paperwork done, by early afternoon. Suceava is in the province of Moldova and, on looking at the map of Romania, my best route back to Hungary seemed to be due west — through Transylvania. What seemed to be a major transit route on the map, turned out to be a poorly surfaced road — the equivalent of a British ‘B’ road. It was also mountainous country and, although it was very picturesque, it was slow-going for the Mercedes, even with a comparatively light load. The Romanian sign posting also left a lot to be desired, with several occasions when it was left to my sense of direction.
I was well into the second day of a long, hard slog across Romania, when I reached the border, at Oradea. This was my first border crossing in Eastern Europe without the assistance of Jock ■■■■■■■■■ My old tactic of watching what everyone else was doing did not have any relevance this time — I was the only person wishing to cross at this remote frontier outpost. However, I need not have worried; the atmosphere at Oradea was completely different from the tension and frantic activity at the main crossing point at Nadlac. Everyone was friendly, even pleased to see me — especially when I donated a jar of Nescafe to the Customs’ staff canteen. The lady in the Romtrans bureau wanted to practice her English, so it took ages to type out the TIR carnet, but it was all very relaxed and pleasant.
My good day was complete when I got a really good deal on a tank-full of black market diesel fuel. I bought enough to get me all the way back to England, but I had to risk getting caught with too much fuel when I crossed into West Germany. There was a 200 litre limit on imported fuel -—any more than that and you had to pay duty. At the German border, the officials seemed more interested in asking me about any Czech army movements I may have seen, rather than checking my fuel tank, so I got away with it. Halfway through Germany, I saw Jock ■■■■■■■■ going the other way, with another load of fruit tree spray. When I got back to Ipswich, I found that all Romanian loads had gone, but there were two loads of Perkins diesel engines waiting to go to Turkey.
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FIRST TRIP TO TURKEY, 1983. [Part 1 ]
Rob Bulmer was in the office when I went to collect my expenses for the Romanian trip.
“Do you two want to do these Turkish loads?” asked Fred, without giving us time to reply, he added, “I know neither of you have done Turkey before, but it doesn’t matter because you won’t be running together anyway.”
Rob and I were still trying to work out the logic of the statement when Fred continued:
“I’ve got one set of permits for Czech-Hungary and one set for Austria-Yugo. Who wants what?” asked Fred, while handing out the papers before getting an answer.
My set of permits was for Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia and Turkey: permits were not needed for Belgium or Bulgaria. I left my passport to be couriered up to London for a Bulgarian visa, while Rob needed visas for Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria.
We left Felixstowe on the Wednesday afternoon. Rob and I ran together as far a Nurnburg on the Thursday night. On Friday morning we split up, as Rob headed east for the Czech border, while I continued south-eastwards, passing Munich and following signposts for Salzburg in Austria. It was the first time I had crossed into Austria and Rob Bulmer had warned me about the complicated road tax system inflicted on foreign trucks. He recommended that I find an agent at the border and pay him to do all the paperwork. Rob had done regular Austrian work before coming to drive for Fred Archer. He reckoned it took him at least half a dozen trips to get the hang of the forms.
On my way over to the agent’s office block, I was approached by another British driver who was also driving his maiden voyage to the Middle East. His name was Chris Wood and he was delighted to see me, as he thought I could help him with his papers. Chris was disappointed to find that it was my first time, too, but we agreed to tackle it together. It took us a long time to get through, but I am sure two heads were better than one, and it could have taken a long longer. The Austrian Customs were a nightmare, even with our forms filled in by the agent. There were rows of frosted glass sliding windows where you had to push your papers under the glass. If it was the wrong papers to the wrong window, then they were rejected without explanation. All the sings were written in German: we only conquered the system by using the process of elimination. It got to the stage when both of us could only see the funny side of the situation. At the end of our ordeal, the Austrian Customs officials must have wondered just what sort of people British lorry drivers were — Chris and I went from window to window, laughing helplessly.
We left the crossing point together and drove through Austria, reaching the border with Yugoslavia just after nightfall. Neither Chris no I could face the prospect of another disastrous Customs encounter on the same day, so we decided to leave it until the morning. On Saturday, however, our decision turned out to be the wrong one, as the border was closed for the weekend. We were stuck until midnight Sunday, but every cloud has a silver lining and two more British trucks had arrived during the night. It seemed that the drivers knew they would not be going anywhere for a couple of days as neither occupant surfaced from his bunk before midday. When they did get up, we all had lunch together in the restaurant, overlooking the crossing. The late arrivals introduced themselves as John Bruce, who drove for Astrans, and Hamish Jenkins, working for Simons. John was en route for Oman, while Hamish was just going to Istanbul — the same as Chris Wood and myself. We told John and Hamish that we were first-timers and John said he would show us the way, as long as we kept up. John was particular who he ran with, but said he owed it to the driver who had taken him under his wing when he was on his first trip. The idea was that we should help anybody in a similar situation to us in the future.
Hamish was an old friend of John’s, who went back a long way; his casual attitude contrasted greatly with John’s seriousness. I thought Chris and I were fortunate to get the chance to run with two such experienced drivers who would virtually guarantee our safe arrival in Istanbul — it certainly eased my mind. Hamish had a saying, a motto that applied to about 50% of British drivers going the Middle East work — it was: “The job’s fued: let’s go on the ps”. He would say this line every time he raised his hand to order four more beers, which the waiter duly brought over to our table. The four of us spent the whole of Saturday drinking in the restaurant, as we looked down on the comings and goings at the border. After a long lie-in on Sunday, we spent the rest of the day doing exactly the same as Saturday, at exactly the same table.
One of the differences between Middle East drivers and drivers to other European countries was that Middle East drivers never made early starts. Sometimes, possibly because of the drinking during the previous night, but mainly because they knew that they were not going to reach their destination that day however early they started. On the Monday, we all had a leisurely breakfast, before John shepherded Chris and me through the maze of Austrian and Yugo Customs’ procedures. This involved paying even more road tax to use Yugoslavian roads, even though we would have to pay motorway tolls en route.
The road through Yugoslavia from Maribor in the north, to the Bulgarian border in the east was called “Death Road” and for a very good reason: it was a single carriageway for much of its length and was used by both farm traffic and vehicles wanting to cross continents, which led to many fatal accidents. The cause of which was nearly always due to the vast difference in vehicles’ speeds that necessitated frequent overtaking. The deaths in the crashes were marked by roadside shrines of flowers and crosses. I had lost count of how many we had passed by the time we reached Belgrade. With the right-hand drive Mercedes, it was difficult to overtake. Hamish was up ahead, where he tried to help by signalling to me about the on-coming traffic, but with only 260 horsepower, it was never easy. Every time I overtook one of the slow, over-loaded local trucks, it was a close shave. The most common on-coming danger was the endless stream of old German-registered Mercedes cars, full of Turkish families making their way back to Germany, after visiting relatives in their homeland.
John and Hamish wanted to stop for the night at the National Hotel on the northern outskirts of Belgrade, but it was packed out with trucks of every nation when we arrived in the late evening. John managed to have a chat with a couple of homeward-bound British drivers before we moved on to park for the night at a service station, south of the capital. The news that it was taking three days to queue up to cross the border from Bulgaria into Turkey prompted John and Hamish to change our route so we avoided the trouble-spot. We carried on driving east, before turning south, in order to go through Greece. You did not need a permit to transit Greece, but John figured we might have problems if we did not make it to the border in one day. To stop overnight in southern Yugoslavia was asking for trouble from the notorious gangs of gypsies who preyed on unwary foreigners. Hamish illustrated John’s warning with a couple of lurid tales of misadventure. He had stories to tell on most aspects of Middle East driving, but the one about the gypsy girl sitting on the driver’s face, while her sister searched the cab for his wallet, was most disturbing. It was a good job for me that they did not know that trick in Romania.
Chris Wood and myself had no qualms about the change of plan, as we continued to tag along behind the other two. We made it into the Greek truck-stop at Evzoni just after midnight. There had been a problem about paying extra road tax, due to our re-routing, but John Bruce knew how to handle it and made it look simple. I just hoped I could remember all this avalanche of information, after John had taken so much time and trouble in explaining everything. Hamish was happy to be in Greece, so he brought out another of his sayings to celebrate the successful traversing of Yugoslavia: “Good job well done, let’s go on the p**s.” He was still drinking steadily when I went to bed at 3.30.
The next day’s run was planned by Hamish over breakfast at Evzoni. Our destination was Kavala, via Thessalonika: Hamish would lead the way, as only he knew the short-cut through Thessalonika. John added a warning about the steep hill down into Kavala and off we went. All was well, until Hamish did a sharp left turn across the traffic, as we can into Thessalonika. I was last of the four and by the time I did my turn into the narrow road between two blocks of flats, the dust kicked up by the other three was worse than any fog. I blindly followed along on what turned into a rough track with raised manhole covers and half-made kerbs. At the top of the track, where the housing finished, I was confronted by Hamish’s DAF coming towards me, with a line of laundry draped over the front of the trailer. Hamish made hand motions, indicating that I should turn round in the field behind him, before we all made our way back down to the main road. We had to endure a stream of verbal abuse from dozens of irate Greek housewives, who had just seen a morning’s washing ruined by four inconsiderate Britons. It turned out that we wanted the next left, just 100 yards further down the road.
Even with the detour, we still made it to Kavala by early afternoon. It was a medium sized port, with ferries and fishing vessels, but the important thing about Kavala, after you had negotiated the long, twisting descent down to sea level, was the lorry park on the beach. A long, narrow parking area, shaded by trees and serviced by cheap, friendly restaurants, serving ice cold beer. What more could a driver wish for? It was said that many weary souls on their way back from the further eastern destinations, spent as long as a week at Kavala, re-charging their batteries, before returning to the UK. We were only going to spend one night on the beach, so Hamish wasted no time in getting his folding chair, in order to sit on the sand with a cold bottle of Lowenbrau in his hand.
John warned Chris and me to take it easy on the beer as the next day was one of the few days on which an early start would be beneficial. The Turkish Customs at the border only made two clearances each day: one at midday and one at midnight. You had to get into the Turkish Customs’ compound before 9.00 o’clock in the morning to have any chance of leaving before noon. The Ipsala crossing was not a busy frontier, as Greece and Turkey were not the best of friends, having fallen out over Cyprus. The Bulgarians and the Turks were not very friendly towards each other either, but due to necessity they crossed the border into each other’s country. No Greeks or Turks crossed the border at Ipsala — it was only used by foreigners to both countries.
We all used the services of the Customs’ agent called Youngturk, who handled all the paperwork. The four of us retired to the restaurant for a cup of chi, the sweet tea, drunk without milk. The only other travellers crossing into Turkey that morning were Dutch and German tourists in camper vans: three going east and two vans returning west. The outer near-side tyre of the drive axle had picked up a bolt on the early morning run to the border and had slowly deflated. It would have saved time to change the wheel while we waited for the Customs’ all clear, but John reckoned that messing about under the noses of the border officials might make them unnecessarily suspicious, so we decided to leave it until we got up the road. The first thing I did on Turkish soil was to change a wheel, although Chris Wood did most of the work, while swearing at Hamish, who did absolutely nothing.
Hamish was more interested in the contents of a Dutch registered coach that was sharing our lay-by. The passengers were all young Australians and New Zealanders, mostly girls, who were doing the European Grand Tour, so popular with antipodean twenty-somethings. The coach party had stopped for lunch and sat eating cheese salad sandwiches on the grassy slopes above the road. Hamish referred to the vehicle as a ‘■■■■-bus’, an unflattering term used by all Middle Eastern drivers, which did not accurately reflect the contents of the coach. It was more of a label given, because of the constant failure of the drivers to get anywhere with the girls.
We left the lay-by with instructions to look out for the long descent into Tekirdag and not to forget to stop at the police checkpoint at Silivri. It was not a steep hill down into Tekirdag, but it was long and twisted, down a narrow valley, so that you would not see the end; a low gear was needed to get you safely to the bottom. The road went straight through the town and it was easy to envisage runaway trucks careering down the hill, with their brakes on fire. After catching up the others at the police checkpoint, it was just an hour’s drive into the Londra Camp, situated on the western outskirts of Istanbul, near the airport. It was an old campsite, originally for camper vans and back-packers, but it had widened its entrance gates to accommodate lorries. The Londra was the Number One rendezvous point for everyone going across the Bosphorus.
Rob Bulmer had arrived the previous evening and was parked in the section of the lorry park that British trucks reserved for themselves. It was the shadiest corner, nearest the showers and the bar, but furthest away from the noisy road. Rob had been to see our agent in Istanbul that morning. He had told Rob that we were clearing Customs at Izmit. The agent left instructions with Rob that if I arrived during the day, I was to follow Rob to Izmit where, hopefully, we would be unloaded in the afternoon.
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FIRST TRIP TO TURKEY. [Part 2]
Izmit was on the eastern side of the Bosphorus, about two hours’ drive from the Londra Camp, but on Friday morning, we could not leave until 10.00 o’clock. This was because of the rush hour restrictions on the Bosphorus bridge, where the toll doubled before 10.00 in the morning. This was not much of a deterrent for a car, but for a four axle truck, it was an extra £90.00. It was good for me that Rob had arrived a day earlier, as it was normal to loose a day while you went to tell your agent to arrange for Customs’ clearance: as it was Friday, I would not have tipped until the Monday. We were both back at the Londra Camp before dark, after having unloaded the diesel engines at a truck building plant, right beside the main Istanbul-to-Ankara highway. As I sat waiting at the Customs at Izmit, I saw John Bruce go by, on his way to Muscat. I don’t think he knew how much easier had had made my job: I could not thank him enough. Hamish and Chris Wood were still at the Londra Camp when Rob and I returned. They had been to see their agents and would tip on Monday.
“You got a result there alright! A good job well done: let’s go on the p**s,” said Hamish as soon as we got back.
In the restaurant bar at the campsite, Hamish recommended the chicken — it was the only thing he recognised.
“That other stuff probably won’t do you any harm, but if you found out what it was — the you would be ill,” suggested Hamish.
Everybody drank Efes Pilsen, the local strong lager. Rob and I sat with Hamish and Chris at a table in the middle of the dining room, soon to be joined by other British drivers. A new Zealand couple also came to sit with us and listen to Hamish recount some of his road stories. The New Zealanders were studying music and the guy had with him a soprano saxophone. We cajoled him to play something and when his girlfriend brought out a small bongo drum, to beat a steady rhythm, the Kiwi blew an amazing set of ethnic Turkish tunes. A lot of the drivers there that night were Kurds from eastern Turkey, Iran and Iraq; they began chanting, dancing and clapping — they appreciated the New Zealander’s talent even more than we did. A whole stream of Efes bottles were sent over to our table and shared amongst us all.
We sat drinking away into the night and I was just thinking what a great job it was when Hamish came out with a chilling statement that stunned us all:
“We’ve got big trouble. Nobody leave the table. Stay exactly where you are,” he said soberly.
“What on earth do you mean?” we all chorused.
“Don’t look now, but we are surrounded: there’s one Turk at every table; earlier they were all drinking together — now they’re waiting for us,” continued Hamish.
Hamish was right. We were the only table of drinkers left in the room: there were two waiters standing behind the bar, waiting to close up, and the only other people present were the seven Turks, each one seated at a different table.
“What do they want with us?” asked Chris Wood, “nobody has upset them, have they?”
“I don’t think so. The way I see it, they see five men with one women, laughing, joking, having a good time. They reckon those five blokes are going to take turns with that woman and if they can take that woman away from those men — then they can take turns with her,” stated Hamish.
“Oh, thanks a lot, Hamish,” said the New Zealand girl, “that says a lot for me.”
“Well, it’s a different culture out here,” went on Hamish, “you just don’t see Turkish girls out for a drink with the lads. Most Turks only see western women on TV, in films or in magazines. It’s all glamour and ■■■. They think they’re easy.”
“Are you sure about this, Hamish? What are we going to do?” asked Rob Bulmer.
“Not 100% sure, no; but I bet at least half of them are carrying knives. I, for one, am not going to do anything, and I don’t want any of you to do anything either. We’re out numbered and ■■■■■■ and I don’t fancy a-beating. We’ll sit it out,” suggested Hamish.
“What if they make a move?” I asked, looking round for a suitable weapon.
“No. They won’t start anything in here. It’ll be outside, or in the bogs. If you want a leak, you’ll just have to ■■■■ yourselves,” concluded Hamish.
The stand-off lasted till dawn, when the Turks finally gave up and trooped out to their cars. The waiters looked as relieved as we all were. All in all, I thought Hamish had got it right. It was a valuable lesson about getting drunk and dropping your guard in a foreign country. Rob Bulmer and I decided to have a rest day on the Saturday, in order to catch up on our sleep, after sitting up all night.
While we were sleeping, a telex arrived with out re-load details. Two loads of marble floor tiles for the new Waitrose supermarket in Harpenden, to be collected from Mezdra in Bulgaria. It was a shame Rob and I would not be able to run back to the UK together, but at least we could help each other find the pick-up point. After making sure we were not the last customers left in the bar on Saturday night, we left the Londra Camp early on Sunday morning.
The road heading west through Edirne and on to the Turkish-Bulgarian border, which was practically deserted of traffic. There was a charge for crossing on a Sunday, which put most people off. Rob and I debated the pros and cons of paying the surcharge versus the probable Monday morning rush. We thought it would be easier to go through on a peaceful Sunday. The fact that we were empty also helped and we were soon on our way across Bulgaria.
Mezdra was in the north-west of the country. It looked like the best way to get there, would be to head for Sofia and then, just before the capital, leave the main east-west transit track, in order to head north. It all went to plan, until the turn-off to Mezdra: from there, the signposts were only written in Cyrillic script, and with no road numbers to follow, we were helpless. To make matters worse, it was pouring down with rain, which meant there was no one around to ask directions. Suddenly I remembered the old AA Road Book of Europe that my Father had given me when I first passed my HGV test. It was not new then, and I never used it, as the small scale on small pages made it difficult to use as a route planner. However, the book did have a section in the front with facts about each country. Luckily, under Bulgaria, there was a chart showing the Cyrillic alphabet, along side the Roman letters. Rob and I had a cup of tea, as we worked out the names of the towns in the area. Afterwards, I stuck up a sheet of paper on the dashboard, with the translation of Mezdra written on it in large letters, before we carried on in the unrelenting rain.
Mezdra was in mountainous country, as you would expect for a marble quarrying area. The road twisted alongside a swollen river, in a steep, wooded valley. Narrow tunnels and even narrower bridges made us think that, maybe, we were going the wrong way, but with no where to turn round, we had no option but to carry on. Eventually, we came to Mezdra, at around midnight. It was still raining, so with nobody about, we parked in a lay-by at the edge of town. In the morning, Rob and I were delighted to find that we were parked in the holding area for trucks waiting to load at the marble factory.
Rob loaded first, in a factory where women seemed to have equal status to men. The wooden crates of marble tiles were swung onto the trailer by a female crane driver, who handled her machinery as well as any man. After the load was complete, the forewoman asked us to join her for lunch in the works canteen. For starters, there was a pink soup that tasted awful, although the bread roll was okay; the main course was mashed potato, greens and a boiled pig’s trotter that had no meat on it. Rob and I did not want to appear ungrateful, but here was no way we could eat our meat. The locals devoured their trotters with relish. If asked, we agreed to plead ‘vegetarian’, but managed to slip away unnoticed before dessert. Back at the lorries, we opened some tins and had a proper meal, before Rob set off, back to England.
The carpenters at the factory were still making the crates for my marble tiles, so I had to wait until the next day to be loaded. I left, just before lunchtime on the Tuesday, so I did not have to decline an invitation to dine. When I got going, I found the marble was much heavier than the load of diesels I had brought down across Europe. The Mercedes V8 struggled all the way back to Zeebrugge. The engine started first time, every time, never missed a beat and was ultra reliable — it just did not have enough horsepower. The 12 speed gearbox had a cog for every occasion — the only problem was that my gears were a lot lower than all the other lorries. It was Sunday morning before I arrived in Dover, where I spent most of the day waiting at the Eastern Docks for Customs’ clearance. I ran up to Harpenden in the evening, ready to deliver the tiles at the supermarket on the Monday. Rob Borgman turned up with his load, just as I was leaving. He had come through Dover on the Saturday morning and had gone home for the weekend.
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Hi Chris, as it’s been nearly a year now since you had your motorbike accident near Medicine Hat, I hope that by now that you are on the road to a full recovery.
Mentioning John Bruce brought back some very happy memories for me of a day spent with John, showing my wife and I, along with Peter Wall and Dennis McCarthy from Hick’s, around Istanbul. I remember asking John how he knew all about the very interesting places that he took us to see and he told me that one of his hobbies was reading all about the places that he used to deliver to or reload from.
John told me that on one of his trips while he was passing through Istanbul, he stopped at a small printing shop, where he wanted to get some business cards made up. He had designed a card with a picture of an Astran truck on it and the words “John Bruce Middle East Driver” along with his own home phone number and Astran’s telex number. I think he said that he wanted one hundred cards
printing and that the price in Turkish Lire worked out to be quite cheap.
Two weeks later when he was on his way home, he stopped at the printers and collected the cards, which were wrapped up in a small parcel. He drove up to Kapikule before he opened the parcel, only to find that they were all printed with the words “John Bruce Model East Driver”.
I bet that there are loads of us now who wish that they had taken a couple of hours off to have a look around a lot of those places and to take a few photos, rather than having to recover from a heavy ‘Efes Control’ hangover.
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Hi Opal Finder, thanks for your good sentiments about the recovery. It looks like another year for the physical stuff but I’m resigned to the mental problems being permanent. My memory is the big loss and I’m grateful that I wrote so much down. At least I can go back in my past through words, although writing memories is out of the question now. ( The recent posts are pasted up from years ago.)
Negotiating this new version of the forum is a bit like stumbling through my new way of life. I hope my mistakes don’t upset too many too much. Currently, I’m camped out alone in the motor home for the Summer, concentrating on getting back my physical fitness. It’s nice not to have to depend on anybody for help or support, which hasn’t come easy when I’ve never relied on any person for anything ever. Thanks again.
FIRST TURKEY TRIP ON MY OWN. [Part 1 ]
It was mid-December when I went to see Fred Archer in his office over at Ipswich. He sat behind his desk in a high-backed swivel chair; he was leaning back, scratching his balls and still wearing the same old dirty Mercedes Trucks driving jacket.
“Hello boy, do you want a turkey for Christmas?” he asked before I said a word. Before I could conjure up an imaginative reply about roasting poultry, he continued,
“There’s a trailer load of second-hand tractors for Istanbul standing in the yard.”
“Yeah, why not,” I replied casually.
Archie reached up behind him and pulled a bunch of keys off a hook; he threw them on the desk.
“Scania one-eleven, JPV 357V, diesel up and then get under trailer 303. I’ll sort out the paperwork and get you booked on tonight’s boat,” Fred added as we both gave a self-satisfied grin.
The Scania III was everybody’s favourite motor for doing Middle-East. It was strong and reliable, did not mind the cold, had plenty of room inside and carried 200 gallons of fuel in huge twin diesel tanks. I would be half way across Hungary before I needed to re-fuel. At 280 horse power, the one-eleven was not as powerful as its vee-eight engined brother, the one-four-one, but with its roof rack, ladders and Asia-Europe written across the front, the Scania sure looked the part.
A break down is one of the worse things that can happen on a long Continental journey; reliability is everything and you have to take care of the vehicle. It is no good thrashing your way through country after country, sooner or later, something breaks. As I had no hope of getting back to England much before the New Year, I took it easy. The permits that Fred gave me were for Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Turkey; I knew the way as far as Bucharest, but expected Bulgaria to be a problem. I did have a transit visa in my passport, but the amount of freight traffic would govern my progress at the borders.
The weather was cold, but I did not see any snow. After Germany, the tachograph laws did not apply, so I was able to make good headway on the better quality roads of Czechoslovakia and Hungary. At the Windmill, another Fred Archer lorry was parked up for the night. The driver was on his way back to England, after having tipped in Istanbul and re-loaded with car tyres in Rumania. As we dined together, he warned of the queue at the Turkish-Bulgarian border; but as I had no permit for Yugoslavia, there was no way I could avoid it. We had a chat about Erica, but once again it seemed to be her night off.
The next morning, I was up early and down to the Romania border before sunrise, in an attempt to beat the rush. Traffic was light at Nadlac as I soon remembered what Jock ■■■■■■■■ had shown me, earlier that year. I crossed out of Hungary and into Rumania in less than an hour, at a border where the two countries share the same Customs building. Armed, with 400 Kent cigarettes from the duty-free shop. I set out on the long haul across to Bucharest.
I had bought enough diesel on the black market in Hungary to get me through to Istanbul, so my only problem was the question of where to stop for the night. It was only breakfast time, but already my thoughts were concentrated on how I could get a trouble-free night. On the main transit route across Rumania, all sorts of things were liable to go missing when you stopped to sleep. Wheels, lights, mirrors, batteries and diesel fuel were all vulnerable, not to mention the six tractors in the trailer. There were three main options to combat the problem: one was to hide up in the middle of nowhere and hope that anybody who is out thieving does not find you; another was to park in the middle of a town and give the local police patrol some cigarettes so that they will hang around to protect you; the last alternative was to drive across the country in one day and park with the other trucks waiting to cross into Bulgaria, hoping that there was safety in numbers. None of the choices was foolproof and during the long day of driving, I changed my mind many times as to what I was going to do.
That day I had also been trying out the “salute” method of speeding fine avoidance. This technique involved saluting the police officer as he stood in the road, trying to wave you down. With his ingrained military training, the policeman’s response to seeing someone salute him was to stand to attention and return the gesture, hopefully standing aside as he did so. By the time the lorry had passed, it was too late for the officer to pull his revolver and do any damage. Romanian police rarely gave chase as they usually only had enough petrol in the car to get them back to the station.
During the day, this routine had worked 100%, but on the third occasion, I came unstuck. It was late, I was tired, he was quick and I was slow. My speed had dropped as darkness had fallen, I was still speeding, but when I saluted, the engine was in the wrong gear. I tried a quick down change, but missed it. The policeman did not see my hurried touch of my head as a salute; when he did not see me slowing down, he went for his gun. I anchored up just as he pulled the automatic from its holster. All this happened about 20 kilometres before Bucharest,at the start of the only piece of dual carriageway in Romania. There was a parking area, with a kiosk set back in a pine wood; it was crowded with trucks, but I just managed to squeeze into a space at the far end. Before I had taken the cellophane off the carton of Kent, the policeman was knocking on the door.
Knowing that most officials do not like it if you lean out of the window to talk to them, I opened the door. I was not going to get out and give up my superior elevated position, but I did not mind showing that I had nothing to hide. The officer did not seem angry, but went on to give me a long lecture in Rumanian, which I did not understand at all. Presumably it was about speeding. However, as he spoke no English, I was wasting my time arguing with him. IN the end I gave the traffic cop twenty Kent king-size; at least this made him put his gun back in its holster as he needed two hands to put the cigarettes in his jacket’s breast pocket.
The ■■■■ did not stop the policeman rambling on in his native tongue; he only quietened down when the girl with the longest hair I had every seen came along and started speaking to him. The good looking female then pulled herself up the steps of the Scania, climbed across my lap and plonked herself down in the passenger seat. He black hair was plated into a ponytail, but was still long enough to sit on. The copper was still hanging around, so I gave him another packet of cigarettes and as he walked away, I shouted a parting shot:
“And make sure my spare wheel is still there in the morning.”
Coffee was the only thing that was going to help me; so I made a flask full using a paper filter and proper coffee. Martina was not in a hurry and we chatted, as we drank two cups each. The girl told me she was 20, lived in Bucharest, supported Steaua Bucharest, hoped to get into the Romanian Olympic rowing team and never slept with Turkish lorry drivers. I was well knacked so it was sod’s law that such a willing young lady should come my way at such a time. As we drew the curtains and got undressed, I could see she was something special. Even a badly chipped front tooth only made her look cute when she smiled. The perfectly built Rumanian knew she had a good shape too. When naked, she knelt on the passenger seat and rubbed her hands all over her body.
“You like? You want? You like?” smiled Martina.
Thankfully she recognised how tired I was and when we made love, Martina insisted on going on top; probably worried I would fall asleep on top of her if the positions were reversed.
“You give me dollars?” asked Martina, as she got dressed.
It saved her from my marks out of ten line, but on that night’s performance I would have given her an eleven. For myself, I scored a poor two out of ten, although Martina saw it differently.
“Very good, very ■■■■, very good,” she said with her cheeky smile when I handed over a ten Deutsche mark note.
“Very kind,” I replied.
“My address, you visit?” said Martina as she wrote it out in the back of my diary.
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” I said finding it hard to stay awake.
“We go disco in Buch. Meet Nadia Comaneci. She is my friend,” said Martina when she climbed out of the cab and blew me a kiss.
After her gymnastics on the bunk, I did not doubt Nadia was Martina’s friend, but I just pulled the door shut and collapsed back into my sleeping bag. Sleep came immediately which saved me from worrying about where I was parked and if everything would be alright in the morning.
The 40 king-size must have done the trick; everything was intact and in place when I awoke. After skirting round the south-west of Bucharest on the ring road, I reached Georgui in a couple of hours and found the border crossing devoid of any traffic. The Romanian police and Customs house was at the northern end of a combined road-rail bridge that crossed the river Danube. This bridge was the single rigid crossing point across the river between Rumania and Bulgaria. It was an old iron girder bridge, with the roadway running above the rail track; similar in style to the bridge over the Mersey and Manchester ship canal at Runcorn, but on a larger scale and not so well looked after.
Soon I was up on the bridge, crossing into Bulgaria. The soldiers of both countries patrolled the bridge from their side to the middle; everyone of the guards put his hand to his mouth to mime cigarette smoking as I trundled passed. An hour later, I pulled out of the checkpoint at Russe and headed up the pass known as Cobblestone Mountain. Luckily the road was dry and not a problem but why this section did not have tarmac like all the rest, I do not know. Coming down from the highlands, I continued south until I came to the main east-west transit route between Turkey and Yugoslavia. Turning eastwards at the T-junction, I carried on until I came to the back of the queue waiting to get into Turkey.
On the first day of queuing, I spent some time cleaning the cab windows and sweeping out the inside. The line of trucks moved twice, about one kilometre each time. Nobody pushed passed and I made fiends with my neighbours by standing around their campfire while looking suitably pi**ed off. There were four Turks immediately ahead of me, two in Dutch registered vehicles and three Yugoslavs right behind, warming up at our brazier. Most of the other lorries were the same, with a few Romanians, plus a couple of big American rigs with Irani number plates. I could not see another British truck ahead or behind me in a queue that went from one horizon across to the other. One good thing was that when things moved, you did move a long way in one go; at least you did not have to sit with the engine running and your foot on the clutch.
Day two had three moves; on the last one I came to rest beside a sign that read: Kapitan Andreevo 7 Km. I figured it was another eight kilometres to the border. My little section of queue inherited some more campfires and kept them going by pouring on diesel fuel, which was siphoned off from our tanks By now, we were all on first name terms with everyone except me having pulled a family photograph from their wallet; I had never had to refuse so many offers of cigarettes in my life.
Another three moves on the third day made me think the end must be coming soon and this was confirmed when two British trucks coming out of Turkey stopped to say it was about two kilometres to the border. I thought it was nice of them to pull over and make a cup of coffee, but the real reason that they stopped was to sell me all their surplus Turkish lira. Two more Brits stopped on my fourth day, although only one wanted to change money. The drivers had not seen any British lorries ahead of me in the queue; it seemed everyone was leaving it until after the New Year. By mid-afternoon, I was at the front of the queue and with the help of my Turkish and Yugo mates, made an easy crossing into Turkey.
It was then that I was shocked to find I had no Turkish permit; the piece of paper issued by the British Department of Transport that gave permission for a lorry to enter Turkey - without it I was going nowhere. I searched the cab high and low, with no success. I wondered if anyone could have stolen it, but it was the only thing missing. Did it blow away in the wind? Did I hand it in at some other Customs bureau and they kept it? Did I bring one with me in the first place? I could not remember. Youngturk, the agent, could not help; a bottle of whisky would work miracles for small problems, but not for a major disaster like not having a permit. I went to bed thinking of what I could do to save myself the hassle of asking Fred Archer to send down the piece of paper by DHL.
FIRST TRIP TO TURKEY ON MY OWN. [Part 2]
My luck changed in the morning when two British lorries came through from Bulgaria. John Mansfield in his Volvo 88 and George Youngman in a V reg Foden parked right next to me. The owner drivers from Humberside had also queued for four days and were pleased to see they were not alone. Amazingly, George had a spare Turkish permit with him. John insisted that he gave it to me. The Foden driver was reluctant to part with the priceless piece of paper because it had his name on it and any mis-use could be directly traced to him, but I said a bottle of Johnnie Walker would take care of minor details like that. The Yorkshireman let me have it in the end, but then refused to take anything for it. I told him I owed one.
John had a load of Perkins diesel engines that were going to the same place I had delivered to earlier that year. George had six second-hand tractors which, when we compared the paperwork, we found were going to the same place as mine. The three of us did the border formalities together; then ran in convoy to the Londra Camp, arriving just after sunset on the shortest day.
It was unwise to take the lorry into town to visit your agent; also it was better to take a taxi, rather than a bus. Jimmy was the man who controlled the cars used by all the lorry drivers when they wanted to go down town in Istanbul. Having lived in London for a few years, he spoke good English and knew the location of all the agents’ offices. First thing after breakfast, we found Jimmy in the campsite reception where he soon organised two cars and drivers: one for John and the other for George and me, who had the same Customs clearance agent.
The rush hour trip into Istanbul was like the Wacky Races, with no one showing any lane discipline whatsoever. I am glad I was not driving. The white knuckle ride was hairy, but we arrived at the agent’s office block in one piece. The driver told us he would wait outside, in order to take George and me back to the Londra Camp when we had finished. He had a long wait; for the agent wanted to practice his English. After a cup of chi, Naci, the agent, opened the fridge in his office and we all started on his stock of Tuborg lager. Naci talked about anything and everything. In George, he found someone more than willing to join him in endless conversation. By the time we left, all the beer had been drunk but our driver was still patiently waiting.
“Did you have a problem with your agent” asked John, who had returned to the Londra Camp hours before us.
“Yes,” said George, “his fridge was too small.”
While we were in town, another British lorry had arrived at the camp. It was a low loader carrying a 360 degree tracked digger; the driver had the same agent as George and myself. Our paths had crossed in the taxis. The next morning, while John went off to Izmit with his engines, Naci came to the Londra Camp, from where he led his three charges to a vehicle compound somewhere in the suburbs of Istanbul. The site was littered with imported tractors, other farm machinery and plant. At a wide concrete ramp, George and I started to unload our Massey Fergusons. Most would not start, so we had to help each other by pulling them off with a chain, attached to one of the few tractors that would run. To get six tractors on one trailer, it was necessary to take off one of the front wheels and half of the front axle. That way, when the tractors faced each other lengthways in the trailer, it was possible to slide the two engines passed one another and save a lot of space. It was a tight fit, but at least it meant that nothing could move around en route. It was tricky coming down the ramp on only three wheels, but George and I could not be bothered to re-fit the other bits, which we left in a pile beside the tractors. Mervyn unloaded his digger in less than half the time it took to do our tractors. The only serious snag of the morning came when Naci locked his keys in his car. The agent was so impressed with my skill with a wire coat hanger that he insisted the three of us went back to his office for drinks after we had taken the lorries back to the Londra Camp. As we were now four, the re-stocked fridge full of beer did not last as long, which meant the taxi driver did not have such a lengthy wait. George and now Mervyn were quite happy to talk all afternoon about the difference between Green label and Red label Tuborg. In the end, I think Naci was genuinely sorry to see us go even though we had drunk all his beer.
A reply to my earlier telex came while I was down town, it had instructions of a re-load at Radauti, a town in Rumania, right up in the north of the country, near the Russian border. John came back from tipping his diesel engines at Izmit to find he and George where re-loading at Iasi (pronounced Yash), also in northern Rumania. We decided to run together; leaving early the next morning. George was not keen on going back through the Bulgarian border at the town called Kapitan Andreevo so he persuaded John to take us through a small crossing point north of Edirne, called Maliko Tarnovo. We all filled up with as much fuel as we could carry; John led the way, George was in the middle and I brought up the rear.
After leaving the main road from Istanbul, we headed north into the hills, where we were soon tackling sharp hairpin bends on steep narrow roads. With dry conditions and empty trailers the gradient was not a problem, but the tarmac surface carried many scars from when drivers had attempted this desolate route in wintry conditions. At the highest point over the range of hills, we came to the Bulgarian-Turkish border, which was deserted, except for the bare minimum of guards and officials. John had been through this way several times before, so he soon showed us the ropes.
In fact, John seemed to specialise in going through out of the way border posts and visiting remote areas of foreign countries. The intelligent owner driver with a university education seemed to give priority to exploring, rather than to economics. Apart from that, John was very business-like but given the chance, he would always put a little adventure in his life. George, on the other hand, was a more traditional lorry driver, as well as being a typical Yorkshireman. He had become an owner driver after being laid off by his long time employer. With his redundancy money, George had bought the Foden and, after several years’ work in Great Britain, was now trying to make his fortune in Europe. The taciturn northerner let John do all the talking and make the decisions, but could come out with some notable quotes that rivalled those of Gavin. For instance: when asked why he drove an old Foden and not a more popular European Marque, George came out with a classic observation:
“A good lorry is like a good woman, it’s not how old she is or what she looks like, it’s the amount of money she earns that matters.”
Yet again, I had struck lucky when it came to finding good people to run with; as I followed the other two down to the Black Sea coast, once more I did not even have to navigate the route. When we came to the sea, it was dark, while the temperature was much colder as we battled into a strong headwind that slowed our progress along the coast road to Burgas. On the southern edge of the city, John selected a big parking area on which to stop for the night. There was no shelter from the biting wind at the edge of the beach, so to get some protection, George and I parked close to the lee-ward side of John’s trailer.
“Don’t worry about your leader, I’ll survive. I’m tough. You take all the shelter you can get,” said John sarcastically, as we piled into his cab for our evening meal.
“What do you want us to do, put the wagons in a circle? Why do we have to stop here anyway?” replied George, who disliked being ridiculed when not at fault.
In the absence of any café, bar or restaurant, British lorry drivers, when running together, always ate the same thing: camion stew. Each member of the convoy was required to provide at least three tins of food for the meal. One of which should always have been a tin of meat, such as steak and kidney pie filling or meat balls in gravy. The other two being vegetables or something like spaghetti hoops. Tinned new potatoes and baked beans were always well received, while mushy peas were usually rejected. The chef was the man with the biggest saucepan, into which all the tins were emptied. The pot was then heated until it bubbled furiously for at least ten minutes. The more experienced drivers came equipped with a large soup bowl, rather than a plate, as the end result of all the culinary preparation with the can opener was usually a broth. John even had a ladle and the camion stew that he cooked that night was one of the best, although I had never had one that did not taste great.
As we sat, peering out into the darkness, listening to the wind howl and the sound of the waves pounding on the beach, John told us of a previous visit to his favourite Bulgarian car park. He had been loaded with 18 tonnes of putty, bound for Baghdad when he stopped to pick up two hitchhikers, a few miles south of Prague. They were two East German girls, who had set off with their backpacks, hoping to spend August on the shores of the Black Sea. John turned out to be the last lift they needed. All three became such good friends on the journey that our chef stayed with the girls for the first five days after their arrival. Parked in the same carpark, the sun was shining, the nights were warm and they went swimming in the sea. A hell of a contrast to the conditions we had on the day before Christmas eve.
The wind seemed to have grown stronger in the morning, as we turned inland towards the bridge across the Danube at Russe; a fine snow blew against the side of our vehicles. Bulgarian Customs’ formalities were quickly completed before the three trucks gingerly climbed up the curving ramp above the railway line that led onto the bridge over to Rumania. The sea going vessels on the Danube needed plenty of headroom so the bridge was high and exposed. At altitude, the wind was even stronger; ice was forming on the windward side of the metal beams.
Halfway across, George stopped, forcing me to pull up behind him at the place in the middle of the bridge where a white line ran across the road, marking the boundary between the two countries. The lorry cab was in Rumania and my trailer was in Bulgaria. When I got out to see what was the matter, unbelievably there was a line of trucks stretching from the Customs’ post at the Rumanian end of the bridge, right up to the centre and I was last in the queue. It was midday, mighty cold and howling a gale. John told George and me to keep as close together as possible; also to keep the motors running. Our leader rightly thought the wind chill would freeze up the fuel lines if we switched off the engines. It was so cold that even the soldiers preferred to stay in their sentry boxes rather than come out and cadge cigarettes. For the rest of the day, progress was painfully slow. As daylight faded, it got markedly colder. It was gone midnight when I received a stamp in my passport for the 25th December, and finally entered Rumania. The last 500 metres had taken 12 hours; I pulled up in the shelter of some Russian trucks and went straight to bed.
On Christmas morning, I was laying awake, wondering how long I could last before having to get up and go for a leak when there was a crash of metal on metal as the cab rocked violently. I jumped up, pulled the curtains and found that a Russian truck had driven into the offside of my cab. The driver was trying to back away, but was only spinning his wheels on the ice, as the two vehicles rubbed together. Because of the cold, I had been sleeping with my clothes on, so after puling on my boots and grabbing my jacket, I climbed out of the passenger door to inspect the damage. As I went round the front, the Russian driver finally found some grip and the two lorry cabs parted company. The Scania had a broken indicator, a cracked mirror lens and the mirror arm, which seemed to have taken the blunt of the impact and was badly bent. The Russian Kaz had similar damage; the driver was tall, young and not in the least bit apologetic.
I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together to indicate to the Russian that I wanted some money for the damage he had done. The Kaz driver scoffed at my demands and started gesticulating that it was all my fault because if I had not parked so close to his truck he would not have hit my cab. It was then that I elected to hit him; deciding to use my head and nut the Russian. He had shown no remorse or respect, which made me angry.