Thursday, 16 June 2016

June 9 & 10 Beijing.



Nigel Post:
Arrived in Beijing and had to pick up the cars from a Warehouse and then negotiate Beijing’s wonderful traffic jams all the way back to the hotel. Not something any of the cars in this rally particularly enjoy. However, fantastic to meet up with old friends we met during the Madrid-Marrakesh Rally and to see the sheer variety of cars running in this event, just extraordinary. 115 cars in total spanning approximately 60 years of the heyday of motor car manufacturing. The Camaraderie is great and everyone tends to open up very quickly about their lives as we are all in this big adventure together so you get to know people easily with less of the usual social reserves. Shovel and I spent the day going over the car and checking everything was where it should be and all nuts and bolts properly tightened then in the evening we joined a few people for a delicious dinner in one of the old and quite rare Beijing Hutongs. Scrutineering tomorrow. 


Shovel Post:
Fantastic to renew old acquaintances and make new ones – a very eclectic bunch of petrol heads and the car park is a motor fanatic’s wet dream. We went for a hot-pot dinner on Friday evening with a lovely bunch of people introduced by Peter St George (aka The Smiling Assassin).  Nigel keeps opening up to everyone about his life – I watch with pity as their eyes glaze over. He really has no idea about social reserves. 

Saturday afternoon I feign a bad shoulder and watch as Nigel crawls around under the car doing a spanner check. He is getting quite good at this and I think I may make a mechanic of him by the time we reach Paris.

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