Our beloved truck underwent some serious home
improvements back in Stiava, three weeks ago.
We sorted the overheating. We'd arrived in Italy with
a mysterious but serious problem: every hill climb hoiked up the water
temperature to almost boiling point. Putting the heater on helped but made it
pretty uncomfortable in the cab; the idea of having to do the same as we drove
through the desert in a few weeks' time was unthinkable. With Jonathan's help,
we flushed, cleaned and refilled the radiator. On Martin's advice Huw drilled
the thermostat, and, after days of searching, Huw and Jon found someone with a
'strobe gun' to 'tweak the timing'. Imagine trying to explain that in broken
Italian. Together, these seemed to fix the overheating problem. Until just a
few days ago here in Tunisia that is, but that's another story.
We constructed an ingenious 'Heath Robinson' awning
from sailing rope and a tarp. I also invented our outside table - you'll see it
in the Tunisia pictures when they're up, as we've used it daily since leaving
Italy. Of course I haven't let the boys forget that it was my idea.
The biggest transformation was the colour. When we
changed her from cream to blue last summer, a multitude of problems followed.
Huw hated it from the first brush stroke; it wasn't the serene sea-green I'd
expected either. We found out mosquitoes and tsetse flies love blue, and shortly
before we left the UK we discovered that all our truck paperwork stated the
colour as 'beige'. Beige? Even the word sounds boring. But at that late stage,
without waiting weeks and paying extra for replacement documents, we had to go
with it. Gutted that the ultimate colour choice had, in the end, been taken out
of our hands, we looked up the dreaded word. Beige: a pale brown/grey colour
with a tinge of yellow or pink. At least that gave us some room for
negotiation. I made the final choice: a genuine Land Rover shade 'Sahara Dust',
a deeper colour than before, more mushroomy and warm somehow. We carried the
tin from Leicestershire all the way to Stiava.
She now looks fairly military and is arguably similar
to before, but Huw fell in love with her all over again and I have to agree she
looks much better. There is one major bonus in my eyes too: because we don't
want to attract too much of the wrong sort of attention at border crossings and
police checkpoints, I can paint words on the side to soften her look, though
I've been banned from doodling flowers, butterflies or spiral patterns.
Jonathan suggested "If found, please return to..." and I'm
considering painting our names above the windscreen - or is that too cheesy for
words?
Route, photos and more at www.thelongandwinding.co.uk
