Marbellas to the Arctic

After a stay with freinds in bergen, John Allen and the Silverish one returned to the UK in the early hours of this morning. The silverish one is still performing perfectly despite having covered over 7000 miles since leaving the UK less than two weeks ago! Welcome back to all of the Arctic Marbellas!

So we (well, most of us!) have reached the end of our oddessy across Europe for DebRA. We drove from Marbella to the Arctic, in two twenty year old micro cars in 4 days and 21 hours. We are tired and exhillerated by our experience in the last nine days since leaving Southampton. During our time away, we've met people from all corners of the continent, from Spain right up to Norway along the way who have been affected in some way by Epidermolysis Bullosa. It was our wish to spread awareness of the disorder across the continent as well as raise money for DebRA, and we have acheived both of those aims. At the time of writing you have all helped us raise more than £3500 for DebRA in the UK, and help the DebRA groups in other European contries raise their profile on television, radio and in the news papers with our slightly off the wall charity drive. If EB is new to you and you heard about it through our adventure, then you are part of the sucess. A difficult part of having an EB sufferer born into a family, or indeed being an EB sufferer, is the lack of public awareness and understanding, which leads to a constant and distressing need to explain to family, friends and strangers, what is wrong with you, your son, daughter, niece, nephew or grandchild. Any publicity we have helped to raise, we hope will go some way to raising the profile of EB, and all the money you have kindly donated to us will help DebRA ease the pain and research treatment for EB sufferers in the UK and worldwide.

We will of course keep the just giving website open and keep the blog updated, we hope we will have much more to say! For example, John and the Silverish one are still out there somewhere on continental Europe, who knows what adventures await? We also hope to have many follow-up stories in newspapers and magazines in the coming weeks.

Once again, thank you all, and a big thank you SEAT for making the 20-year-old Marbellas so well that they made the challenge without even the most minor of mechanical issues. Thanks to Nicky and Steve for helping us promote our trip using their local contacts and knowhow, thanks to DebRA Spain and DebRA Germany for making us so welcome in their beautiful home towns. Also, big thanks also go to my fellow duracell-bunny-drivers, John, Jon, Jim, and Shaun for helping to make John and I's very small idea become a reality almost as big as Norway. (Which, let me tell you, in our experience is a very VERY big place indeed!)

We left Hamburg in the red one and drove towards the Ruhr. We made good progress on the Autobahns, the lack of a speed limit allowing us to push the red one to it's limits! We crossed through the Southern Netherlands and into Flanders, Belgium, where we stopped for fuel and waffles. We traversed Belgium and passed into France, arriving at calais at about 3.45 in the afternoon. We booked onto the 4.55 P&O sailing to Dover and arrived at about 5.45 UK time. Reminding ourselves to drive on the left, we drove towards London, and the Red one was in it's fifth Country in a single day! Not bad going for any vehicle, let alone a Marbella! We drove west along the M25 and down the M3 towards the Hampshire coast, and were home by 8.30. Now we await the return of John and the Silverish one within the next few days! It is fair to say that we are all feeling slightly shellshocked this morning!! Marbella to the Arctic Circle in 4 days and 21 hours is quite a disorientating experience! 

The red marbella, piloted by Jon, Jim, and Ross, left Otta and deposited Shaun at Oslo Airport to make a flight home, and the team in the Red Marbella pushed on out of Norway, and onto the slightly faster Roads of Sweden, Corssing the bridge back into Denmark they made it to the Puttgarden Ferry bound for Germany in time for dinner. We aimed to get south of Hamburg by the evening. Unfortunately the Autobahn south of Hamburg had been closed with no diversion, and the occupants of the red one foud themselves lost in Hamburg. We found a hotel and stopped there for the evening. Later in the evening we speculated that with luck, we might just be able to get back to Southampton on the next day.

We left the arctic circle on Saturday and headed for Otta in central Norway, where the road splits, one way to Oslo and one way to Bergen. The original plan had been to spend a day or two resting in bergen before making the long trip back to the UK. Unfortunately, Jon and Shaun needed to get back to the UK sooner, so at Otta, the Red Marbella and Silverish Marbella parted company. John continued on to Bergen in the Silverish one, and the rest of us stayed in Otta.

We got up early again this morning and had breakfast.  The cars had survived the lively Friday night in Mo i Rana so we set off for the circle. As we approached the glorious mixed birch and pine forests, gave way to straggly looking birches and amazingly a mile or so before the Arctic circle the vegetation died out almost entirely and very abruptly into a rocky barren landscaped pitted with pockets of snow,

The flying saucer shaped polar circle centre loomed into view and we stopped the cars in front of an Arctic circle marker, for cheers and photographs. This was made all the better by the appearance of a rainbow over the two as of yet,  fully functioning Seat Marbella cars. We are now heading south towards Bergen where we hope to have a days rest. We will update the blog when we arrive.

During the evening in the hotel  in Sarpsborg, John had been talking to a bar man who gave us some good tips for a shorter route to Mo i Rana -  the gateway to the Arctic circle. By an amazing co- incidence a member of this man's family suffers from one of the simpler forms of EB.

We left Sarpsborg early in the morning and continued on our way. We hit heavy morning traffic and road works near Oslo and left the EO6 which although marked as a motorway on our maps is just a single carriageway road. We headed up the Osterdalen an impressive river valley with impressive rolling hills in love warm sunshine.

As we got further north we passed through pine forests and hills and mountains of increasing height. We stopped for fuel and made use of the fuel stations hot dogs, which are widely available in Norway.

Just South of Trondeheim we slowly approached a traffic speed trap by the side of the road. There were at least three policemen who gave us  indulgent smiles and waved as we drove by – there appear to be no cars as small as the Marbellas in Norway!!

As we headed North of the beautiful Fjord around Trondeheim the clouds began to gather. Soon a rainstorm was upon us as the night drew in. This slowed our progress significantly but we made it to Mo i Rana in good time

We stopped at a small railway themed hotel in Mo i Rana to get a good nights rest before the 80km trip to the Arctic circle tomorrow.

It is 22.30 local time, the marbellas have arrived safely through stormy weather at Mo i Rana - we are just 80km from the Arctic Circle and are :roll:booking into hotel.  Blog update tomorrow

We left Beidenkopf early in the morning and headed into the misty hills of Hesse it took a while to get back to the autobahn but we passed the time by playing the alphabet game.

At the next stop we used Shaun’s 3G technology to ascertain that ferries from

Puttgarten left every 45 minutes; we headed up past Luebeck and loaded the Marbellas onto the 2nd ferry of the day.  After spending lunchtime on the Baltic we quickly crossed Denmark without stopping.   We realised at this point that we had made it from the Mediterranean to the Baltic in two days!

We entered the impressive tunnel and bridge crossing from Copenhagn to Malmo Sweden – if only Dover to Calais were so easy!

After paying our toll the Red One was pulled over by the Swedish immigration control officer and the less suspicious looking Silver One slipped slowly into Sweden.  Shaun who was the driver of the Red One at the time was congratulated on his ‘little car’ and was then duly breathalysed in line with a national anti drink drive campaign, and the Red One was sent on its way.

We stopped at McDonalds in Angelholme to meet Steve Hall who has helped us greatly by assisting us with the promotion of our drive across Europe. 

Putting Abba on the Silverish Ones stereo, we continued our drive to the impressive looking city of Gothenburg and up towards Norway.

By this time it had grown dark as we approached the quiet border control on the Norwegian motorway and were stopped by a lone police officer.  He asked us where we were going - we told him, he looked at our Marbella and said “good luck”.  TheRed One followed, he asked – “are they your friends?”  “Yes” came the reply – “they seemed very drunk” he said and waved us on into Norway. 

We arrived late at the quality hotel in Sarpsborg to rest before our big push to Mo I Rana and the Arctic Circle tomorrow!

We left Cluny via some country lanes and headed back to the motorway and Dijon, meeting a waving fiat panda driver coming the in the opposite direction! Close to Dijon we stopped for a toilet break and telephoned DebRA Germany to tell them where we were. They sounded doubtful that we would make it in time for the reception.

We passed through the Alsace and crossed the border into Germany only to find that the road from the border control to the north bound carriageway had been closed off. We were forced to head south for the first time since leaving Marbella. Upon reaching the first junction we turned round and headed north through the glorious sunshine in the Black Forest. The traffic on the autobahn was heavy but we made good progress past Frankfurt before turning off towards Biedenkopf

When we arrived we entered the pretty market square and were greeted by masses of waving school children, Shaun and Jon Short in the Red One were the first to get out and were completely swamped by our new found Arctic Marbella fans.:)

The Silver One slipped unnoticed past the children and by the time we got out they were saying their goodbyes and were off!

Netti, Suzanne and Bettina from DebRA greeted us and showed us where we were staying, allowing us an hour to relax before our welcome party at the local tennis club. Outside the club we were presented with car stickers from DebRA Germany and from the town of Biedenkopf, which we put on to the cars before photos were taken with the whole team.

We entered the club and spent a lovely evening with our hosts who served us dinner and drinks before presenting us with gifts and souvenirs from the Town Hall and the heart of Germany.

We were made to feel extremely welcome and would like to thank all of the team in Biedenkopf for their kind hospitality - we wished we could have stayed longer but we have a long journey ahead of us on Thursday with an early start and we hope to reach Norway by the evening.