18th August:  We reach Mongolia! 

Photos and more to come soon..

3rd August:  We have stopped for a few drinks and a proper meal in Petrozavodsk, in Russia.  The Arctic is somewhat missing internet cafes so hence the lack of updates.

Our minor Arctic detour was well worth the effort with stunning scenery and vast wilderness.  We made it to Nordkapp - Europes most northerly point before changing direction and heading east.

Entering Russia near Murmansk is a sobering experience, a true industrial hell hole in the middle of vast plains and forests.  A good introduction to Russia!  Reaching Murmansk at 4am we searched for some food and tried to avoid attracting the attention of the local cops - somehow we managed despite running red lights and having very noisy cars.

Heading south we were not so lucky with both bugs being pulled for speeding 'big problem'...  we were doing about 65mph in a 40mph zone.  After being sat in the back of the cop car for a few minutes and them examining our papers and asking if we spoke Russian we were told 'goodbye' and off we went..

Each day is broken by our frequent stops to fix our cars - yesterday the exhaust on the polo fell off after hitting a huge bump on the terrible roads..

Today we head east towards Vologda, having been told by some Polish travellers in a expedition prepared 4x4 that the roads run out.

27th July:  We have been hitting the miles hard and have not had the chance to get to a computer for a while.  We drove north from Prague, and camped with another team near Hamburg.. The following day we visited a friend and her new baby in Denmark, before crossing to Sweden over two awesome bridges - one being a combination of a tunnel, causeway and suspension bridge with a total span of about ten miles!

The blue bug has been suffering from fan belt problems the dynamo pulley is warn and is chewing belts.

In Northern Sweden driving through the night is a magical experience, the sun set lasted all night and travelled around the horizon, with a halflight from about 11pm to 2am, before the most amazing misty sunrise.

We have been driving the cars hard, the Polo is holding up well, the bugs are getting extremely hot, but with 3000 miles already under their belts they are doing fantastically!

On stopping to change drivers we nothice a huge pool of petrol develop under the blue bug - we had changed all fuel lines beofre leaving to prevent fire.. the heat had made the brass connection on the fuel pump come loose. It was good fortune that this happened when we were stopped!

We crossed into Finland and decided to get the fan belt sorted, pulling into a garage with a Bug outside we were promptly ingnored for a while.  The guys at the garage were not overly helpful, but after the help of a fantastic Swedish VW nut we now have a working car.  Jon is a top guy who went out of his way to help us - taking us around the area in search of parts.

We are heading for Norway today wanting to make up some lost time..

24th July: Team Yakatak convoyed with Marco's Polo and drove through the night. All was going well until the blue but decided to throw its dolls out the pram and chucked a fan belt.

22nd July:  Team yakatak line up with all the other 200 or so participating cars in hyde park including a certain polo that is rumoured to have belonged to a certain marco.

 team yakatak in all there pre-start glory

team yakatak and just some of the many hundreds of groupies and fans that turned up for the launch

eeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssstttttttttttttt!

vrrrrrroooooooooooom!

the most uptodate news from team yakatak and marcos polo came via sms at approx 1830hrs, marcos polo managed to catch the speedy aircooled beetles again after an incident with a red traffic light just after the start line. co-ordinates sent in the sms place all three cars just off the coast of dover.

18th July: All cars are now road legal and kind of running ok.  We are ready to go.... but with a massive list of jobs to do.  We want skidplates, spotlights, stereo systems and comfy seats... all luxuries we will try to add if we get the time!

We have had a fair amount of exposure in the press at both a local and national level:

12th July:  With less then two weeks to go before we leave the green bug still has no MOT.  However we the brakes now work thanks to some frustrating long hours that Neil has been putting in.  We were under the car until late last night.

We still have no camping gear and feel very unprepared..

10th July: After running very rough for a few days the blue bug finally dies on us.  A strip down of the engine revealed a simple fault - some washers in the wrong place.  Whilst the engine was out we had a look at the barrels and pistons - all looks good.  Fingers crossed that this is a good one!!!

26th June:  The blue bug has an MOT!  It scraped through first time, no handshake and well done from the tester, more 'I couldn't find anything to fail it on.'

The green car still has no MOT.. or brakes.. and is sat on axle stands with holes in the floor.........with less than a month to go!!!

Visas, thanks to the rally organisers for taking much of the burden out of the visa application process!  It is a major struggle trying to write in the Cyrillic alphabet!

23rd May: Yakatak t-shirts now for sale.  We have tasteful zinc for the boys and sophisticated pink for the ladies.  Available in most size at £12 a go. We have very limited number so hurry!   To get your hands on on of these beauties e-mail dan@yakatak.co.uk with the size colour you would like.

All proceeds from the sale of t-shirts will go towards covering our costs.

The resulting banging and clattering brought us to a quick stop at the side of the autobarn. Not quite sure what was wrong we went to open the bonnet to retrieve out tools only to find it was locked and we did not have and tools with which to open it/breakin! After an apprehensive half hour, hoping the German Police did not take to much interest we got the bonnet open. The cops did stop at one point, but Neil smiled and waved them on, miraculously they dissapeared!!

We changed the fanbelt and limped to the next services and gave the bug a good service, in the process I pulled away a piece of rusty bodywork about 25cm by 15cm - not supposed to happen I think...

Then we pushed on to Prague, arriving shattered around 7pm, the breakdown slowing us down. We booked into a hostel and hit the rally party. Cars were still turning up in droves at 10pm.

Now for a chilled morning and departure towards Denmark at lunchtime..