London to Mongolia in a rubbish 1989 Nissan Micra

A massive thank you once again goes to Jeremy Levine at our major sponsor cheapestcontracthire.com for giving us Dave, for paying for the repairs, for cheering us on at the start line and for the constant support on the road.

To Robbie at C Dart in Donington for pulling out all the stops to get Dave fixed in record time.

To Ian at Signs Direct for your stunning artwork and fine avoidance back window design.

To Daz at Tyre Express for giving us the Michelins that made it all the way.

To all those at Chirst the King college for your support and all our other sponsors.

To all of you that have kindly donated to one of our selected charites to really make this trip worthwhile.

To all of you friends/family and strangers that have buoyed our spirits with your support and prayers both on the road and at home.

To those in Ryanair who moved at short notice to arrange our leave. To John Lovick and Neil Gough for your support above and beyond the norm.

To Sonia at BALPA for your enthusiasm and support.

You may still donate to one of the charites for the next couple of months if you choose to, we hope you do.

Dave made it, Ed is still with us but will be staying with a Mongolian child unless he can manage to do a Lucan.

We start the process tomorrow of getting back to England. We look forward and hope to see you all soon.

To each and everyone of you thank you, without you we couldn't have done it.

We kept Dave in the hotels basement car park, we didn't get the chance to hand him over on Saturday so today on Sunday morning we took some pictures of him in UB before we he got handed over.

We had hoped to give some stuff to MAF, who work in Mongolia but their offices are closed for the weekend and we will be gone by Monday. Dave lays empty and alone in a car lot with other heroes of the class of 2007 after we did our photo shoot and went to Daves bar to do the paper work. both of us felt really sad today as we emptied him and walked away for the last time. I kissed the roof.

The car that left Dave's garage, became Dave and ended up at Dave's place in UB.

It's somewhat strange how attached you can become to a car, but he has taken on his own persona, when overtaking, we would often shout "Go on Dave", when one of us left to talk to a hotel or get directions, the other would "stay and watch over Dave", when the gas tank was low, "Dave is thirsty shall we get him a drink". It is because of this little cars ability and doggedness that we are here. Dave we love ya and hope you enjoying herding goats in your retirement years.

We have spent the whole of Saturday trying to organise a way of getting home, having been guided by our hero Dave to UB, getting out of the place is proving more difficult than we imagined. We have spent hours on the internet and running around and all over the city. We had originally planned to go by train to Beijing and fly from there.Hmmm. The train runs 4 times a week and there is not a single seat available this month.

Our only option to get there are to take a local train (13 hours) or a minibus to the Mongol border town. taxi to the border. cross border, taxi to nearest chinese town Erleen, then a 23 hour bus journey to Beijing. Great. The reservation I have with this route is that the bus is on a first come first served basis and there is no guarentee you may even get a seat. I dread the though of being stranded in some chinese border town for days. The only other option is get a minibus back to the russian border (5 hours). cross, then onto Ulan Ude to catch a train.

We have been looking at flights from all major russian cities and their is one company flying 737's via Kaliningrad who are quoting £125 one way from Samara on Sunday 19th and £200 from Omsk. Another is quoting £360 from Krasnoyarsk via St Petersburg. The advantage of this is there are many trains going east to west in Russia and and even if meant staying on for 4 days to Moscow their are tons of flights for around £150 - £200.

We did not realize how cut off UB really is, only a couple of airlines sold out months in advance and not a train ticket to be had. At least this way we are guarenteed to be moving in the right direction and can get home. The hotel receptionist helped us today to find a way out, there are 2 seats reserved by russians that may be available at 5 towards Irkutsk, there is nothing towards China. We are off shortly in she hope of getting out this evening.

We got up knackered at just after 8am after a few hours sleep, and hit the road down to the border at about 9. The countryside again was spectacular. Changing from more fertile green to browner green in the the heat, rolling hills and the deafening sound of millions of grasshoppers. Dave still barely alive hit the border town at 2.30pm.

Russia we loved you, and we got through the entire country without paying a single fine, thanks to the great bit of work by Ian at Signs Direct, as soon as the Police read why we were doing it they let us off, all other teams were daily getting money relieved from them.

The Mongolians shut the border at 6pm so we hoped it would be less time consuming than on the way in. The heat was intense and progress was slow. Some French lads were turned away at the border as they had lost an insurance form for their VW camper. I was getting worried as I had lost my customs declaration, listing what I was bringing into the country, and needed for exit. When our turn came after 90 mins or so, the Russian border guard asked me for my declaration, I shrugged my shoulders and handed over my passport with a $20 note in it, "you fill in 2 now". Result. Now the debacle of trying to get into Mongolia.

At least the Russians spoke English and would tell you what to do next. The Mongolians just stood around and left us with no idea. Most were also not ashamed at trying a bit of daylight robbery. A lady sprayed our car with some stuff, apparently in August to October they get the bubonic plague here. She demanded 50 russian roubles (about £1), but isn't this Mongolia what about mongolian cash. We paid, and were then told we didn't need to. Next I was taken into an office by a lady for another lady to photocopy the car registration document, when the lady who bought me in walked out, for the photocopies the other woman typed 500 into a calculator and said "You give me 500 roubles" (about £10). I said "what for" as another officious person walked in and she deleted the amount on her caluclator and gestured me out the office. Dear me, they were certainly playing on our naievity and complete lack of what to do, with no help or guidance from the Mongolians all milling around.

Eventually after some frustrating hours we got the all clear. One guy appeared who did speak English, there is an updated list for all of those on the Mongol Rally and when they arrive at any of the Mongolian border crossings. Of the 200 teams we had arrived 6th and as one team started in Vienna, we were the 5th team from London. We we greeted at the final barrier by some dirty looking currency trader. No tah mate. We had already changed $50 in whatever the Mongolian stuff is called. We have started referring to all the foreign curencies as rupeears.

I converted a couple of lads to the Albion and Mongolia beckoned.

We and more importantly Dave had made it into Mongolia only another 230ish miles to the capitol. The border town is how you may imagine poor and very run down, we picked up the good asphalt road and started the final fling. It was just after 6.30pm. The countryside is uniquely different here, We saw our first Gers, Nomadic Mongolian herdsmens tented homes.

There are a lot more cows and horses wandering across the road here than in Russia. The scenery was again stunning in the evening heat and we were loving it. We came across a couple of wild camels and took a picture, Ed quacked at one, who was squaring up to us and hissing, guess he had the hump.

As the light went it became a little trecherous. Mongolians seem content to drive with full beam on, and the lack of white lines on the road make it virtually impossible to see the road. After 4 hours or so we saw the lights of Ulan Bataar in the distance and felt this huge buzz of exitement. Before we left England, we didn't have much faith in Dave making it, and with the reducing road quality and Daves deteriation we would not actually dare to believe it, now we did, we would make it under our own steam, on one set of tyres, with 2 blown bulbs and an airfilter change, Dave had done it. On Friday he done his final stint of 393 miles before a less strenuous retirement job. We love you Dave.

Both Richard and I were gobsmaked by Ulan Baatar, we expected a few big buildings with some crappier outskirts or something. The City is huge a lot bigger than most we have been in, in Russia, it is also a lot more modern than we thought. Loads of neon, bars, clubs trendy looking eateries. A big Zara and Esprit shop we passed by. What a contrast to the drive in with goat herders living in Gers and hardly any towns.

Ulan Bataar is a throbbing place with trendy western dressed young Mongolians everywhere. We checked into the plush genghis Khan hotel. £36 each for a twin suite, we parked Dave up for the night in the basement car park. The Mongol rally organiser said we had to go straight to a bar called Daves place when we get here, but we are going to get some pictures of him today in UB first, before visiting MAF at the Airport. We had a lovely bit of Chinese food in the Hotel and decided to go out for few well earned beers. The Genghis Khan Hotel has a nightclub as part of the hotel, so we thought we would go there expecting it to be pants. My word, it was the equal of many UK clubs, great decor, good lights a DJ playing decent house music that can actually mix and hordes of trendy Mongolians strutting their stuff.

One thing about this place we noticed already was that people are not all so friendly as in Russia. A group of young drunk men, were playing the old herd mentality number, one told me to "go from seat we sit here" when I sat down. Fair enough. Then another was waving his arms for me to move when I was standing over 2 metres from any of them, I turned to him and said "I don't understand what you are asking for", a few of the "tough guys" started trying to square up, for daring to talk, apparently they don't like western men very much here. We were just minding our own business having a couple of beers. I wasn't to worried about it kicking off though as the many army clad security guys walking around the club had rather large tazer stun guns. We decided to leave as the lads were getting increasingly more drunk and idiotic and turned in at 3am.

We did not leave Irkutsk until around 7 in the evening. We had a bit of a lay in after the offroad experience, had a look around and then tried to find an internet cafe at around 2pm to do last blog. First 2 listed in lonely planet, on opposite sides of city centre, were now shut down, finally found one with the slowest connection imaginable. It took 4 hours to upload the pictures.

Leaving Irkutsk was rather difficult, we followed sign for Ulan Ude and other places and then you arrive at a sort of roundabout with 4 exits and no signs. Should be straight on then hey? No. We started heading heading out of town westerley on the road we came in on. Where's LNAV when you need it most. Drive back and pick another exit? still wrong. Third time lucky and we are on the right road.

Irkutsk is also another city that is blessed with really nice hilly and forest surroundings. As we left the city to head down to the southern tip of Lake Baikal, it was like driving in the swiss Alps, tight roads, up and down between thick pine forest. It was great to be driving here though we had a slow average speed. After a couple of hours we rounded a turning and saw Baikal, what a magnificent sight, It was approaching twilight and it is one of those moments that no camera could ever capture.

With still around 600 miles to go at this point, we were starting to think that Dave wasn't going to make it, he struggles to turn right and there was this funny burning smell coming form the engine to add to the blowing exhaust pipe note. We tried to deal with this as with all things by boyish humour and hope. We laughed about setting up a small memorial that said "Dave from Chesterfield dearly loved, 1989 - 2007" or erecting him in some town square alongside other great Russians "Peter the Great, Lenin, Yuri Gagarin and Dave".

Pressing on around the huge lake we lost the light and with a considerable distance to Ulan Ude, it was going to be another late one. We had decided as with many places before to try and get a hotel in the centre so we could have alook at the place in the morning briefly before leaving. We hit the town at around 3am and after a failed attempt to get a room in the best listed hotel in town (which is listed as best of bad bunch) we ended up in the Hotel Odon, listed as lacklustre. Lacklustre? it was the biggest hole either of us can remember staying in, certainly on this trip, it makes the moscow dump seem like the ritz. We had driven 392 miles and our reward was this disgusting scratchers gaff.