I've been back in the UK for about a week now. Everything is unpacked and put it away until the next trip. The Landy has had a service which has included all fluids & filters, auxiliary belt, rear brake pads and some minor little bits. It now needs two new rear tyres, so that'll get sorted soon enough. The first couple of days back in the UK were spent at a mates place, drinking a lot of wine and whiskey, then planning trips to Albania for the summer!
I'm really impressed with how the Landy has behaved as a vehicle for this trip. Its been over a lot of rough ground, some long stretches of tarmac and lots of ferries. It's just soaked everything up and kept on ploughing through though. I feel a bit of a camper van conversion coming on for future trips! There are pro's and cons to using a 4x4 vs a bike. Here's what I think...
The Pro's;
1. Easy to park up anywhere and crawl in the back for a sleep, so less accommodation needed.
2. Carry more kit.
3. More comfy and easier to travel over longer distances.
4. Less tiring from a concentration point of view.
5. Weather protection.
6. Travel slower.
The Cons;
1. More expensive at borders, ferries etc.
2. Can't go as many places as on a bike.
3. More conspicuous. (Its a big thing to hide in the mountains or a forest).
4. Needs more kit in terms of maintenance, management etc.
5. Harder to repair in remote places.
6. Travel slower.
7. Less sense of freedom as cooped up in a metal box and no feel of air, weather etc.
In the meantime, costs for the trip work out at around £2500.00 all in. There was 7600 miles covered in total over the six weeks, so roughly £3 per mile or £57 per day.
The breakdown is:
Fuel: £1016.00
Food: £246.00
Ferries: £371.00
Tolls & Tunnels: £60.00
Accommodation: £89.00
Sundries: £215.00
Total: £1997.00
On top of the above, I also used about £500 in Tunisia. I withdrew money at a cashpoint in local currency, (Dinar) on two occasions. It is a cash based economy and virtually no receipts. I didn't bother to record my spending details whilst there to be honest. I also came out with a small amount of currency for my next trip there, which is a bit naughty as they don't allow any money back out of the country.
A full tank of fuel at 70 litres worked out around £38.00. Food was around £4 per day for me there and that was because I shopped at their supermarkets as opposed to local markets which would have made things cheaper. Their insurance was 80 Dinar for 14 days. It's a set rate for every vehicle as far as I could tell.
Since I've been back home, its either been frozen, windy or really wet, so I've just gone back through the blog to look up some names for the films and found that Blogger has had a few melt downs whilst I've been writing the blog and posting via a phone. This is the third time this has happened. A lot of the pictures are all over the place, different formats & sizes, weird spacings, etc etc. And they were all taken on the same phone and uploaded via the same phone. Another computer based oddity.
On top of this, I normally don't bother to allow comments on the posts as it often turns into a SPAM fest of utter crap. Blogger seems to have ignored the settings for this and allowed a load of both abusive and sales shite. So, this may well be the time to look at other platforms once I've done the final posts for this trip. Time will tell. Its a shame as Blogger is an easy platform to use, but since Google took it on, they aren't supporting it properly it seems.
