After a short stop for coffee and dates, sitting by the castle wall, we set off for Jubaila - unfortunately between us and our next destination lay miles of yet more corrugations which made our progress painfully slow. The village of Jubaila should have been a five minute stop - but Florence had other plans. For the previous 15 miles we had smelt a strong smell of burning plastic, but no amount of hunting could lead us to the source of the pong. Hoping that the Range Rover was not about to burst into flames we carried on - but, when the car refused to start at Jubaila the cause of the smell quickly became apparent. You may remember that since we left Aqaba, the ignition switch has been held together by tie wraps - a temporary solution until we reached Riyadh, where a new ignition switch sent out by Famous Four was waiting for us. Well, the ignition switch could cope no longer - one of the wires had burnt out and there was no way Richard could resurrect it this time. The younger Abdullah looked horrified - we were miles from anywhere; how would we ever get the car moving? 'Watch this' said Richard, scrabbling around for a suitable piece of wire - and then gave Abdullah a quick lesson in hotwiring cars. Richard was proclaimed a genius and we set off for the next town....

It seems that a road is being built out to Jubaila but we could only catch a tantalising glimpse of this as we drove alongside over yet more corrugations. By now it was dark and our tempers seriously frayed - but then, bliss! Real tarmac - but only a four hundred metre stretch before we plunged back into the sand...

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