1st - 5th November 2003

Hello Florence! An emotional reunion - cars have feelings too! Florence and trailer have been well looked after and she even started first time.

What struck us first was the amount of what can only be described as stuff we had accumulated - and there was no way all of it, plus the things we had brought out with us, was going to fit back into the car. So we have decided to ship what we don't need back to the UK, a surprisingly cheap exercise - 105 kg of everything from wetsuits to redundant cooking pots travelling with BA World Cargo for £110! What to send back was an easy decision for me - my vastly expanded waistline has rendered most of the clothes I had out here unusable, and of course I won't be diving for a while (sob!).

The change in weather had a bad effect on my hands and ankles, which for the first few days were four times their usual size - an attractive look! It seems also that my snoring has taken a turn for the worse - it's just as well we are not on safari as my rumbling would attract elephants from miles around. Of course, pregnant women really shouldn't climb ladders, but if I was to follow this rule it would make getting into the roof tent tricky as we stupidly forgot to pack a crane. Richard suggested that, in order to allow him to have a decent nights sleep, I should lie on the ground beside the car - I think not!

Richard has been busy preparing Florence for her journey home - amongst other things, we have an upgraded GPS system, with our Garmin GPS V running through a Compaq Tablet so we now have a decent size screen on an adjustable arm mounted to the dashboard, and to cure the running problems Richard has rebuilt the distributor, fitting a new cap, rotor arm and amplifier . Getting Florence started again was a bit tricky as we forgot to switch off the interior lights so two days with the doors open had run the main battery flat. As we have another battery in the engine bay and a third in the trailer, all charged by a solar panel, it was not a great problem as we can jump start the car - but I did not help matters by connecting the positive terminal of the main battery to the negative terminal of the second battery.... let's just say it was a tense moment!

Reports of bad sandstorms in Kuwait during and after the war were entirely true - depsite being parked undercover, Florence was full of very fine dust which is virtually impossible to get rid of without the use of an industrial vacuum cleaner. Something else I forgot!

Our plan is to drive to the Saudi border at Regai on Saturday morning, where we will be met by a team from the King Abdul Aziz Foundation. We had orginally thought we would be transitting Saudi alone, but it seems the powers that be have other ideas. Of course it will be great to see Abdullah etc again, and it certainly takes away the hassle of route and accomodation finding. The journey should take two to three days and we will be entering Jordan at the Haql border crossing on the Red Sea coast early next week.