Temperature: 16°C and extremely breezy
The much needed clutch fly wheel on its way from Salisbury
The one o’clock deadline given by the concierge for the return of our car came and went. After a couple of phone calls it became clear that the car had not been fixed and the fly wheel bought in Georgia was not the correct one – Toyota had made two sorts in 2002 and ours happened to be of the other variety, just a 1mm difference in the machining of the fly wheel plate meant it didn’t fit. Deeply disappointing for all but we were still grateful for massive efforts everyone had made so far.
Plan B: fire up into action the plan for James at Westover Group in Salisbury to expedite the spares he had cleverly thought to order should the contingency plan be needed. Great forethought. With an hour’s deadline for the latest collection in the UK we set up a UPS account, arranged for collection and shipping and got the customs documents drawn up (never been more grateful for fast wifi, WhatsApp and Google!). Now all we could do was wait, and remind ourselves that this is all part of the mission: the drive.
Feeling more than a little downbeat I logged on to my Gordon’s email and distracted myself by catching up on some work, Murray returned to planning and reorganising our route and over night stops for the reduced time that we now had.
Waking early we checked the UPS tracking website and were delighted to see our fly wheel had reached Germany and was on its way to Turkey, inching ever closer. I prayed that it wouldn’t be held up in customs when it finally reached Baku.
There was nothing for it but to carry on being tourists so we took a taxi to Gobustan to see the petroglyphs and mud volcanoes and carry on with our wait.
Gobustan Reserve
Mud, glorious mud! The vaunted mud ‘volcanoes’.
The industry on the outskirts of Baku
Whitesides on the Road 