Day one of our Grand Tour

Map of the whole outbound trip.

View Trans Asia 1975 in a larger map

Wow, what on earth had we let ourselves in for! A huge adventure that was for sure.

Europe

The trip through Europe is a little vague almost forty years after the event. I am also unsure if some of the snippets belong in this trip or a later crossing of Europe. Here goes anyway.

View Trans Asia 1975 - Europe in a larger map

Map of Europe with approximate route

We had arrived in Europe

Whichever way you look at it, we had arrived in Europe. We were on the 'Continent', mainland Europe. It was my first time. The very first time that I had ever stood on mainland Europe. It was the 5th June 1975. OK it has taken awhile for me to get here, just over 22 years old, but here I am, on a great adventure.

Pete and I had crossed the English Channel, the only sea crossing, with our truck, the rest of the journey was on land.

Belgium

Arrived at Zeebrugge recovered reasonably well from the loading incident. Off the ship, cleared customs and on our way.

Friday 6th June. Parked in a service area between Brussels and Liege on the E5. 96 miles from Zeebrugge at 12:30 AM. Mileage on the truck's odometer 69745

Slept the night in a layby, On our way in the morning.

We thought at the time that these motorway laybys, with rudimentary facilities were such a good idea. They were more frequent than UK motorway services at the time. Camping was allowed, so it was cheap and convenient.

West Germany

Entered West Germany and had to declare how much fuel we had in the tank. We did not know about this before hand. Apparently it was something to do with paying tax on fuel which they consider should be bought in Germany. It was more of a problem in the other direction in reality. A lot of the big rigs / artics had 1000 gallon or more belly tanks on the trailers in addition to the huge tanks on the trucks. The drivers would fill up in somewhere like Iran for a shilling a gallon, that translates to 5p a gallon, or about 1p per litre. They could then travel across most of Europe without buying any more fuel. I wish!

At one fuel stop for us, one of the other truck drivers suggested we use the truck diesel pumps as it would be faster to fill our tank. It was. The nozzle size is about 2.5" or 60mm, which in itself would make it quicker. The pump was also on steroids. It took mere seconds for the tank to be full and overflowing. Diesel spraying everywhere. I don't recall using the big boys pump again, but perhaps we were just more careful having learnt the lesson.

We were driving along a four lane road, into a city centre somewhere in West Germany , when we were confronted with a low arch bridge. The question was how low, and how high was the truck. We knew the height in feet and inches, but not in metric. The signs were in metric. There was insufficient time to do the conversion in our heads. The bridge was upon us. I was driving again. There was nothing for it, headlights on, move to the centre of the road straddling both centre lanes, in the face of oncoming traffic, align with the highest part of the arch an proceed, with caution. As it happens there was plenty of headroom. Another lesson learnt. We wrote the height in metres on the dashboard next to the feet and inches.

The photo is of a Bedford TK box van from Archive of Transport, Travel & Trade with kind permission. Our truck was perviously in Kraft Foods livery but may have been leased to Kraft from Ryder.

Our cab was this yellow, but the yellow box had been overpainted white. Good for reflection in the hot sunshine to come.