We Do Adventure

Back when we were living in the UK there was a time we were proud owners of a new new MINI. It was yellow. It was also a great car; the sort of car you could get back into after a day at a motor show and be completely satisfied with, even though it cost a fraction of the price of some of the cars you'd sat in during the day. It was during on of these motor show trips that I paid a tenner for a ride in a Caterham 7. Because if the MINI had a reputation for go-kart like handling the Caterham represents a whole other level of raw motoring. And so it was that I had the wildest five minutes I've experienced on four wheels. Apart from the few seconds after pulling away the car never travelled in a straight line. It slipped and slid, squealed and spun its way around the little test track. All hot exhausts and burning rubber. The definition of a blast. These days I don't drive a MINI, or a Caterham; I drive a Volkwagen Transporter. It's not a car but in my experience it...

I've been thinking about writing this post since I snapped the photo on the left about a month back. I wanted to craft something thoughtful, perhaps even a little profound, to accompany this image. As I sit typing now I get no sense that I'm going to achieve my aim this evening. Nevertheless, like a fine impressionist painting, I hope these words go some way to conveying the picture in my mind. I loved cars as a kid. Either my ninth or tenth birthday outing was to the Motor Fair at Earls Court, London. (Whichever it wasn't was a trip to London Zoo!) I can still remember the cars I got my photo taken with that day: the then new Toyota MR2 , the MG Metro 6R4 and behind the wheel of a BMW 628 CSi – the 635 CSi was my favourite but there wasn't one of those on display. There were plenty of other super-cars roped off where you couldn't get your sticky little fingers on them. These where the days when the Lamborghini Countach was cool! Yes, these were the Thatc...

It’s funny how some things can be so familiar to some yet so foreign to others. We were dropping a friend and co-worker home today after a morning of workshops when they started shouting and pointing: look at that weird German car! We looked, immediately realising someone was in need of a little education. Objectively, yes, it is a weird car but is not a weirdness that should be blamed on the Germans. That they can be blamed for all the Mercedes, Audis and BMWs that clutter Mostar’s streets says more about their ability to churn out desirable status symbols rather than weirdness on wheels. The idiosyncrasy on show here was the proud preserve of the Black Cab, the taxi that is, or certainly used to be, ubiquitous in the frantic ferrying of busy people about Britain’s capital. Why this one came to be parked somewhere up a back street in Bosnia and Herzegovina is anybody’s guess. But running British licence plates and sporting a still-valid-for-another-month tax disc we have to assume tha...

I’ve done a few name-and-shame posts in the past. This is the opposite. I’m going to kick off with a bit of credit-where-credit’s-due. Before our trip to the UK is asked some friends from my home town what local car rental companies they’d recommend. The response seemed to be that hiring from Gatwick Airport was the best option: it’s just down the road and we’d be flying in and out of there so it was convenient. Hertz were the cheapest for basic rental, although not necessarily for adding a second driver, so we made an online registration. When we came to pick up our Group B Fiesta or equivalent we discovered it had morphed into a Group C Focus, and at no extra costs. No complaints there! So after two weeks of racking up the miles around southern England I was beginning to wonder how things would be when I got back to driver on the right (or should that be right-hand side?) of the road. This is question everyone asks. How easy is it switching? Well, thankfully I’ve had no problems so f...

I have three chances to drive in Bosnia Herzegovina. The first was to bump start Novi Most's old Toyota combi. The second: bump starting the combi again! The third, however, was the chance to drive through snowy mountains in a Toyota that didn't seem to have any mechanical faults. I've never struggled to adjust to driving on the 'other side', whether it's been in a left- or right-hand drive vehicle. But we've seen Mostar 's tiny streets and its twisting mountain roads. If we're to have a car when we move it'll be left-hand drive. Rowan wants it's to be small and I don't blame her. She's not yet had the chance to drive on the right so that's a new experience that's awaiting her. We're currently driving a new Mini Clubman , which is nice although not perhaps as iconic as the yellow Mini One we had before it! Every other car in BiH seems to be a VW Golf. You can see the complete history of the model in a matter of minutes on ...