Onwards!

This is it.

The car is almost packed, the visas have almost all arrived and nearly all of us have our international driving permits. We're as ready as we'll ever be...

Please keep your eyes on this blog and also on our Twitter if you want to follow us whilst we're on the road.

We'll be updating our blog whenever we get internet access but will also be texting in updates to our twitter/facebook accounts for more regular albeit short updates.

We have also added a new tab on this blog where you can follow our progress on a map - this will automatically update every time we can get our phones online (possibly not very often!)

Finally you can keep track of us on the adventurist's live map over at -> http://www.theadventurists.com/the-adventures/mongol-rally/live

Thank you so much to every one that has donated so far and to anyone who donates whilst we are away. As always massive thanks to all of the sponsors who have made this trip possible and to our families/partners who have put up with the madness these past couple of months.

See you all in 8 weeks!

Julia's House - New Paint-job Video

A quick edit of the time spent recently at Julia's house - put together by our very own Jordan Bradbury.

We visited Julia's House Childrens hospice in Broadstone to meet some of the children that the money we are raising will benefit. The same children then helped to paint our car.

Song - 'Black Rainbow' by 'Pitx' - distributed freely from ccmixter.com

Julias House Hospice Handprints . . .

Today we visited Julias House Childrens Hospice in Poole, we got the kids to paint handprints on the car, wich we then lacquered over to keep them permanently on the car. it was a really fun day, really cool to meet some of the kids who the money we are raising is going towards. it was also the first day the new team were all together, wich was exciting, makes it sink in a little bit more just how soon we are leaving. . .

Learning to walk before i can run...

A huge thank you to Kinghams Driving School, Steve kindly donated all of my driving lessons to help us deal with the loss of Dwayne Doherty and being left with only one driver! thankfully i took my test this morning and passed! Steve Kinghams approach to teaching is really friendly and professional, i would recommend him to anyone trying to pass, lessons had a friendly relaxed atmosphere and his methodical teaching style helped me (and many others) pass first time! so if you are learning to drive and looking for driving lessons in bournemouth then go with Kinghams Driving School www.kinghams-driving-school.co.uk

Also i would like to say a huge thank you to Russell Johnson for his amazing donation of £100!

Wrigley appreciation day

 Today is Wrigley appreciation day. 

At least, it is in the 3JD camp. After a couple of pretty brutal weeks which have seen the team spending massive amounts of money on fixing our poor car, tying up bureaucratic loose ends and gaining access to Iran, we were all feeling fairly low.

Thankfully spirits have been re-buoyed today in light of the incredibly generous donations received by the beautiful supporter of all things philanthropic and ridiculous; Miss Giselle Wrigley and by her esteemed parents Jo and Kevin.

Thanks so much for your support guys! We really do appreciate it, and if we notice any Mongolian families who need the floors of their gers screeding I'll be sure to pass on your number Kevin :D 

In addition to heaping gratitude on to the (entirely deserving) Wrigleys I also wanted to keep everyone up to date with current 3JD affairs. We spent last weekend sweating profusely in the embassy of Islam and in return for several gallons of perspiration and a small fortune in golden sovereigns we have been allowed to submit our fingerprints to the Iranian embassy who will hopefully offer us all visas to travel through their country!  

We have been having a fair bit of trouble with a petrol leak on our car recently and so the better part of this weekend will be spent trying to stop the Alto from pouring flammable liquids on to every available surface. With all luck the replacement tank we've had to buy will solve the problem and she'll soon be slowly accelerating her way towards Mongolia with a greatly reduced risk of explosion. 

In addition to pretending we know what we're doing when it comes to fixing cars we will also be making a return visit to Julia's House Hospice this weekend to take part in a photo shoot and meet some of the children they help. Hopefully we'll be updating again soon with a write up!

There's plenty more 3JD news on the way and a few updates that are worthy of their own posts so keep your eyes on the horizon for further blogging and website updates in the not-to-distant future.

The state we are in.

Greetings and welcome once again to the unpredictable world of a 3JD blog update.

I feel that we are long overdue a general status update and also that I have been rather lax in my blog writing duties...

There is now less time remaining before we leave than there will be time spent on our journey (39 days left until we embark on a 52 day adventure). This is a rather sobering, somewhat terrifying and really quite exciting thought.

As the 23rd of July hurtles closer so too does 3JD shuffle slowly towards a state of near organisation and preparedness, I fear that our limping gait may never bring us quite all the way to a perfectly prepared state, but then I suppose that not knowing what to expect is where a lot of the fun of this journey will come from!

Our general absence from this blog can be mostly explained by how insanely busy we have all been in recent months! It turns out there's rather a lot of bureaucracy to wade through and work to be done when you're planning to pack up your lives and set off across a third of the world, raise some sponsorship, generate a little bit of media attention and of course raise a whole lot of money for some rather excellent charities. It's been a great process so far but has left us all with little time for anything else whilst balanced with our individual jobs or uni work.

That said, there have been several interesting developments to the 3JD situation lately!

I will start off with the bad news that has recently rocked the 3JD world: That Dwayne Doherty will no longer be able to join us on this noble venture. This major tragedy comes due in equal measure to the complications of acquiring visas in a troubling world and to Dwayne's insuppressible employability. 

So there you have it; one of the progenitors of the 3JD name will no longer be joining the team on our journey. This is sad news, especially when considering it was Dwayne's near boundless enthusiasm for the rally that spurred us all on in the first place. Still we can be thankful that Dwayne has helped a great deal in getting us this far and rest assured that he is going on to fairly epic adventures of his own! (there's no way we'd let him leave the team for an office job in Slough....)

On the upside, Dwayne's departure has freed up a seat in the car and the doors of 3JD team recruitment have been flung wide open (or rather left quietly ajar). We are hoping to fill Dwayne's seat at least as far as Iran and hopefully we can announce 3JD's newest member soon!

Another positive note is that, thanks in no small part to the insane generosity of Jordan Bradbury's family, our fundraising efforts for Children's Hospices UK and The Christina Noble Children's Foundation have been going rather well! We're now at a combined total of just over £1,000 And would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who has donated so far. We would of course also be delighted with any fresh donations which can be made here or here.

                              

Finally we've now got a few of our visa applications approved, with the rest hopefully following suite very soon! Today we have been issued with our official Iranian invites so we will be making a trip up to London in the next few weeks to hand over our fingerprints to the Iranian embassy and secure the final part of that visa (no doubt a fun filled and suitably lengthy blog post will follow documenting our time spent in the embassy waiting room). Our noble steed has also recently scraped through it's MOT (after a two page long list of failures) thanks in no small part to a rather sizable discount from Horizon Suzuki Garage in Poole. Along with the amazingly generous support from our sponsors we are now considerably closer to being ready for this thing than we were a few weeks ago!

Keep your eyes on the horizon blog readers, for more news from 3JD will be with you shortly (possibly).

Cotswold Outdoor

Boom!

The picture above shows the incredible donation made to our team by Cotswold Outdoor store. They have shown unprecedented generosity in sponsoring us with various camping equipment for us to use on our trip:

Two sleeping bags

Two tents

Two sleeping mats

A stove and gas bottle

Cookware

First Aid kit

Cotswold have been incredibly supportive and helpful with us, and we thank them from the bottom of our hearts.

They've got a fantastic range of equipment on their site and in their stores, if you need outdoor equipment, you know where to go!

http://www.cotswoldoutdoor.com/

Sponsorship Update

It's been a while since our last update, which is frankly a crime.

We have been hard at work behind the scenes, talking with a number of different companies and businesses about potential sponsorship. Some have been positive, the majority not...

However our spirits cannot be dampened, and we continue to tirelessly pen the merits of our trip and cross our fingers and hope that the recipient sees the things we do.

Sponsorship allows us to concentrate our own funds solely on the project, without having to spend too much on equipment. With more of our own money going into the trip, we can help benefit the charities better.

One company who has recently decided to generously jump on board the bandwagon that is 3JD is Cell Labs (www.cell-labs.com). Their fantastic site has a huge range of batteries, for all manner of electronic products, from cameras to laptops.

They have donated three batteries and a charger for our camcorder, which we will be using to record the entire journey. Having three extra batteries is going to be a huge help, with charge points being few and far between on our journey. They have also donated a car charger, in case we need an emergency charge to our camera.

So thank you Cell Labs for your fantastic donation!

We have more sponsorship news incoming in the next couple of weeks. I can only imagine that you are on the edge of your seat, so you might as well stay there. We'll get back to you soon.

General update and why Rose Peck is a wonderful human.

So i feel it is time to update this blog, it has been dead for a while, this is due to two reasons, the first being visas, the forms and fear of making a mistake was so much that i have physically been unable to blog. secondly we are going through a bit of drama with Dwayne and his visas, there may be problems that mean he cannot come on the trip any further than turkey! this is a big problem, and is now forcing me (Jake) to get my full car licence... learning to drive then straightaway driving to mongolia! will keep you posted on the Dwayne situation! all visas other than his are sent off and awaiting approval! so fingers crossed!

in more positive news, we have recently managed to secure quite a few decent sponsors! i will be doing individual posts about them all soon when we have the stickers on the car and hopefully the products in hand!!

lastly, i came home today, after a full day of driving practice to find this lent against my door:

I genuinely had no idea who it could have been from! after opening it, slightly worried it was a letter bomb from someone trying to sabotage our trip! it turned out it was from Rose Peck and Jamie Watson
who donated

Peck donated £20 to our trip, as well as her Wishbone necklace for good luck!! we will hang it from our rear view mirror for good luck! and will be thanking her when it inevitably stops a bullet!

On fron tof the card, after scratching off the box, the "Fantastical (im sure that not a word) Dragon" gave us these kind words of wisdom...

Surely every year is technically your birthday year? but we will be sure to look out for white cats, clover, topaz and 14 butterflies....

Will keep you posted about our newest sponsors next week!

Picking up the car... northern adventures.

This weekend we went up to dwaynes parents house to pick up the Alto we brought the other week. it has been waiting there untill we had some spare time to go up and do some work on it. Joe is going to be driving it around now making sure everything is working, and we are in the process of sorting out some decals for it! here is the adventure that was picking the car up.. including getting bitten by a dog and breaking down on the first day of having it...

  Woking to Tibshelf. after all of us had finished work for the day!

 Drunken arguments with Craig, Dwaynes brother, about the suitability of our car.. "it was designed in india.. its so simple its amazing, its basically just an engine and seats."

 Paying for Insurance.

 The first drive... you can see the anticipation/fear in Joes face.

 aaaaaand we ran out of petrol... me and D had to walk half a mile to the nearest petrol station while Joe waited by on the duel carriageway with the car!

 engine... men...

 "working" on the car...

 These things.... ^^ gave me this vv

 Making the trailer www.3jd.co.uk/alto

 Joes first time driving in 10 months, after only passing his test 10 months ago 250 mile drive.

Shakeway Fundraise Day.

Today Shakeaway Salisbury opend a new store, they allowed us to come and fundraise around the new store, wich brought in alot of customers, we left a donation box of lapell pins in the store and went around Salisbury armed with a box of bears a handfull of lapell pins, some trolley companions and a possotive attitude!

we got an amazing response and raised over £80 for our 4 hours of fund raising, here are a few photos from the day:

A reeves the baker employee genuinley traded this loaf of bread for a lapell pin....