CHALLENGING TERRAIN IN TURKEY!

Hello Flora Followers, Emma here again. We just received an update from Car 41 about a challenging day in the Turkish mountains. It sounds like Flora is just hanging on, by the skin of her teeth, but determined to make it into Paris. Read below for an account of the day.

We had a dreadful day the day of the mountain section. The weather was awful with wind and heavy rain. We had decided not to do the time trial sections as Flora does not handle bends and the brakes are not great on wet roads. We set off on steep terrain anyway and half way through the day the amp meter was registering constant discharge. Car 39 Phantom II stopped to help and fiddled with the brushes and the generator sprung into life! Great we thought but later that day she stopped again and we spent a long time trying to fix her. We decided to take the main road to the hotel in case we didn't make the rally hotel, it was now dark, we had no lights and we re trying to find the white lines on the road with a flashlight! It was dangerous and I was quite scared. Suddenly a van pulled in front with warning lights flashing and lead us down the road to the hotel! He was a volunteer from the Turkish motor club who had spotted us on the road. We had previously called the rally for assistance but no reply! Flora eventually died 1 km. from the hotel. We were towed in and were escorted by the police with flashing lights! All very exciting. When we arrived at the hotel at 11:30pm we heard that a rally car on the time trial had left the road and plunged 40ft. Amazingly they walked away from the scene and apart from some bruising and shock are fine. Their car however is in very poor shape. Another car spun out on the wet roads, the Itala in fact and Karen was thrown from the vehicle, again she escaped with a sore hand and they are carrying on! So our problem is minor to some. We are now in Greece heading for the ferry to Italy tomorrow. We are managing with 2 batteries and charging them each day. One battery seems to last about 4-5 hours and so we hope to continue that way until Paris. We are now taking the fastest route each day which is allowed under the rules, several of us are doing the same thing. We are both well, tired but determined to finish.