Barnsley to Beijing by banger is drive of a lifetime

Forty-five years after Robert Douglas bought his classic MG TC, he and his wife, Lynne, have driven it all the way from their old home in Barnsley to their new life in New Zealand.

Mr Douglas bought the 1948 sports car for £150 as a teenager in 1966, just two weeks before he met the girl who was to become his wife.

Over the years the couple, from Dodworth, acquired a number of other vintage vehicles and undertook several long-distance tours which took them the length of America and around Australia.

However, this latest epic drive from South Yorkshire to New Zealand, via Europe, Russia, China, south-east Asia and Singapore, was by far their most ambitious challenge to date.

Mr Douglas, 64, said: “The hardest part of the journey was navigating through Mongolia, where the roads are more like tracks made by vehicles through the desert.

“It was really tough. It was like nothing I have experienced, as navigating is a major issue.

“The maps of Mongolia are pure fiction. There are rivers to cross, bogs to drive through – it is very rough country. The best way to navigate is by following the telegraph poles from one place to another.

“It took three weeks to cross Mongolia because many roads were closed off due to large amounts of rain. Getting across the border from Mongolia to China took three days and we were forced to sleep in a customs hotel on the Chinese side.”

Mrs Douglas, 61, added: “Once over the border we faced crowds of people who would mob the car every time we stopped in China because it is so unusual. There were just so many people that it was very overwhelming.

“My favourite place on the trip was Laos, where the people and culture are incredible.

“We arrived when they were having the long dragonboat races on the Mekong River – it was mind-blowing. They know how to have a good time.”

Although the Douglases knew their dark blue MG was bound to break down en route, they went prepared for any emergency.

Extra storage compartments were fitted to carry not only the luggage and camping equipment, but spare parts in case any repairs needed to be carried out.

The first hiccup came when a brake light failed in Poland, but they had a spare and could quickly replace it. Several hundred miles later, the indicators conked out in Russia, which were replaced in Omsk.

In St Petersburg, the Douglases topped up the brake fluid and also replaced worn-out brushes on the dynamo, while an oil leak was then repaired in Moscow.

In Mongolia, a broken silencer was repaired and the vehicle also underwent a full service.

Mrs Douglas said that, although the car may have reached pensionable age, it was much more suited to the trip than any new car would have been.

She said: “We’ve had it restored twice and they’re really easy to fix. On a trip like this in a modern car we wouldn’t stand a chance, whereas with this type of car we can carry basic spares and fix it on the road.

“They made 10,000 TCs after the war and most of those were exported to the States. Not many stayed in Britain.

“It isn’t exactly a rare car, but it was in limited production. Back in 1966 it was a young man’s cheap run-about, it cost £150 then.

“That’s what men did in those days, they bought these cheap old cars and got hooked. It’s a simple engine, a simple system to fix.”

The couple had to pay out about £2,500 just for visas and have not added up the final fuel bill for their trip, but think they managed 30 miles per gallon out of the 1250cc engine.

Mrs Douglas said: “We seriously have no idea what it has cost.

“We’ve been doing it on a shoestring, camping wherever possible.

“Where it wasn’t possible to camp, we stayed in the cheapest places overnight.”

Prior to their 30,000-mile trip, the couple admitted that people said they were “totally, completely and utterly mad”.

But after years of long-distance driving, they knew what they were letting themselves in for – and have now got the miles on the clock to prove it.

Mrs Douglas said: “We’ve done long-distance touring in the past.

“We went around Australia in 2002 and in 2008 we drove from the southernmost tip of South America, through central America, up the west coast of America and to Alaska, to the furthest point you can get to in the north in a car.

“We left the car in Colorado and then went back the next year, picked it up and spent three months driving around the USA, ending up in Virginia.”

Although the Douglases also own other classic cars including a 1974 MG GTV8, a 1936 four- seater MG and a 1939 two-seater MG, they say they will never sell the trusty MG TC which has now carried them all the way to New Zealand.

Mrs Douglas said: “It has been part of our lives from day one. We will never part with it.”

Route across half the world

ON May 31, Lynne and Robert Douglas set off from Barnsley and picked up MG spares en route to Dover, stopping overnight before crossing the Channel.

They reached Vienna on June 9 and Krakow the following day, before driving into Russia on June 15 – where petrol is half the price it is in the UK.

June was spent driving through Russia, before the couple reached Mongolia on July 3.

The Douglases’ wedding anniversary on July 25 was spent driving over the border into China, before a visit to the Great Wall of China.

On August 19 they made it to Tibet, before hitting Laos on August 24.

In September they followed the Mekong River into Thailand and reached Malaysia on September 21, from where they then travelled into Singapore and eventually to New Zealand.