Chatteris duo Dan and Dave have made it to Vladivostok in Russia and are just one week away from arriving in Japan in their 16-year-old Toyota Yaris.
The Cambridgeshire mechanics have been on the road since Sunday, August 12 and left the Fens with a blue-light escort from Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue.
Their journey has been well documented with regular updates on their social media pages ‘Chatteris2Tokyo’ as well as a live tracker on their website.
It’s all in aid of Children in Need and this year’s Fenland Business Awards will be supporting the Fenland pair as money raised at the ceremony will go towards the charity.
In a post on social media, Dan and Dave said: “BOOM! We finally made it to Vladivostok last night!
“We’ll be spending a week here until our ferry leaves for Japan next Wednesday. No more long days full of driving, time to relax and run some errands!
“Sort the paperwork out for the ferry and Japanese insurance, fix a few issues with Larry [the car] so he’s fit and well for cruising the land of the rising sun, and get ourselves a well overdue haircut!
“As you know we estimated 12,500 miles to get to Japan, driving through 20 countries in total.
“Well we’ve actually done 22 countries and have currently clocked 13,478 miles! Larry has done us proud! If you’re going to travel the world, make sure you do it in a Toyota!”
They had an ambitious plan last week to try and make an early ferry from Russia as there is only one per week to Japan.
They said: “OK, so what we’re going to try and do is damn right stupid and NEARLY impossible but we’re giving it a go anyway!
“We done some calculations earlier and we’re confident-ish that we can make the ferry a week early! Our original plan was to arrive in Vladivostok (where the port is) with 3 days spare before the ferry leaves.”
They later added: “Unfortunately we will not be getting the earlier ferry to Japan now. We was absolutely smashing the 43 hour drive to the port of Vladivostok and had just 16 hours left to go when our shipping agent emailed to say that Wednesday’s ferry is actually fully booked.
“We’re absolutely gutted as it would have be awesome to spend an extra week exploring Japan’s car culture, but it is what it is, luck was just not on our side this time around!
“After 27 hours straight driving we decided to pull in to the next town to find somewhere to stay the night and get a bite to eat.
“Now that we’re WELL ahead of our plans we’ll be having a huge lay in tomorrow and then slowly make our way to Vladivostok where we’ll stay for a week until our ferry leaves for Japan next Wednesday. Was worth a try!”
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