Steve Moore:\u00a0Long distance Clara would have been very proud of us. Today was all about smashing out a big day on the road and seeing how both crew and the fire engine coped. There was no need to worry\u2026Martha absolutely loved it. We drove to Cardiff from Liverpool taking in Snowdonia AND the Brecon Beacons. Wow,\u00a0 wow, a little bit more wow and then some more. 400 miles of some of the most breathtaking roads you can imagine. It\u2019s sad to think most Brits choose to go abroad when we\u2019ve got all of this on our door step. If I was Prime Minister I\u2019d enforce a law that said in order to qualify for a British passport people would to have to prove they\u2019d; see snowdon, walked in the lake district, driven the west coast of Scotland and visited the Jurassic coast in Dorset.<\/p>\n
Now – we all know Martha doesn\u2019t really like diving in town, frankly it is a painful affair and boy does she whine – the open road on the other hand, well she loves it. The windier the better! Through Snowdonia, every bump and turn was lapped up in our 1994 Mercedes. It was however, another reminder of how much the fire engine hurts the crew\u2026every bump, corner and drain can really be felt. After 11 hours every single part of your body knows about it. By back is completely ravaged and I\u2019m in agony. God only know how by body is going to cope over 9 months. Ouch.<\/p>\n
It was a truly inspirational day. As this was our \u2018long day of driving test\u2019 we didn\u2019t have any visits to the wonderful charities planned. It really was a true test of endurance for Martha on the amazing roads of Wales. Luckily for us our Martha passed with flying colours, my back \/ bum \/ left arm \/ knee \/ head \/ left ear however failed miserably. I\u2019m close to being a broken man! The thrill of a day like today, the big chat in the cab and the crazy good views all made it very worthwhile though and brought home how truly excited I am for the expedition to start on July 18th<\/sup>\u2026just over 50 days time!<\/p>\n We said our goodbyes to Louise and Michelle in Cardiff and by all counts they had a great time. I think Uncle Tony and John will miss their new best mates. At Cardiff Central station we chucked the Mahoney sisters off and replaced them with big chat Kate Bartishel (not Bartoshel as I\u2019ve apparently called her for the last 5 years). I have promised Amy I will be nice to her for at least day. God give me strength \u2013 it\u2019s going to be tough and in order to give me a fighting chance of success I\u2019ve had to ask Kate not to give me too ammunition. Tough day ahead. Dance monkey dance.<\/p>\n Steve<\/p>\n [flickr album=72157624149506008 num=30 size=Square]<\/p>\n Steve Moore:\u00a0Long distance Clara would have been very proud of us. Today was all about smashing out a big day on the road and seeing how both crew and the fire engine coped. There was no need to worry\u2026Martha absolutely loved it. We drove to Cardiff from Liverpool taking in Snowdonia AND the Brecon Beacons. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expedition-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1634"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1907,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions\/1907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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