UK – Ukraine Convoy: Short Story Two – the team and the drive

Yesterday I shared my first experience of driving aid from the UK to Ukraine, focusing on the Ukrainian people I met. That was a hard story to write, so today I wanted to focus on something a little more fun – the actual journey and the amazing group of volunteers I took the journey with.

The challenge.

The drive is around 1,300 miles long. Crossing six countries – the UK, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Poland and finally Ukraine. The intention is to get this journey done in three days.

What is important to remember is that you’re not driving a brand-new car. You’re the caretaker of an older vehicle, which you’re trying to look after as best as you can – to ensure it gets to Ukraine in the best possible condition. This means you are not driving faster than 60 / 65mph at anyone time.

Day one.

The starting point was Banbury, Oxfordshire. The rest of the team met up the day before we set off. This was so they could get a good night’s sleep the day before as they were traveling from across the UK and Europe.

I am not sure how much sleep they had, as they all stayed in a quiet village pub together and by the time I arrived on Thursday morning – there was some quite pale faces.

As I live not far from Oxfordshire, I took the benefit of having one more night in my own bed. Whilst this was great for my back (which will be relevant later) on reflection I wish I had joined the rest of the team to meet everyone in one place. As I was doing this drive on my own, I was a very apprehensive about the type of people I was traveling with. Would they like me? Would they hate that I had worked for the Conservative Party? Would I like them? What would I talk about with a bloke I have never met before, whilst being locked in a car with them for 15 hours a day about?

Whilst I am quite a confident person and have travelled alone before – that was just taking the occasional flight here and there, I was nervous on the drive to meet up with the team. It felt like a first date, a first day at work or watching England take penalties.

However, as it turned out I had nothing to worry about.

The Snatch Land Rover I was driving was not quite ready for the departure time, so I was able to watch the majority of the convoy set off, I stayed at the garage waiting for the Land Rover to be finished and with the rear recovery vehicle (this was a 4X4 which would be donated to Ukraine too, but had supplies, so if anyone broke down – they’d be caught).

We then were ready to go. When I saw the Land Rover, which is a former British Army Snatch which served in Northern Ireland – I thought ‘f**k yeah’. What a cool looking thing and I could not wait to get going.

I was a passenger for the UK stint and the inner Top Gear child inside me came out at this point.

We left Banbury and headed to the Euro Tunnel. Again, thanks to Jacob’s immense organisation this was a smooth process and thankfully, he drove the Snatch onto the train.

Once we landed in France, it was my turn to drive. I was nervous. I had never driven on the ‘wrong side’ of the road before and I had certainly not driven anything this size or weight before.

When jumping in the driver’s seat, there were some things which hit me straight away. The seat is fixed. The seat is also quite rigid. The protective glass was old and as a result had started to frost, so visibility was not this car strong point. There’s no radio and temperature control was hit and miss.

But it made up for it, but being seriously cool. Right?

When we set off, I also realised that the steering wheel had a fair bit of give, it didn’t like fourth gear and you had to anticipate the braking, as it wasn’t stopping quickly. Also, you had to shout to talk to your passenger as it was loud.

I took the vehicle from France, through Belgium, The Netherlands and onto the bonkers autobahn onto our end stop in Germany. It was a long drive and by the end of day one my back was in bits, my bum was numb, and my voice was killing me from the day of shouting to Jacob about his family, what sports he liked, how and why he got involved with the charity and why German drivers sit so close to you.

I then had the opportunity over arguably one of the most deserved beers I had ever had and some fantastic food to catch-up with the rest of the team.

What struck me was the diverse range of ages of the volunteers. There were a couple of university students, some recent graduates, a smattering of older gentlemen and a couple of others around my age.

Whilst I won’t go into names, there was also an amazing range of professions. A black metal guitarist, a barman, engineer, students, travel experts, YouTuber, accountant, legal expert, IT engineer and a university lecturer.

This is where all my nerves about the group fell away. They were a wonderful group of blokes, friendly, easy to talk to, all liked a good beer and all with an interesting backgrounds which I knew nothing about – which made integrating them fun.

After a long day, I slept like a baby. Which was needed ahead of day two.

Day two.

This would be the killer day.

Setting off around 07:30 from Germany, aiming to get as close as possible to the Ukrainian border, to make our third and final day of driving as easy as possible.

This would roughly be a 900KM day.

But I started with excellent news. As the Snatch looked so cool, I was able to rotate, and give my back, ears and voice a rest by jumping into a Hilux with two top blokes from Yorkshire.

Although a long drive, the morning was remarkably stress free. We had lots of chats about politics, America, their families and why these two had decided to do this convoy again. This was their second time and in total they have raised a staggering £20,000.

It was then my shift to drive from early afternoon until the Polish border (early evening). Compared to the Snatch, this was just like driving your own car, mega easy. We cruised across Germany. The only two incidents we had was a huge delay, which saw us take a rather adventurous route through a couple of small villages (my first time at roundabouts looking the wrong way) and the Hilux having a slight pre-Madonna moment where we ended up on the hard shoulder on limp home mode. Which was a slightly scary moment, but thankfully the fellas knew how to get it fixed and we were off and running again.

As we crossed the Polish border, the news of the meeting between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office started to drop. This dominated our chats for the rest of the drive.

We stopped off at a fantastic hotel near the motorway around 23:00 and whilst the others went to find food, I went to find my bed.

Day three.

The final day of the drive. Weirdly, I felt fine. I wasn’t tired or bored of driving.

Today, I was back in the Snatch taking it from Poland to the Ukrainian border.

All my previous thoughts about the Snatch disappeared as it was cool to drive this beast into Ukraine.

Today was the first day where I started to notice a few things which made you realise where we were going. For example, as we neared the Ukrainian border we drove past the last NATO airbase to the border. It is huge. With a significant amount of military traffic on the roads. Far more than I have ever seen before. As we neared the border, the journey which had been full of laughs, silly incidents and jokes started to become a little more serious.

As we headed to the border point, the roads got quiet. We drove on some beautiful Polish roads. Around 10KM from the crossing point, we were the only cars driving towards Ukraine.

The border crossing was painless. All six vehicles were through in an hour or so.

From here, it was around a two-hour drive to our destination. As Lviv is not near the front line, it is easy to forget that you are in a country at war. However, there were some subtle things you noticed which reminded you where you were.

For example, along the motorway are adverts encouraging people to join the Army. We saw the occasional military checkpoint and we drove past some small villages where you saw military graves sat within their local church.

We then arrived, handed the vehicles over and headed for (several) well deserved team beers.

What did I learn from this part of my experience? I spent hours listening to people about what motivates them, their aspirations, why they were here and their stresses back at home. Listening to people you’ve never met before, in very weird, enclosed circumstances made me reassess that the pressures you’re feeling yourself, others are in the same position and more importantly the majority of people are thoroughly decent people who want to help others.

As an aside, I would also say, if you’re thinking of doing the drive – don’t be worried about the distance. It wasn’t daunting and the miles slip away.