Whilst overlanding around England a good friend of ours - a true classic car enthusiast - invited us to join him on a sunny Sunday afternoon at the ‘Concours of Elegance’ which is held annually in the beautiful gardens of Hampton Court Palace on the River Thames.  
Hampton Court Palace is always worth a visit when in England as we both enjoy medieval history - and the spectacular gardens made the drive there worthwhile.
The very first vehicle we spotted was a lovingly restored Mercedes 0317 van – being Mercedes Benz Sprinter fans more about this historic racing car transporter later. 

The Editors say it so well, “The most important role of these tales from the road is to inspire you to pack a bag and hop behind the wheel to explore something new”.
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After listing the ‘Top 10 Best European Drives’ in our earlier blog we’re undecided about whether to head East and drive through all the Stans of Central Asia (like our intrepid overlanding friends John & Suzanne of www.Tiggers-Travels.com) or RORO ship our reliable 4x4 Sprinter ‘Mr Benz’ to Canada and start the long drive up to Prudhoe Bay Alaska before turning south all the way down the Pan America Highway to Ushuaia Patagonia.

After a lot of to-ing & fro-ing and serious consideration, we have now decided on a name for “the vehicle” that will be home and transport for us: Mister Benz!

And this is where life for all the wonderfully reliable Sprinter Vans begins…

​Following the trip from Overlanding pals Christian and Sybil (BennyGoesOverland) to the mountains in Albania in spring this year where they dropped off children’s clothes at a small but very active mission church in Fushe Arrez – we decided we’d like to help as well!

​Now living mainly in the Netherlands due to BREXIT, we got in touch with some new friends who kindly helped with surplus apparel – again a big DANK JE WEL to Max:

TOUJOURS L’AMOUR…
One of our absolute favourite châteaux in the romantic Loire Valley is Chenonçeau:

One of the first “European Roads of Culture” Mister Benz has driven so far is the so-called Via Molina – Lower Saxony’s famous Road of Mills.

And as pictures often speak for themselves (and if like us you happen to love these old mills) I would like to keep my comments fairly brief this time.

After all – there are more than 600 ‘mill locations’ in the Northern German county of Lower Saxony alone and we have randomly picked out a few for this trip.

Highly recommended are also the pretty museum villages in Hösseringen and Cloppenburg (allowing us to delve back into the past and a bygone age of rural life).

For Digby and I London has been our adopted home for almost 40 years - until BREXIT changed everything in our search for “the best” retirement country.

We’ve always enjoyed travelling and our careers took us to many different places – me working in jewellery design & teleshopping – now writing - and Digby running his own TV advertising and media agency in Central London - a busy professional life.
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So off we went to Panama a few years ago including to the Pearl Islands and ventured via the Panamerican Highway to Boquete (the Garden Inn is worth a stay) on route to Costa Rica.  However, this was not for us long-term.  I certainly struggled with Spanish and Spanish with me…

FITTING MERCEDES me ADAPTER TO SPRINTER

We wanted to monitor the systems on our Sprinter 4x4 V6 Independent whilst overlanding through Europe & USA and had read about the Mercedes me Adapter.

So whilst in Germany we made an appointment with Mercedes Benz Trucks located in Langenhagen just north of Hannover.