It all started during a conversation with Ray Montieth Smith of Trailmasters when he asked if I wanted to to go greenlaning in Romania. I declined the offer, but asked him to keep me informed of similar adventures. A week or two later, I rang his office to be told that he was away, so I asked which wonderful part of the world he was visiting. Expecting an answer like Morocco or Canada, I was a little taken aback when the reply was Wrexham!

Probing further, I discovered that he was at the offices of Operation Christmas Child, organising a return trip to an orphanage in Blon, Belarus. Once he had returned to the Trailmaster office, I contacted him again and subsequently joined the team for the return trip.

With the trip six months ahead, it seemed that there was plenty of time to get everything organised. However, one of my main problems was taking a fortnight out of the 4x4 Mart schedule which would need some careful planning and certain deadlines would need to be brought forward. As it happened, final preparation took a lot longer than anticipated and an expected rather busy few weeks, which included the London Motor Show and the Superwinch/Safety Devices Hillrally became exceedingly hectic to say the least! In the meantime, I had formed 4x4 Aid (which was later shortened to FourAid, as we also use two wheel drive vehicles) along with John Bracewell and tried to raise as much sponsorship as we could.

I made a long list of things that were required, including passport, injections, international driving licence, visas, vehicle insurance, documents, MOT, foreign currency, etc, etc. Then I started to work my way through it.

On a visit to Avon Land Rover Services of Bristol, Barry Cambridge had told me if I had a problem with a vehicle to contact him, so, as the leaving date neared, I called in to see him. A 110 non-tdi diesel was selected and a week later I went down to pick it up. It had been fitted with a roof rack, extra tank and worklamps, the next stage being to run it up to Oldham, where Bob Christie of BJ Acoustics had offered to fit a soundproofing kit. The journey back was a lot quieter!

Bernie Morris of Liverpool's LR Supermarket had kindly donated the whole team a pair of Camel Trophy Adventurewear boots each, so I called in to pick mine up and take the opportunity to purchase some spares. The gearchange had got a little wooly over this period, so a call to LEGS of Oswestry for some advice was made. Two hours later they had rebuilt the gearchange mechanism and it was like driving a new vehicle. Thanks!

The final week was spent trying to finish the off-road magazine I was working on, check that everything had been done, liaise with the other members of the team and load everything into the vehicle. Chamberlain's had supplied a set of seat covers, Bakers 4x4 had loaned a bed conversion and Simoniz had donated antifreeze and de-icer. Climair sent a pair of wind deflectors and a set of Olympic ECLs were supplied by A&A Tyres of Cardiff. Ryders International had supplied a Warn 8274 winch and fitting kit, but my last minute problems meant that I was unable to get it fitted in time.

All of a sudden it was time to pick OOC's Ian Mackenzie up, make our way over to Widnes to meet up with John Bracewell, who had taken over the co-ordination of the excercise on the absence of Ray. We then ran in convoy along with the ambulance, that Staffordshire Ambulance Service had donated, to the M6 to meet up with the Scottish contingent. The journey continued down the M6, M1, M25, A12 to the docks at Harwich, where the remaining (southern) members of the team met us. Then we prepared to board one of Scandinavian Seaways luxury ferries, as they had very kindly given the whole team free return passage.

I assumed that I would be sick as a parrot on the boat and it was suggested that I undertook alcoholic beverage so that I would at least have something to be sick with (well, I thought it was a good excuse!), so a trip to the bar was made. With 22 hours of sea travel in a force six/seven gale, I wasn't looking forward to the journey, but after team member after team member fell by the wayside, there was only two of us left drinking. And all that beer. It seemed that every time a round was ordered, someone fell out.

One of the vehicles had a problem on the autobahn with loose wheel nuts, which was solved by the combined use of an airjack and a hi-lift jack. We drove on through the night, swapping drivers as and when the need became necessary and eventually we reached the German/Polish border. The controls on the German side had closed, so we preceded to the Polish side. The paperwork we were carrying allowed us to go to the front of the queue and after the necessary inspection of passports/visas/etc, we were into Poland.

A few miles into the country, it was decided to stop for food and fuel, so a convenient petrol station was located. We quickly set up the cooking appliances, well away from the refuelling areas and tucked into a wide selection of meals, keeping the local prostitutes at arm's length.

After hunger had been satisfied, we drove on further into the night, before stopping in a layby for a few hours sleep (or lack of sleep in my case). Carrying on through Poland, along their two lane roads, with a wide "hard shoulder", which you were expected to move over onto, when being overtaken. Nice in theory, but this piece of tarmac was also used for horse drawn vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians! The roads also suffer from subsidence and have "tramlines" made by heavy lorries (bit like parts of the M6). It was fun at times to try and keep the 110 with one set of wheels in and one out of the ruts!

Certain members of the team had been winding others up and convincing them that we when reached the Polish Alps, they would have great trouble ascending them with their loaded vehicles and trailers. As I had researched the route beforehand, I didn't fall for this, but one or two nameless members of the convoy got quite concerned. The route actually took us along some of the flattest roads I have ever seen, the nearest thing to the Alps being the occasional railway bridge!

One of the vehicles in the convoy got stopped by the Polish police, so the whole convoy stopped and I did a three point turn to find out what the problem was, nearly causing another by driving off on the left hand side of the road. Funny how you get disorientated. The problem turned out to be that you need to drive on dipped headlights in Poland, even if it is a bright sunny day. One rebuke later, we were all on our way again.

We reached Warsaw, which looked very interesting as we drove through, it would have been nice to have spent some time exploring, but as this was an aid convoy, not a tourist trip, we continued.

Politely pushing our way to the front of queues we eventually found the man with the correct rubber stamp. Next problem was that he needed to see the passport of the "missing" person, who happened to be Ian, back in the Land Rover in Belarus. So it was back through Russia, walking slowly this time, into Belarus to collect Ian, then back through Russia into Poland to get the necessary stamp. Once we had this, it was through Russia again, back to the vehicle in Belarus and continue on our journey.

Into Brest. Not the most pretty of cities, to say the least, with a large amount of tower blocks. A supposedly wrong turn meant we all had to U-turn on a piece of waste ground, the first bit of off-roading so far! However, it was found that we were on the correct road after all, so after another bit of off-roading, we were heading in the correct direction.

The main roads in Belarus are reasonably well tarmaced, but have controls every so often. These are left over from the days of communism, but a lot are still in use today. We joined the Belarus M1 (yes, really!) and headed towards Minsk. Contraflow systems are in place, just like our own M1, the main difference being that in Belarus, they occassionally forget to direct you back on to your correct side! Makes for interesting motoring. Luckily there isn't the amount of traffic that there is on ours.

This section, up to Minsk, consists of large areas of nothing, interspersed with large areas of forest, and I mean large areas. This is known as bandit territory and was time for "tight convoy" mode. We found a layby where we decided to stop for a few hours, this came complete with a 24 hour cafe. This establishment, run by two friendly Russians, served some very interesting coffee and local "rocket fuel", which they call Vodka. I declined the rocket fuel, as I was driving in the early hours of the morning.

Starting time came around very quickly and the convoy headed off towards Minsk. We had to drive into Minsk, which was obviously designed by the same person who did Brest and used a standard house brick with black squares painted on it as a scale model for the buildings. stacking them up as and when required. Heading out of Minsk towards Blon, avoiding the trollybuses and trams, it was decided that it was time to refuel. A garage was located but, although there was plenty of petrol available, it was sadly lacking in the diesel department. So much for the legend that in Belarus, petrol is exceedingly scarce and diesel in abundance. Time to empty a jerry can full of diesel into the tank.

Ian from OCC, went to locate the Director of the orphanage, Vladimar, whilst the rest of us manoeuvred our vehicles into the areas where we could unload. Backing up to the door in turn, we started to unpack a varied selection of clothes, toys, baby food and medical supplies. Phil reversed the ambulance into a parking area with the "assistance" of a local boy who kept waving him back. Unfortunately, this was until he hit the post!

Once everything had been unloaded, we sorted out the sleeping arrangements, which comprised of ex-USAF camp beds, brought on a previous OCC convoy. Although some members of the convoy were ill or very tired, there was enough still standing to start sorting out the work that was needed to be done. The lads from Scottish Power's Longannet Power Station started working out the best way of supporting the building that was about to collapse into the swamp and how another building which had been subject to a "Fawlty Towers" extension could be stabilised. They worked out that the most effective way to solve both problems would be to remove the "extension" from that building and use the timber as supports for the one near the swamp.

The children that were in the orphanage ranged from healthy youngsters to very serious cases of babies with terminal illnesses. We assisted entertaining the children as much as possible and hopefully, brought a few seconds of sunshine into what will be a few cases, very short lives. Some of the children "assisted" us in carrying out the laying of the floorcovering and brought rays of sunshine into our lives. They were fascinated with beards and every male was called Da-da. Moments I will always treasure.

The waste wood from the "extension" was loaded into a tipping trailer on loan from Great Eastern and Robb and I drove it around to unload it for the bonfire which was going to be the highlight of an evenings's entertainment, supported by a firework display. They didn't tell us it was a hand operated hydraulic tipping trailer, but luckily the action was quite effortless to raise the body. Anyhow, it was a good excuse to drive the Land Rover in the snow.