Warrior for Warriors
Summer 2023 - my first experience buying and driving a pick-up truck to Ukraine (Polish-Ukrainian border, to be precise). I bought the Mitsubishi L200 K74 “Warrior“ truck from a gent near Bournemouth and drove home without problems. I also sourced locally a spare set of tyres and my neighbour gifted me some off-road gear. The road plan was as follows:
Day 1: Sussex to Leuven, Belgium; 270 miles, 5 hours + border
Day 2: Leuven to Berlin, 470 miles, 7 hours
Day 3: Berlin to Krakow, 370 miles, 6 hours
Day 4: Krakow to UKR Border, 200 miles, 4 hours + border
Day 5: Fly back to the UK from Krakow airport.
Day 1:
My first ferry across the channel (easy, comfortable, fast enough),
My first driving on the wrong side of the road (surprisingly easy, too)
Dunkirk beach - amazing site to visit, great history, overpriced food
Leuven and staying over with my friends - super happy to see after a very long break
Day 2:
Driving in the Netherlands: max speed of 100 km/h would normally drive me mad, but in this case it was perfect as the truck does not really go higher
Running a Dortmund #parkrun - a great park and venue, very welcoming hosts
Swimming in Beckum was really nice and refreshing, would not survived in this heat without it
Crossed the main entry point from West to East Germany, a very sombre museum
There is nowhere to buy food in Germany on a Sunday beyond "pommes fritters", maddening
Day 3:
Totally exhausted by now. It's +33, the car has no A/C and it heats up like a volcano.
Poland is very much like Ukraine, so with all its good and quirky. Krakow is beautiful and a worthy 3* destination.
Also, it was heartening to see multiple UK number plates heading east to hand over their respective cars.
Day 4:
Border crossing was the main event, some important highlights:
Since we are not after any tax refunds, IGNORE the “shorter“ “goods-to-declare“ queue - it literally does not move
V5 is the only document required at the Polish side of the border. But it is required, no excuses.
The letter from the army unit is pretty much the only document required at the Ukrainian border.
All in all took some 4-5 hours, if we stayed in the “longer“ but faster general queue probably can make it in 2-3
PS. After the car made it into Ukraine, one of my friends drove it to Kyiv, where it was fully inspected. It was in very good condition, so not much to do. The car was formally transferred to the unit in the early days of September and was used by the Engineering/Sappers team to clear and lay mines as required in the South of Ukraine. Somewhere in November, I learned that the frame of the car had cracked from overload, but the guys welded it back together, and it was still in good use.
