The Belgian Job

This tale starts some time ago when SWMBO was reading one of the Icelandic Horse mailing lists and came across mention of a chap in Iceland – Omar Runolfsson – who had a herd of Icelandic Horses that carried the splash gene. SWMBO began to covet one of these splash horses and frequently showed me pictures of them – said pictures greeted with the usual, male, noncommittal grunt.

More recently, early 2004 to be exact, Omar revealed that he would have to disperse his small herd of splash animals, quick as a flash SWMBO was pounding her keyboard like a woman possessed – a few thousand key strokes later *tada* I am now the proud ‘father’ of a splashed mare in Iceland – greeted with the usual, male, noncommittal grunt.

Several months later – Icleand is no longer the Land of The Midnight Sun (more like Land of the Perpetual Night) and it was time to decide how to get Kápa into the UK. Coming from outside the EEC to within necessitates that the horses have to pass through an EEC Border Inspection Post licensed for Registered Equidae – the UK boasts four of these – Stanstead, Luton, Heathrow and Prestwick.

Stanstead, Luton and Heathrow are all in easy reach of the M25 and, thus, anywhere in the South East. Prestwick is about 5 miles from where I was brought up and, thus, is pretty remote from anywhere south of Carlisle. Having said that – collection from there would have provided a useful excuse to partake of a few drams in company of aged parents and ageing siblings. However, given that the main cargo airline of Iceland is, funnily enough, Icelandair and that Icelandair Cargo does not schedule to Prestwick then my idea of a short break in Scotland was out – greeted with the usual, male, disappointed grunt.

At this point maybe I should introduce the third party to the up and coming menage a trois – Malcolm. Now then, just what is a Malcolm? In our case a Malcolm is a 7.5 tonne ex-pantechnicon (now there is a term of Victorian age that just rolls off the tongue – like aspidistra, Rorke’s Drift, stiff upper lip and ‘get up that chimney, lad’ bought in late November 2004 for conversion to a horsebox, Malcolm had previously been a lifelong resident of the Isle of Wight and had obviously spent a fair old time moving furniture therein under the auspices of the ‘Malcolm Proud Removal Co.’ Hence the name.

Eventually it was decided that Kápa would be arriving at Liège Airport in the wee small hours of the 21st December – along with a horse for Smári, two for Mic and a fifth horse destined for Germany. We agreed that we would take Malcolm and collect the horses for the UK. This, of course, meant that plentiful beavering had to be committed upon Malcolm in order that he be transformed from a plain pantechnicon into a handy horsebox.

The 1969 Original	The 2004 Re-make
The Italian Job	The Belgian Job
Synopsis: Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) and a few chums drive off to Italy in a convoy of customised vehicles to steal a load of gold. Lots of fun and frolics in this crime comedy caper.	Synopsis: Graeme, Fiona and Malcolm drive off to Belgium in a customised furniture lorry to collect a load of horses. Lots of angst and hair pulling in this comedy of errors.

All went well until the maiden voyage of the good ship Malcolm to Smári’s Christmas Bash on 11th December – we arrived at Bentleigh Farm in good order but with a suspicious smell of gear oil emitting from the back end of the lorry. After sitting parked up for a while – sure enough – a tell tale trickle of gloop from the nearside hub showed that we had a failed hub oil seal. No problem – whizzed the lorry back to our local lorreyman the next day who had been fiddling with the brakes for us, there then followed a comedy of errors that turned the remaining few black hairs on my head grey.

Day	Plane lands in…	The Problem	Stress Factor
Monday 13th	8 Days +	Leave Malcolm with lorreyman – new hub seals required. Plenty of time to get them fixed.
Tuesday 14th	7 Days +	Lorreyman unable to locate new parts – fortunately – I know a man who does. New seals ordered and coming via DHL overnight.
Wednesday 15th	6 Days +	No seals yet, DHL are as much help as a chocolate fireguard
Thursday 16th	5 Days +	New seals arrive near close of business (in DHL land 24 hours plainly means 48 hours). Lorreyman will fit them on Friday
Friday 17th	4 days +	Lorreyman hits a snag – new brake drums will not fit, appear to be 3mm out, he orders another set to be delivered Monday. Malcolm is now stuck on his ramp all weekend and there were a dozen small jobs that I needed to do on him before we go.
Monday 20th	2 days +	No new drums by the close of business – I begin to think that ‘overnight delivery’ is now a contradiction in terms. Small beads of sweat now appearing on my manly brow – starting to make plans to beg/borrow/steal/hijack another lorry for the trip.
Tuesday 21st	36 hours	New drums arrive!!
Tuesday 21st	34 hours	New drums do not fit either – pants. All out, eyeball rolling panic ensues. Executive decision made to refit the old drums with new brake liners and ‘go for it’
Tuesday 21st	30 hours	We get Malcolm back ready to ‘rock and roll’ with just over a day to go until the plane lands at Liège – it’s 500 miles, it’s dark and nobody’s wearing sunglasses – ‘Hit it”

Eventually we hit the road late Tuesday afternoon to travel through to Liège via Dover. We had decided to use the short sea crossing for a couple of reasons – main one being that there are a large number of daily crossings so, if you miss one ferry there will be another along shortly – not so important on the outward leg perhaps but, on the return leg with the horses I figured that the less time we spent hanging around waiting the better. I’d previously used Seafrance from Dover to Calais and decided to use them again – mainly because they seem to be a bit more relaxed about carrying livestock.

We hit the traffic jam outside Dover around 10pm and trickled into the harbour over two hours later amidst a huge convoy of lorries – I think that every lorry driver in Europe was trying to get home for Christmas. Upon entry to the docks the three ferry lines were displaying their next available freight crossing – P&O were within a few hours, Norfolk Line at 8.30am and Seafrance at 8.00am. Figuring it would be better to grab some sleep at Dover we stuck with the Seafrance idea and made our booking – parked up in the loading lane and settled down for some well needed kip…… 45 minutes later *tap* *tap* on the glass – wake up, we’re putting you on the 0230 sailing.

This put us ashore in France just after 4am French time – so much for some shut eye! First stop was the ELF garage about 800 metres from the ferry terminal – it may not be the cheapest in Calais but it is miles cheaper than the UK – it also boasts half a dozen HGV pumps, an all night cafe and free overnight parking for lorries. Fully gassed up we decided to take advantage of the empty roads and press on into Belgium – a few hours later we were parked up in Belgium catching up on our sleep in freezing temperatures.

The remainder of the trip to Liège was fairly uneventful – we did have a two hour crawl around the Brussels ring road due to an accident on the opposite carriageway – it was also interesting to note that the Belgians have two main languages – Flemish in the north and French in the south. This presents little problem – so long as you remember that Liège is the French way of spelling the Flemish Luik and guess which one you do not see on the signs on the Brussels Ring Road? That’s right – the one you are expecting.

Anyways, we rolled into Liège Airport at about 2pm on Wednesday and found that it is plainly an up and coming regional hub – there is a gleaming new, almost complete passenger terminal, an expanding cargo handling facility and, in between the two – their animal quarantine centre. We’d already noticed that the locals had a penchant for using English names (the twenty foot high words ‘Liège Airport’ sandblasted onto the sides of the all glass passenger terminal were one hint) so it was no surprise to find that the animal transfer station was called “The Flyin’ Farm”. Having scoped out the area we trundled into Liège for a spot of retail therapy of the liquid variety for all three of us – Malcolm got some more diesel and we stocked up on a few bottles of wine.

We returned to the airport by early evening and caught a few more hours sleep outside The Flyin’ Farm. We had been expecting the flight to land around 11.40pm so, when there was no sign of life by 11pm we began wondering – you know, the little nagging thoughts like ‘was it Luxembourg or Liège?’ So I wandered into the customs office where I had an excellent chat in my schoolboy French with a pleasant customs officer – I’m not sure just what he thought of being woken from his slumber by an unshaven, unwashed individual who then proceeded to massacre his mother tongue with a fine, Scottish, chainsaw like burrrrrrrr but he did direct us over to the cargo terminal where we should seek out the LACHS office.

A few minutes later we pulled up outside the Liège Airport Cargo Handling Services (another English label!) where I had a pleasant discussion, in French, with an Icelander. Our plane was, in fact, not due until about 1.30am and he suggested that we add an hour to that to allow for unloading and paperwork – so we caught another forty winks in the car park until just after 2 am. The paperwork was quickly sorted and all I had left to do was pay the import duty and handling fees – no worries. Mic had already established that the airport would accept credit card payments so I flourished my VISA card in their general direction and the Belgian clerk plugged it into her card reader.

Bzzzzz – no joy. ‘Try again’ I said ‘it’s worked all the way down the motorway and in Liège’.

Bzzzzz – still joy. ‘Here, try my other card’

Bzzzzz. ‘Try this one’.

Bzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzzz.

Houston – we have a problem. It’s 2.30am, we’re in the middle of another country, their machine only likes Belgian Credit Cards and we have to find 2,380 Euros before we can spring the horses out of the transfer station – pants! Cue 7.5 tonne lorry streaking into Liège town centre where we burst into the foyer of the local Citibank like a SWAT team – between us we have around half a dozen different credit and debit cards which we start chucking into the cashline machines. Given that most of the cards have a £500 daily limit (around 700 Euros) I figured that we would be able to draw out the necessary funds. Wrong. First Direct and MBNA seem to limit you to 500 Euros – we even rang up their 24 hour customer services who told us, very nicely, that they could not help. Fortunately Fiona managed to remember the PIN for a credit card she has not used in years and we were saved – ‘the airport Malcolm, and don’t spare the horses’.

Back at LACHS we counted out the folding stuff with the Belgian clerk – it was all in small denomination notes from the cash machine so it took a while but, I’m sure that she saw the funny side of it. By now it was around 3.30am, the horses had been vetted and I was itching to get loaded and away. However we were held up for another hour or so and struck up conversation with the other chap there to collect the fifth horse (seems that the aircraft was carrying only the five horses and an awful lot of frozen cod). He was called Ingo Muller, a pleasant gentleman from Germany who spoke excellent English (good job as, otherwise, we’d not have struck up anything with him as our German is, well, as about as good as our Mandarin Chinese and Russian if you get my drift). Proving what a small world The Icelandic Horse is he asked us say ‘hi’ to Fi Pugh – ‘Hi Fi’, there – that’s done.

At about 4.45am we were led back around to the animal transfer station and allowed in to see the horses. The Flyin’ Farm was spotless – everything still had that gleaming ‘new’ sheen to it and, under the brilliant lights the five horses were standing in a pen. Well, when I say standing I really mean eating – the airport guys had provided a large quantity of hard feed and whilst four of the horses were eyeing it up speculatively, the fifth – Depla – was doing a fair impression of a shaggy hoover.

Fiona finally got to clap her eyes on her new horse – I think she was too overcome for words but then that may have been lack of sleep.

We loaded Ingo’s horse first and it popped up onto his extremely smart horsebox like it was a stroll in the park. We then walked Kápa and Smári’s horse down to Malcolm – Kápa had little handling in Iceland and we did not know how she would load -straight up the ramp and on board (yes!) Smári’s horse was right behind her and then we brought Mic’s two down and they also loaded as easy as pie. Given that I had anticipated a bit of a struggle loading then I was delighted to be able to on the road by 5am.

Malcolm bombed back to Calais in pretty good time given that he was now fully laden for the first time – however the weather was changing from a pleasant (if you are a penguin) hard frost of around minus nine degrees to rather unpleasantly high winds and driving rain. High winds in the Straits of Dover can mean a rough crossing which means that the ferry companies can be reluctant to carry livestock (previously I’d found out to my cost that SeaFrance tend not to sail in the sort of weather that P&O do) so I was getting a little troubled on the sailing front. No worries though – the wind and tide were both driving hard in the same direction so we had a relatively smooth crossing, first off the ferry at Dover to boot.

Unfortunately Her Majesty’s Customs decided that first off the ferry plainly equaled hardened drug runners, or booze bootleggers or tobacco smugglers – we were whizzed into their search area and Malcolm was treated to an all over X-Ray by their giant X-Ray machine and then had a few of his orifices probed (ooh errr missus!). Whilst we had handed the horse passports over with ours they did not show any interest at all in them – not even the ‘gaudy’ ones – eh Smári ? The whole procedure took around an hour and, at this point in the trip, was as welcome as steak tartare at a vegetarian’s convention; however we smiled through gritted teeth and were soon on the way home.

We dropped the three other horses off en route and arrived home at around 10pm. Kápa declined to unload at first but was soon tempted by waving a handful of haylage and an Elding on a lead rope at her – after feeding and watering the others we dragged our weary carcasses home to bed and left the horses to sort out the new herd dynamics.