Rust 2 Rome A minimal effort blog.

It was an early start today, packing a wet tent, in the rain, into a tiny car. Although advice from a colleague years ago means our tent packs up as a single unit and all of our stuff is from cycle touring, so we are pretty slick and it all goes in the car ok. Just.

There’s at least two cars with four folk in, loads of cars with roof boxes, Mercini have an E class estate with a WINE DRAWER.

The big Jag XJ we spoke to on the start line has three guys who finished swapping their engine and gearbox in the early hours of Saturday morning (for a Sunday morning departure). The split screen bus is largely full of spares but they blew their diff trying to get over Hardknott and pulled a Joni Mitchell (calling for a big yellow taxi to take them away). They claim they will be back but they’ll have to fix it and then catch us so I doubt we will see them again.

The T2 isn’t fairing much better, electing to go round the passes to save their clutch…

The route is only revealed during morning briefing each morning as Marko (our leader) prefers to keep it all as a surprise, but it’s all on the satnav if you want to look so Fraser had a quick peek before we left to see where we are going, and we arrange to meet him tonight for dinner with his folks in Hythe (10 minutes from the campsite) and his parents entertain us with tales of a life with Baroness Thatcher…

So we are heading for the white cliffs today via the British Motor Museum. I mean I wasn’t going to bother going in, we have a dinner appointment to make, but it’s cars. And I really like cars… We did a whistle stop tour whilst Brian (who’s doing it with his daughter in a 1.4 Megane convertible) got caught by a Jaguar enthusiast and was stuck for nearly 3 hours.

No splittie at the campsite, and the Bora has also called a Joni, but the owner has sprinted home to Barrow and returned with his c30. The T2 struggled to climb the slight slope into the campsite with a lunched clutch but they reckon that the splittie owner is going to help them change it in a lay-by near Calais…

The T2 drivers are from near Hapton, which is where Kathy was from and there was a distant connection!

In which an unsuccessful attempt is made to be an IT whizz.

In what would become a feature of the trip we arrived on time! Then misread the satnav, and missed our turn.

We’d no idea what to expect, I mean we have friends who’ve done it, but their info was just “it’s ace”. The meet point was next to the bridges in Soith Queensferry so we wander round looking at the other entrants, one chap has ruined a perfectly nice Corrado, there are two Transporters that I doubt will make it to England. A flush of Volvo estates, big Mercs and Audis. Some of the competitors were in fancy dress and our leader, Marko, is dressed as an Edwardian fop, I’m not sure sure even now whether this was fancy dress, or just how he dresses.

Suzy has rocked up to see us off with one of her pals, and 3/4 of Clan Ford have also appeared to wave us off! I offer to help setup someone’s satnav (I mean how hard can it be) because he said he was a mechanic and I was hoping we’d be friends, for when the MX5 breaks down. I’d even brought the macbook exactly so I can make myself useful as there’d been some chat on the FB page tha folk were struggling to set up their Garmins. Mine was genuinely incredibly straight forward, so I figured they were all just a bit slow.

I do not manage to setup anyone’s satnav. I just got lucky with mine.

Anyway, driver briefing was short and put us all into groups of four cars – all connected by our CB radios and off we went. Heading South.

The Mazda was exceptional in the Lakes, it’s so small and the steering is so direct you can position it exactly on the road and the lack of power never really rears its head. Overtaking is an issue as it’s hardly got any power, but the Lakes is so busy it doesn’t really matter what you are in – unless you’re on a bike you’re stuck in traffic. Although the Mazda has an ace up its sleeve if you’re really cheeky, pull the right hand stalk, up the lights come and we look like a 60s race car.
On a charge.
Both Wrynose and Hardknott were despatched with aplomb, although whilst we occasionally scraped he exhaust we saw some of the bigger stuff taking chunks out of the tarmac with their sumps…

Dinner in a pub in Grange, then a campsite on a slope.