Arriving late at the hotel in Montelimar having driven 570 miles it was a pleasure to get a beer, bloody good steak followed by several beers, meeting the other teams was great, we managed to narrowly escape the weird Japanese drinking game by inches, good fun watching the other competitors embarrass themselves... the next day started well for most, however one competitor had slept face down on the concrete floor in the hall way, he was later seen retrieving his shoes from the swimming pool, he opted to leave his bed in the pool!!!
Having had breakfast we headed to the local Ford dealer to buy a new radiator overflow cap, however no joy the spares department was closed.... taking a management decision we headed for the Alps, we started into the hills and watched the temperature gauge rise, when it got close to the red we stopped, slowly releasing the cap watching the overflow bottle boiling..... a litre bottle of antifreeze and 6 litre bottle’s of mineral water later she had cooled down long enough for us to proceed!!, about 20 competitors stopped to help, which was great comfort... over the Alps down through the Gorge du Verdon straight into the next little village, parked the car and into a bar, several beers watched England play Rugby, down the mountains into Nice for a drive round the coast to Menton just beyond Monte Carlo.
Found the hotel followed by a restaurant on the coast had some diner, then went off to find some of the other competitors to have a drink with, heading to the organisers hotel we walked 6 blocks to discover the only hotel in Menton that doesn’t have a bar!!!, we walked towards the beach and bumped into some marshalls that advised us that most of the competitors were in the Casino, unfortunately Spartacus & Heath weren’t dressed appropriately so admission was denied, the bottle of Port and another planning session pursued.
We had breakfast on the balcony of the hotel overlooking the sea, watching the keep fitters trying to shred the pounds running the waterfront... St Trinians was upon us, dressed accordingly we frightened some hotel guests and a bunch of locals on our way to the start, a pleasant surprise to arrive at the start to discover it wasn’t a practical joke and everyone had made an effort... see photo’s
Overall a great day we headed for Venice looking at the challenge, management decided fairly quickly that we weren’t going to achieve today’s goal, carry your spare wheel on the train, then water bus into St Marks Square, we jumped a water taxi arriving at St Marks Square in time to watch the All Blacks play Scotland, several beers later and a great water bus ride back to the train station we saw several comrades carrying their spare wheels!!! The hotel was about an hour’s drive arriving at about 9:00pm we got settled met with the rest and had more beers... a lite bite and more beers...I had to rescue Spartacus who was busy testing Lemon Chello, I got away with only having 2!!, the early night we had promised ourselves turned into another blurry evening like all the evenings recently.
Waking early we headed for breakfast, loaded the water pistols, mounted the cannon, and got ready for the onslaught, some of the brave ones from the night before were talking about eggs & tomatoes for the fight on the beach however this wasn’t to be, The guns all loaded about 40 minutes of chasing the opposition around the beach reloading in the sea as needed, turned out to be bloody good fun.
The final run to Rome...... started with us surprising the competition with the water cannon, they all thought the water fight was over!! we had fun for a couple of hours dowsing down a number of competitors slowly at the start then on the roads travelling towards Rome, management decided that the unit should be packed away before the local police decided we were having too much fun..... Sat Nav was winding us around local roads far too slowly and we were being followed by a team that were using “Twat Nav – a bloke with a map... we headed for the A13 and eventually got on to run straight into an accident we were out of the car waiting to get going for about 40 minutes, the mountain passes and tunnels were great, too many people had air horns which echoed through the tunnels and passing comrades always started a hooting sessions!!, Which spread like wildfire when cars were stopped at motorway services...
The car got hot and overheated a couple of times, we discovered the fan wasn’t working without the air-conditioning running (this hadn’t been working for a long time!) more water and anti-freeze soon chilled it out, unfortunately these stops along with accident and our slow exit from Venice had delayed us to a point that we would not make Rome in time to contact a Car Breaker to dispose of the “Marrakech Express” we coasted into Rome and found our hotel, celebrating with a couple of beers at the hotel then headed for the centre to meet all those that participated, the Rally organisation was very poor, the prize-giving was due to start at 7:30, we got there at 8:30 to be told that they had pushed it out to 9:30 and by 10 past 10 we had given up and headed for a favourite restaurant for a true Italian Gastro meal to finish of the trip we ended up back at the hotel at 2:30 realising that sleep deprivation was catching us up......
Checking out of the hotel and find a Car Breaker in early morning Rome rush hour was challenging, however we managed to find the place eventually, tearing off the number plates getting the tax disc and completing the Italian paperwork along with those last photographs of the banger before she got crushed, checking the trip meter we had covered 1672 miles in the 5 days..... “Cushions” Sat Nav had suggested if returning home via the car we would be arriving home at 5:00am Wednesday morning we held that thought for just a minute (that’s all) and jumped a taxi to the airport, with the Sat Nav still running in Cushions baggage as we exited Gatwick car park we could hear her muffled voice giving us directions to Woking....... We’re home......
I need to download and resize the pictures and hope to get that done this evening...
A tired Angelino.....
The Destination
For those wanting images email : alhunter@btinternet.com
