Saturday morning and yet another early start, with wake up just after 6am and about 5 hours sleep. Anne cooked us up a full English breakfast, and then we hit the road for the launch of our cover story for our mission to save the world - the mighty Mongol Rally - at Goodwood Racecourse near Chichester.
Once at Goodwood we parked up, collected our rally stickers, and went for a bit of a wander around to check out the rest of the cars and have a bit of a chat with some of the other teams. There was a huge variation in vehicle types and preparations here, with everything from what appeared to be cars borrowed from the parents that weekend for 'a trip down the coast', to some seriously kitted out Suzuki Jimny's, and even one Range Rover that's seriously pushing credibility on the 1.2 litre rule... Ironically, knowing the reliabiltiy or otherwise of British vehicles, the Rangey's probably the least likely vehicle to make it...
Hopefully not a sign of things to come, we had our first, but completely trivial, vehicle failure waiting for our honour lap of Goodwood for the rally launch. While wiring up our power inverter, the battery clamp for the negative terminal broke clean in half. Luckily in our box of bits we had a U-shaped piece of steel with a bolt through it that is now doing sterling duty as a clamp clamp.
A few hours after we arrived at Goodwood, Nicola, Anne and Tim Cooper, Matthew and Claire, and Jonathan and Nikki Krogdahl came down to see us off on our big mission. At this point, I should mention that we had been treated to pretty much continuous rain from the time I had arrived at Heathrow, but that on Saturday morning the weather had miraculously cleared, with glorious blue skies and a beautiful mid twenties day for the drive out to Goodwood. It looked like it was going to be the perfect day to launch, but of course, while we waited for our honour lap around the racetrack the weather turned again with just enough rain to make the windscreen wipers essential, but intermittent mode too fast... I hate it when that happens
Following our parade lap, we hit the B-roads for the scenic route to Folkestone through the English countryside, and a couple of hours later we were at the Eurotunnel for passport control. Amazingly we'd arrived exactly on time for our booking, based on a 3 hour window of expected departure from Goodwood and Google Maps estimates of driving time (more on these later) to Folkestone.
After an uneventful channel crossing in the train we entered Calais, for Peter's first taste of driving on the right hand side of the road - with the steering wheel on the wrong side just to make things a bit more interesting. After a few excursions on the wrong side of the road we decided it might be safer for me to drive for a while to give Peter some time to acclimatise.
The first stop in our mission to save the world was to meet up with Clarissa Moriera and Robert Hutton, key members of the resistance against the Utopian Banking Society's evil conspiracy in France. Based on Google Maps driving time estimations, I'd told Rob while we ere in the UK that we should be arriving in Paris around 11pm. This was to prove to be just a tiny bit optimistic...Our desire to avoid the notoriously expensive French Toll roads, combined with the Subprime Micra's inablilty to hold more than about 80km/h up any incline, meant that by around 10:30pm we had only made it around about half way to Paris. Calling Rob's mobile with both of our phones resulted in a recorded message in French that seemed to be saying that calling that number from our phones was forbidden.
At this point we began to fear that Rob and Clarissa's cover had been blown, and that they too had been abducted by the UPS. We sent a coded SMS message to explain that our arrival had been seriously delayed and that we could expected a few hours before sunrise. After a tense wait we received a message back from Rob, containing coded instructions to find the key to their apartment and let ourselves in on arrival.
At around 3am we found Rob and Clarissa's street in Paris, and amazingly there was one parking spot free, a mere 10m from their door. We punched in the code at the door, grabbed the key that Rob had hidden behind a painting in the lobby and made our way up one of the deadliest staircases on earth up to their apartment in the dark. We fumbled with the key for a minute or two, and then the door opened from within.
Once inside, Robert and Clarissa showed us to our beds and we quickly discussed the plan for Sunday. It had been a long day, but so far we haven't had any major difficulties. Hopefully our luck holds up...
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