Where do we go from here? Well after the bug and lorries were allowed off (team bugsplat was loaded into the base of the ferry as it was too low to go up the ramps to higher deck), we left the ferry and with true style and spirit of the scumrun waited for our friends from the boat. No, my memory of that bit is wrong. Gruff was driving and against all things holy, he figured, sod it, boot it, lets get some miles done. So roof down, mist stinging cold, we have hit the French motorway at a sensible speed without seeing much apart from fog and dark smudges with tail lights. After about half an hour of this I was getting proper chilly and fed up with the game. This just wasn't fun - open top car, mist, dark, horrible weather and sleep deprived. On the upside, with the roof down the natural weather conditions made a wonderful fridge alternative for our crate of energy drinks on the sound cabinet. With the occasional chattter on the CB and not a lot to see, I dozed off and let Gruff drive.
Skipping forward a few hours I awoke as we entered a fuel stop. My first proper daylight glimpse of this country in many years and whats the first thing I spot... We are drowning in tea. Yes. If you cast your mind back somewhat you will remember that the carpet got ditched some months back and we left the electrical cables unprotected in the theory that we are grown ups and whats the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen is that 20 stone of bloody Taff will be unable to operate a polystyrene cup. Apparantly the cup of tea I had bought him earlier wasn't "perfectly round" and because he can only accept perfection when it comes to tea his body rejected it and poured the tea across the floor pan. That would be the floor pan where lots of bits are earthed next to live cables. I was tired, grumpy and I may have been a little harsh in my choice of phrases but the question is still valid... How hard is it to drink a cup of sodding tea?
As usual, I seem to have gone off a little so lets drag back a bit. Before the fuel stop, at the start of the toll motorway, Jon & Kelly caught up with us. Now I'm back on track.
OK, so we pulled into the fuel stop and lo and behold theres one of ours in front. It's James and Marc in the FTO. Top Scum dressed as US Fighter Pilots. I say James and Marc. If I recall correctly Marc was off paying for fuel and getting essentials whilst James was holding a single windscreen wiper looking a little unsure of why exactly he was holding a wiper. I never did find that out.
What I did find out at that moment was exactly why you shouldn't fill your fuel tank when you are insanely tired. By this point, Gruff was starting to look weary and it was his turn to fill the tank up. I watched with great amusement as the fuel barrelled out of the filler nozzle (as the tank was full), ran down the side of the car and over his foot. Quite a lot of unleaded was wasted across the floor and Gruffs shoes and socks before he twigged. How I chuckled at the time but karma bit me back. Twice. Firstly, it was my time to pay for the fuel so I had to cough for fuel foot as well as the tank, and secondly the stench of petrol in the cab wouldn't shift.
As I was paying for fuel I was impressed by Jon (Volvo T5) and his bilingual abilities. he seemed to be speaking quite well in his quest to pay for fuel (I simply pointed at the car and waved a card - This worked everywhere) and I couldn't understand a word. Right up until "erm... je suis erm... pump....erm... five". God alone knows what he was telling her before that point. Probably that handbrakes are awesome or something similar in french.
Suitably coffee'd and pasty'd up we went back to the cars (remember, we are in a full services at this point) to discover Gruff having a slash in the bushes. A point worth noting here that it was a longer walk to the bushes than the toilets from where we were parked...
Our route cards for the day we had worked out so with fuel on board, off we went to both the headquarters of Verve Clique and Moet et Chandon. Both predictably in the Champagne region of France.
(Jon parked the big Volvo on the grass somewhere overlapping a disabled spot at Verve HQ)
The Verve Clique was a relatively simple find with no drama. We turned up, met a bunch of other scummers, got pics taken outside and drove to the Moet HQ. This checkpoint was in a narrow bit of a fairly busy town. What the tow planners hadn't thought of was 100+ cars turning up and stopping in their warren of streets. We buggered that towns roads for a fair few minutes. Not drawing attention to ourselves was easy. Not drawing attention to our group was nearly impossible as right outside the Moet building were the YMCA boys, in full outfits, standing on top of their police car doing the signature dance with the stereo at full whack. It's at this point we broke free and left.
By this point we had swapped drivers and I was in control whilst Gruff had nap time. We had Jon & Kelly leading, us following and the FTO with Marc and James behind. Having got the checkpoints done, all that was left to do was find the campsite. With plenty of time left before dark we had figured we weren't going to clock in on the fastest 10 cars (a prestigious plaque and parking spot allocated each day to these champions of cheap chariots), so we could either a) try and drop in with some of the faster cars times or b) actually enjoy some of the fantastic scenery. With that in mind, we dropped away from the motorway network and wound our way (at a fair pace may I add in here) through the back lanes and roads towards camp.
By mutual agreement we pulled in for a spot of lunch at a cracking park and the three cars drew quite a lot of looks at they turned up.
Regardless we walked into the shop and promptly found an interesting pairing of crisp flavours - Donner and chicken kebab favour crisps. Whilst we were deciding what to get from the foreign menu snacks an unmissed feeling cropped up. Yet again, either scroll to the relevant blog post or take my word for it, I had a very very poorly stomach the week leading up to Scumrun and loaded myself up to the limit on pooblockers on the Monday evening. This is now Friday. I hadn't had a "movement" for 4 days so I told Gruff to pick me something to eat and I'd see him outside in a bit. Without aiming for the vulgar note, it was a mixture of relief and pain as I gave birth to the largest, roughest traffic bollard in the history of man.
Outside we got chatting about what we do and I already had a hunch that Jon was an officer of the law. This was proven to be correct and Kelly is some sort of IT - turn it off and turn it on again helper (sorry Kelly, I couldnt resist that as I know how much you hate tech support being grouped). It's no secret that Gruff drives lorries and I play with numbers, but it just left Marc and James to stop being coy. After a bit of nudging and hinting, Jon recognised the boots (of all things) and twigged. Thats right guys, Gruff and I have been speeding through France with not 1, not 2, but 3 of her Majesties finest. Jon is Medway but the FTO guys are full on Met officers.
I think I mentioned before that I was crap with names so we just dubbed Marc and James with the tags "5" & "0" respectively. We're still friendly with these guys and the tags have stuck. As much as I love slating the job that these guys do, you'll find out later that it's a very good club to be in and they're handy to know at times.
Having discovered occupations and watched them exchanging stories which I won't go into (but take my advice now... If you are ever in London and need directions, just hope it's not 5 & 0 that give them to you). Absolute quality and brought tears to our eyes.
Having got the un-named meat sandwiches eaten, we agred that dinner shopping would probably be a good idea so aimed to find a big supermarket in Strassburg (where we were camping that evening).
A few hours later we arrived at a beautiful stretch of road. A couple of miles of insanely sweeping and tight hairpins combined with a steep downwards hill. The volvo handled like a barge on steroids due to it's size and the FTO was struggling wiith left turns. Every left turn needed to be done wide as they couldn't control the lock. Which put us in our element. Both the other cars have larger more powerful engines but steering / handling issues whereas we are light and nimble, agile and fun. Remember it's drive it like you stole it Savage in the hot seat, not Drive it like Miss Daisy, so I leadfooted that poor little cabby with last minute braking, over the lines on blind corners to get the apex just right before off the brakes and powering on to the next corner. Oh such fun. Oh the joys. Oh shit. At the end of this stretch we got caught behind traffic (in honesty, they were probably speeding but we had been giving it the beans and still caught them). Whilst in that traffic we could smell burning. Really rancid, mechanical burning. A quick check on the CB revealed none of us had any warning lights showing but there was definately an issue with one of our cars. The Volvo seemed OK, the FTO said they could smell it strongly through their vents which meant it was us.
5 & 0 dropped back a bit to slow the traffic behind them and I took the car up to 50 and went for an emergency stop to check out if it was our brakes. That emergency stop was laughable. We had no brakes at all. Time to pull into a supermarket carpark and have a look. The once pristine white alloys were now a combination of black and grey. The heat being generated from those front wheels was ridiculous and worrying. So we decided to go to the shop to let them cool off.
As usual, Gruff needed a fluid loss so rather than use the toilets inside the shop he wandered off to the edge of the car park with his flies in his hand, ready to release the one eyed gopher. I believe it was Jon that told him this may not have been the smartest idea as he was about to start reliving himself yards away from a fully marked French police unit.
We wandered into the shop determined to get some meat for the barbecue in the car and some cans of fizzy pop. We knew we wanted burgers, sausages and steaks so the mission was simple. Find them. We couldnt. What we did find was the butchers counter but he didn't speak english and the labels could have said anything. What we bought meat wise I dont know, but they were the nicest chilli covered steaks I have ever tasted.
Whilst on a wander round the shop Gruff had got lost trying to find sandals and whilst we were trying to find him, 5 made a friend. This friend looked ever so slightly "special" but unattended and without any carer so I can only assume that he was normal by French standards. He tried striking up a conversation but when we politely blanked him, rather than being upset, he simply started stroking the fighter pilot outfit 5 was wearing. It's not the only bit of worrying man action those boys got this weekend, in fact it set the tone for the guys I reckon.
I'm looking at my notes and realise that I have missed out a bit somewhere. Not overly exciting but I know we set off a speed camera somewhere just outside Champagne region so I'm pretty certain the Volvo and FTO did also.
Back to the train of thought, we left the shop and made our way cautiously to the campsite. We found it with ease and circled the cars. Jon and Kelly had a simple tent that took seconds to construct. 5 & 0 had a slightly more complex variant but our bloody great hotel made of canvas was a mystery to us. A deal was struck and I fired up the barbecue, 5 & 0 made our tent, Jon wandered to the bar and Gruff got out the way.
After eating the nicest meat off Hannah Montanna plates (cheers sweetie for sneaking them into the shopping trolley - I didn't get stick for them at all), we then moved onto the sausages we had bought. Not being a full barbecuist I dont know when things are ready so got 0 to try one. He said they were just the right side of luke warm in the middle so we got stuck in. A beverage was needed at this point.
(L-R, Jon 5, 0, Kelly)
After that, it was time to wander up to the bar to meet everyone else who had made it in one piece. A pleasant time was had and we called it a night and crawled to our sleeping bags.
Tomorrow is a fresh challenge but an interesting story to tell...
Breakdowns, titty bars, cheap beer, and deresticted autobahns coming up next.
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Joe Richardson (Team bugsplat) has created a cracking bit of video foootage - check it out here...
A seperate note, the engine is now in, has been tested, and I'm due to pick the scummer up on Saturday...
Here is a taster of the new and improved Juliette - put it on full screen and turn your speakers up:
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