| Friday May 30th 2003 :: Reading to Dover | |
| After carefully packing the car and running through everything in my head about a million times in case I'd forgotten anything, I went to join some friends for a few (non-alcoholic) drinks in Reading before I set off for Dover. At about 9:45, I left Reading so I could get to Dover in time for the Ferry check-in at 12:30. My epic journey had begun! |
| Saturday May 31st 2003 :: Dover to Brussels | |
| Caught the 1:00am ferry from Dover as planned and about an hour and a half later, arrived in Calais. After a few hours "sleep" in the car, the Minis of Tamworth mob arrived, having caught a slightly earlier ferry than planned. After a short pit-stop, refuelling and getting used to silly French toilets with the freaky automatic flushing thingies, we set off to Belgium, planning to stop and set up camp somewhere near Brussels. The drive was fairly uneventful until we got to Brussels, where we got our first taste of European city driving. Christ help us. Driving in Brussels was interesting, lots of tunnels, trams and mentalists. It soon became clear that it was going to be much harder to keep the convoy together in built up areas. Having successfully got through Brussels, we got a little bit lost! It was nothing major though and we were soon back on track and looking for a camp site. We ended up camping somewhere a bit South East of Brussels if I remember correctly, you can see some photos of the camp site below. The camp site wasn't bad for our first stop. Fairly scenic and with ok facilities, except only one shower worked! We were all happy to arrive though and after sampling a few cans of Jupiler, what seemed to be the local beer, we were all grateful for a good night's kip after a long day. |
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Arriving at the first Camp Site - Click for a larger image Here we are approaching our first camp site, in Belgium. We were glad to get here, having got a little lost along the way! |
The camp site at Belgium - Click for a larger image The camp site in Belgium, with our tents now all set up :-) |
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| Sun June 1st 2003 :: Brussels to Stuttgart | |
| A bit of a killer day this one! We left the campsite in Belgium at about 10am, aiming to get to Stuttgart before setting up camp. All was going fairly well, if a bit slower than we'd hoped, so we stopped in Luxembourg on the way, as planned. As we were a bit behind time, we only spent an hour or so in Luxenbourg for lunch before hitting the road again to make tracks for Stuttgart. After a long afternoon's driving we got near to our intended camp site, I'm not entirely sure where it was, but I don't think it was a million miles away from Stuttgart. When we got near the camp site, we pulled over into an empty car park to check on the map, as we weren't sure whether we hadn't reached the site yet, or if we'd already passed it. I'd turned my engine off and when I came to start it up again it wouldn't start. Starting to worry a little, as it normally starts on the button, I tried it a few times and it eventually started. As we were pulling out of the car park though, the engine died and I couldn't get it started again. I was at the back of the convoy at this point, but luckily Gemma & Becks noticed I'd stopped and came back to see what was up. Mark then turned around and came to help too. After a bit of fiddling, it became clear that the problem was electrical rather than fuel related as there was no spark at either the plugs, or the HT side of the coil. Favourite suspect was the coil, so we swapped mine for the coil from Mark's car, which made no difference. After some deduction, I realised it was likely to be the electronic ignition module. My car was originally fitted with points, but I'd fitted a Lumenition Magnetronic ignition module a couple of years ago and re-used it on the new MG Metro engine. Not having a spare one, I was left with no option other than to call the AA and make the most of my five star European cover! I phoned the AA at 7:08pm and was told that a recovery truck would be with me within the hour. I was beginning to panick a little now as I realised that my chances of getting another ignition module were slim to none, but hoped that there might be a garage near by that might be able to fit some points. Mark had stayed with me and the car while we waited for the AA, while Gemma and Becks had gone to the camp site to set up their tents. After about an hour and a half later, I was beginning to get a bit impatient waiting for the AA, so I phoned them again. They phoned the ADAC - The German equivalent of the AA, who said they were having some trouble finding me. This was understandable I suppose, as I'd had some trouble describing exactly where I was. Still though, I'd given them the name of the street I was on, the name of the major road that I was just off and a description of the nearest major junction on that road. Anyway, they said they'd have someone with me in about half an hour. About half an hour later, coincidentally, the Police turned up. Luckily, one of the Police men spoke English reasonably well. I phoned the AA again and got the Policeman to speak to them to give them our exact location, including the postcode. The AA said they'd fax this information to the ADAC so they could locate me and, after checking our documents, the police left us to it. After waiting a little longer, a few elderly folk who lived nearby were walking past and stopped to find out what was up. Mark and myself tried our best to communicate and talked to them for a while. One of the women went off and very kindly brought back a flask of tea and some mugs so we could have a cuppa while we waited :-). The ADAC phoned me saying that they'd recieved a confusing fax from the AA giving our location. I explained our location (again) to the woman from ADAC, who, luckily, spoke a bit of English, and she seemed to grasp where I was and told me they'd be with me soon. After another hour or two it was starting to get dark and we arranged for Gemma and Steve to come back to us to keep me compay so that Mark could go back to the camp site to set up his tent. Gemma and Steve arrived and waited with me for the ADAC to arrive. Several more hours passed and I phoned the AA several more times. I was getting more than a bit fed up by now and about six hours after I'd phoned the AA, the Police returned again, a little confused as to why we were still there! We explained what was going on and they phoned the ADAC on our behalf to find out what was going on. The ADAC told the Police that they didn't know anything about me, complete crap obviously, as they'd phoned me on my mobile earlier to ask about my location! Anyway, the Police arranged for them to come and get us and then went away again, letting us know they'd keep checking on us every half hour or so to check we were alright. In the mean time, a Turkish man who lived just up the road had come out to see if we were ok and he offered us coke, tea and biscuits! He was a very nice chap and we tried to communicate with him, just idle chat really, it was a bit difficult with the language barrier, but we managed a conversation about football! Such an international language! At last, more than seven hours after being told they'd be here "within the hour" the recovery truck arrived! The recovery guy put the car on the back of the truck and said he knew a garage nearby that would be able to help. He then took us to a BMW garage. I tried telling him that BMW wouldn't be able to help me, but he insisted that they helped another guy with the same car as me a few weeks ago. Being too tired to argue by now, I agreed to wait till the garage opened in the morning and ask them if they could do anything. He then tried to get me to pay 60 Euros for towing me to the garage! After spending a while on the phone to the AA trying to sort it out, he finally understood that the AA would pay him and he left. Gemma and Steve returned to the camp site to get at least a bit of sleep and I "slept" in the car until the garage opened. I'd like to give special thanks to Mark, Gemma and Steve for staying with me while I was waiting for the recovery truck. None of us expected it to take that long and the extra lack of sleep didn't do any of us any good! Thanks guys! |
| Mon June 2nd 2003 :: Stuttgart to Austria | |
| The BMW garage opened at about 7:45 the next morning and I went in asking for help. Of course, there was nothing they could do for me, but nontheless, they were very helpful and offered me a coffee and the address of a Rover dealer about 40Km's away. I phoned the AA again and asked them to arrange for me to be towed to the Rover dealer. This time I only had to wait an hour or so, thank God! When I got to the Rover garage, they seemed like they hadn't seen a mini for quite some time and were quite astonished when I removed the entire front end to make it easier for them to get at the distributor! Anyway, after a lot of hunting through dusty old boxes hunting for parts, they managed to fit some points and I was on my way. The downside was that they charged me 95 Euros for the privilage! As my phone battery was dead from spending so long on the phone to the AA, I couldn't call them again to arrange payment, so I had to pay on my credit card. Great. Finally back on the road again by about 11am, I hadn't held up the day's driving too much, which was a releif. The journey to Austria was a bit of a nightmare for me, as it took quite a bit of fettling by Mark and myself to get the advance and points gap right. The drive through Austria was amazing though, with some of the best roads and scenery on the whole trip! The camp site we stayed at in Austria was pretty good, good showers and more importantly, a bar! We had a few beers in the bar, then a few of us went down the road to a bar/resturant type place for a bite to eat. After a really nice meal, we noticed another mini park up outside. We got talking to the guy driving it and he was very excited to see another two minis outside. He lived nearby and apparently only saw another mini once in a blue moon! He seemed pretty chuffed that he'd seen two other minis in one day, then we told him there was another five back at the camp site! Satisfied after a lovely meal, a few drinks and a bit of mini conversation to boot, we retired back to the camp site to catch up on the sleep we didn't get the night before! |
| Tue June 3rd 2003 :: Austria to Venice | |
| We left Austria at about 10am, we were getting quite good at getting up early by now, so that we could get showered and have breakfast before taking the tents down and packing everything away so that we could leave at a reasonable hour. This was helped in no small way by the fact that once the sun had come up in the morning it got so God damn hot in the tents that you couldn't possibly stay asleep after about 7:30! Anyway, the drive to Venice was looking to be a comparatively easy day, in terms of distance, it wasn't looking too bad. As it turned out, it actually took quite a long time to get to Venice, mainly due to our average speed being quite low. This was because the majority of the route was not motorway, but windy single-lane roads and although very scenic, it meant we were often held up by other traffic. Once we were in Italy, we had our first unwanted encounter with the Police. We were approaching a built-up area having been driving on open country roads for a fair while. As we approached the more built up section, the speed limit dropped to 50km/h, although funnily enough, not one of us saw any sign to indicate this. We'd just gone through some traffic lights when a Police man with a radar gun who was hiding in a layby busted us doing 72km/h. The first four cars in the convoy got through ok, as the Police man couldn't run to the road to stop them quickly enough. Dave, who was in front of me got a bit of gesturing from him, and as I drove past he was waving a red paddle at me and gesturing me to stop. After a breif moment of thought, I decided I'd be better off not bothering, so I carried on. Mark, who was behind me, didn't get the luxury of making such a choice, by the time Mark was passing the Police man, he was standing in the road, pretty much forcing Mark to stop. Mark took one for the team and pulled over, he got stung with a 137 Euro fine, which we all chipped in for, as it was just unlucky for Mark that he was at the back of the convoy! Apart from that mishap, the journey was quite pleasant, lots of scenery to take in and some fantastic windy roads! We ended our journey at the Marina de Venezia five star camp site, just around the bay from Venice. This was a fab site, which was good, as we were to spend two nights there! |
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Snowy Mountains - Click for a larger image Here's a shot of the convoy with some snow covered mountains in the background. I took this one when we'd stopped for a break in the Alps on our way to Venice. |
PJ in the Mountains - Click for a larger image This one was taken in the same place, but facing the other way. |
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Some Italian Scenery - Click for a larger image Another photo taken during a break from driving. This one was taken once we were in Italy, heading for Venice. |
Camp Site in Italy - Click for a larger image In Venice at last! This is a photo of our camping pitch once we'd arrived at the camp site, near Venice. Notice the Minis of Tamworth banner! |
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| Wed June 4th 2003 :: A day in Venice | |
| We were making good time for getting to the IMM in Ferrara and we were all getting a bit tired of just camping somewhere for a few hours of sleep before driving again, so we decided to spend two nights in Venice, giving us a whole day to actually see some of the sights. It was nice having a morning when I didn't need to bother taking the tent down, and the hot shower was a bonus too! We'd decided to go into Venice by getting a water taxi from near the camp site, which would take us into Venice. Once we got there, we had a good look around and generally looked like tourists for a bit. One thing that soon became clear was that Venice is a very expensive place, 6 Euros for a Coke seemed a bit steep! We were starting to get a bit bored by mid afternoon, so we decided to head back to camp and chill on the beach for a while, but we ended up having to wait a little while for the next water taxi. Once we'd got back to the camp site, we were straight into the sea to cool down a bit and play a bit of frisbee :-) Later in the evening, we went to check out the restaurant on site, and ordered some "large" beers. Large doesn't quite cover it, the 1.5 litre glasses were quite special! After a few more drinks in the bar, things died down at about 11pm. We'd heard that the beach was the place to be after hours, so we headed down there and after me and Mark had had a quick game of beach volleyball (without a ball), we spent a few hours hanging out with a group from Germany before heading back to the tents for some much needed shut-eye. |
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Venice - Click for a larger image A typical "postcard" shot of Venice. Venice was a really nice place, I've never been anywhere like it. |
More of Venice - Click for a larger image A shot of the main river through Venice. |
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| Thu June 5th 2003 :: Venice to Ferrara | |
| As we were packing our kit up, ready to leave the camp site, one of the staff asked if we could arrange our cars by the sign at the entrance, so they could take a photo for their website. We obliged of course, and I took a few photos too! Then we were on our way to our ultimate destination, Ferrara, for the IMM 2003! From other members of our group's previous experience of IMM's, we decided to get to the IMM site on Thursday rather than Friday, as we would likely miss the queue's and get a better camping spot. As it turned out, this was a spot on decision to have made! The journey from Venice to the IMM site was fairly uneventful for the first part, it wasn't until we got near the site that we began having trouble finding the exact location. Going off the directions from the web site had got us to the beach at Lido de Pomposa, the IMM was supposedly only 500m from the sea, so we figured we couldn't be far away. Wrong. After lots of confusion and asking of directions, we eventually found the place, not having seen a single sign except for at the entrance to the site, which was more like a few km than 500m away from the sea! Not to worry though, there was no queue to get in, we were amongst the very first to arrive and once we'd got the tents set up we were happy at the thought of not having to drive far for several days! |
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A Group Photo - Click for a larger image Here we are, posing for the camp site's photographer with the club banner. |
A Group Photo - Click for a larger image The same photo, but without the club banner. |
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| Fri June 6th - Sun June 8th 2003 :: IMM 2003 | |
| Once at the IMM, we soon realised that it was just too hot to do much. 40 degrees C meant that anything requiring any degree of effort was out of the window! This provided the perfect excuse for us to spend the majorty of our stay at the IMM on the beach :-) As for the actual show, I was hoping to pick up a new electronic ignition module to replace my one that broke in Germany, but the trade stands turned out to be really dissapointing. There were only a handful of stands and only one major supplier, MiniSport, who were sponsoring the event. Even their stand wasn't very big and I discovered that most stands were just selling shiny bits and stuff and not useful parts. As a result, I couldn't get a new ignition module, which made my heart sink a bit at the thought of having to nurse PJ all the way home as he wasn't running right on points. Mark failed to find a starter motor too, after his had packed in, so all in all, a pretty poor result. Despite the dissapointing trade stands, the show itself was pretty good. We had a good time razzing around the track on go-karts on the first night, and watching Minis doing the same for the rest of the show! There was a red VTEC powered mini there that made me drool a bit, it had a really well done flip-front and I'm hoping to see it featured in one of the mini magazines soon! The evening entertainment wasn't bad either, well, there was plenty of alcohol available, which was a good start! They had live music, a competition to win a mini, a pizza fashion show (use your imagination!) and we had Dangerous Dave to keep us entertained too ;-) On the whole, our stay at the show consisted mainly of hitting the beach in the daytime, after playing shower roulette (will it be hot or cold? You just don't know!) in the morning. Then we'd perhaps watch some minis doing the sprint or gymkhana and have a few (?) drinks in the evenings. It was nice to be able to do these things, having spent the last week or so doing a whistle stop tour of half of Europe and come Monday, we were quite settled, which of course meant that it was time to move! |
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The IMM Camp - Click for a larger image Our pitch at the Circuit de Pomposa, the IMM 2003 venue near Ferrara. |
IMM Club Presentations - Click for a larger image Minis of Tamworth making their presentation to the Red & White Mini Time club. |
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| Mon June 9th 2003 :: Ferrara to Turin | |
| After the IMM, it was time to make our way back to England. We decided to ease ourselves back into the long days of driving by starting off with a relatively easy day's driving heading for Turin. We made good progress and had got to just outside Turin by early afternoon. Unfortunately, at a motorway junction, we had to make a fairly sudden move from the right most lane to the left hand lane in order to come off at Turin and Ash & Leanne being at the back of the convoy got caught amongst the other traffic and couldn't move over to the left lane in time, sending them off in the wrong direction. Bad luck meant that it was several hours before we were back on track and it was time to go and look for a camp site. Again, we had more than our fair share of bad luck and spent quite some time looking for a camp site, though we decided to carry on and get some more ground covered, so we ended up camping way up in the Alps! This was quite a releif as it was a LOT cooler up there, meaning we had a much more comfortable night's sleep. |
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Camping in the Alps - Click for a larger image It was a mere 17 degrees C at this camp site, which made a nice change from the 40 degree heat in Ferrara! |
The Service Station in Turin - Click for a larger image This is the service station we spent most of our time in Turin at! |
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| Tue June 10th 2003 :: Turin to Dijon | |
| We'd decided that we'd like to spend two nights somewhere on the way back up, which meant that we had to make pretty good progress so we could be sure we'd make it to Calais in time to get the ferry. The day started off very slow and crossing the Alps seemed to take forever. Once we were in France though, we really picked up the pace and did pretty well to get near Dijon. Although we'd done well to get near Dijon, we were too far away from Calais to risk stopping for two nights, so we decided to carry on tomorrow and then stay two nights wherever we got to. |
| Wed June 11th 2003 :: Dijon to Somewhere or Other in France | |
| I found this day really hard going, I was feeling really tired from all the late nights, early mornings and long drives and I was finding it hard to stay awake. I was pretty glad when we arrived at the camp site! I can't remember the name of the place we stayed, but it was somewhere in the North of France, which was good because it meant we didn't have a huge drive to get to Calais on Friday. There are no more photos from this point just yet. They're on the film in my camera, but I'll scan them in and post them here as soon as I've got the film developed. I really ought to invest in a digital camera! |
| Thu June 12th 2003 :: Staying Somewhere or Other in France | |
| Having come to the conclusion that there wasn't much to do where we were, we picked up some leaflets and decided to make a trip to the zoo! Off we went to see some French animals and we spent the day feeding popcorn to goats, monkeys, camels and a variety of other animals :-) After an entertaining day at the zoo, we returned to the camp site for a barbecue and some beer. |
| Fri June 13th 2003 :: Somewhere or Other in France to Dunkirk | |
| The plan for today was to get to somewhere near Calais, as we needed to check in for our ferry at about 10:30am which didn't leave us much time to get there on Saturday morning. We set off for Dunkirk as it seemed like the most interesting place near to Calais. We didn't really have that far to drive, as we weren't a million miles away from Dunkirk anyway, but that didn't stop us from getting lost ;-) We weren't far from Dunkirk when we hit a big roundabout with about a million traffic lights scattered around it, I was second from back of the convoy, with Gemma & Becks behind me. I got caught at some lights and lost sight of where the others had gone. The area was built up, which didn't help matters because no-one could hear my radio calls asking which exit they'd taken, so when the lights turned to green I could only guess at which exit they'd taken. Needless to say, I chose the wrong one, so we pulled over and called Mark, who was with the rest of the convoy. We agreed that both parts of the convoy would head for the A16 and we'd meet at a convenient point. We ended up coming off the A16 somewhere about half way between Calais and Dunkirk and, conveniently enough, there were signs for a camp site that was just a few miles away. We headed to the camp site and got the tents all set up and were all done by early afternoon. A few of us decided to head for Calais to have a look around. Once we'd got to Calais it soon became clear that there wasn't really anything special about it and its main attraction was the cheap booze and tobacco, so we made the most of that and had a wonder around the shops before returning to the camp site for a bit of sun bathing and football. Later on in the evening, we took down the gazebo and put everything we could in the cars so that we'd have less to do in the morning before retiring to bed for the last time on our trip. |
| Sat June 14th 2003 :: Dunkirk to Camberley | |
| We'd got up earlier than usual due to our first taste of rain since we left England! I heard spots of rain on the tent and decided to get up and take the tent down before it got too wet. Dave was already up and about and the others soon followed suit. We didn't take long to get ready, as we'd already packed up the gazebo the previous night, so we were able to leave for the ferry quite early. We were supposed to be at Calais to check in for the ferry at 10:30am, though we got there about an hour early. Luckily, they let us get an earlier ferry, so we didn't have to wait for too long. Before too long, we'd crossed the Channel and the ferry was approaching the white cliffs of Dover and we all returned to our cars. Mark was still having trouble with his starter motor and needing a push every time he wanted to start the car. Everyone in our group that wasn't driving (Becks, Leanne and Carrie) were recruited to help push Marks car so we could get off the ferry. After a bit of a giggle and a few funny looks, we were soon on our way! The rest of the convoy were heading back home to Tamworth, but I was going back to Camberley, so I stuck with the convoy 'till J11 on the M25 before waving goodbye and heading off to MiniSpeed to pick up a new electronic ignition module. Another half an hour or so later and I was back home in Camberley and it was time to unpack the car. About three hours later, I'd finished unpacking the car and could relax for a bit. It's amazing how much you can fit in a mini when you've been living out of it for two weeks! My Mini Adventure was over :-( I had a brilliant time on our IMM adventure and I can't wait to do it again. The IMM's in Norwich next year, which won't be quite such an epic voyage for us, but it's in Spain in 2005, plenty of time for poor PJ to recover! |