A 3000 mile round trip from Newcastle to Monaco and back - crossing France, Switzerland and Italy in a car costing less than £200? Do it in 6 days, with 99 other cars, raise a ton of money for some very worthwhile charities and you have the crumball rally (and the reason I was so hard to get ahold of last week). After fixing a massive hole in the exhaust, rewiring the front half of the car, stopping the engine stalling at 50+ mph and replacing a frankly useless battery we grabbed the Ferry from Dover and arrived in France at 1am on the morning of the 5th. With nowhere to stay we bumped into some other Crumballers in the car park and crashed on the floor of their hostel room. The next morning it seems that most of the 100 cars actually made it to the start line in Boulogne, yet even those had suffered a couple of knocks, missing parts and blown tyres.
Andy and I on our team car (Team #47 - Veni Vidi Volvo).
British Merc complete with sound system playing the Italian job, damnbusters and the national anthem at maximum volume..
Team Emergency-Paralytic.

Ambassadors of the Sovereign.
It was at this stage that the odometer on our 17 year old Volvo clicked onto 260,000 miles (it has had a hard life lol) and we made our way for the first day’s challenge. While we were parked up and collecting our days challenge packs the only really serious accident of the entire event happened. We had around 20 cars all parked up in one of the stopping areas and one of the teams was towing another car. The car being towed was turned off and the steering lock suddenly came on (meaning the driver couldn’t turn the wheel). With no control it hit the back of one of the cars, that car jumped forwards and crushed one of the drivers legs. The cars came away with only broken lights but the poor guys leg didn’t fair so well and had snapped. He was destined to spend the rest of the trip in casualty - get well soon man!
We did some champagne related challenges and made our way to a bar in Besancon. A few drinks later and my team went back to the campsite to catch some sleep but I fancied staying out with one of the other teams. We headed out into the wilds with fairly limited french which mainly consisted of us asking ‘ou est les femmes?’ and when old women started appearing we tried adding age clarification ;). We decided the only solution was a club so we asked some locals, a tramp and some people in a bar, but the nearest club was about a half hour walk from where we were. Luckily we found a guy walking through the middle of the city carrying a rifle and after we got talking he gave us a lift to a club called the Astoria.
260,000 miles on the clock!!!.
Partying in Besancon - condom machines on every corner.
Clubbing at the Astoria in Besancon.
Sometime between 4 and 6am I lost the guys in the club (they were wandering around trying to find me lol) so I started talking to a group of French girls who used to do english in the UK and ended up going for after hours drinks/party with their group. At 8am things were dieing down so I set off thinking I’d just find something I recognised. Unfortunately I’d been out for about 12 hours by this stage and when we left it was daylight. We’d been driven half an hour outside of the town centre and then walked to a party further away. It was at this stage I realised I had no real clue of where I was, was over an hours walk from anywhere I’d been the night before and didn’t know what the campsite was called. Everyone was leaving for Italy in 2 hours and my team would assume I was getting a lift with the guys I’d left in the club earlier. Luckily I had a photo of the campsite on my camera and in what can only be described as ‘pigeon French with hand gestures’ I explained to a taxi driver who recognised the photo and took me back - just in time to climb in the car and join my team towards Switzerland. See, everything works out if you’re lucky
Thank god I didn’t have too much of a hangover as today was the day we were driving over St. Bernard’s Pass - an incredibly long, steep and winding route up and over mountains. It was expected to destroy most of the cars but amazingly only a few blew up/caught fire.
Sara and Andy @ Lake Geneva’.
Some of the crumballers who made it to the top of St. Bernard’s Pass.
Our team at the highest point on St. Bernard’s Pass.
Lake at the top of t. Bernard’s Pass on the Swiss/Italian border.
We crossed Italy without a map (which was interesting in its own right) but driving into Turin centre at 9pm on a Saturday night without one was pretty intense. The Italian drivers are insane, the city is packed, full of one way streets and there are no roadmarkings. My French had been good enough to get us by until now but not one of us spoke Italian so it took us a LONG time to find the bar. We got a little lucky when asking for directions as some of the words for directing people and counting are close enough to Latin that I could understand them but I couldn’t reply in any sensible way. We did arrive tho and some of the Crumballers who could speak Italian sorted us out a discount on a room in their hotel. In the morning we went to get the car only to find someone had tried (and failed) to break into the drivers side door with a screwdriver - so, we spent the rest of the trip climbing in through the passenger door.
We zoomed across Italy doing various tasks related to the Italian Job movie and pulled into Monaco as part of a giant Crumball Convoy with everyone hanging out of the windows, playing music and trying to park next to ferrari’s. After a bite to eat we headed over to Nice for the final awards ceremony and a hotel. The next morning we decided rather than going straight home we should go along the South coast to Montpellier so I could geek it up and see a bridge called the Millau Viaduct - not everyone’s cup of tea I know but it’s a very cool bridge :P. Along the way the car started breaking (overheating, exhaust snapped, car started stalling, etc) but we fixed them all and in a spirit of anglo-French relations we even stopped to fix a van belonging to some French guys who were stuck on the side of a mountain.
Me and Andy celebrating finishing in Monaco.

Ferrari’s seem the norm in Monaco…
Fountain outside our hotel in Nice.
The most important ingredient in me fixing a car is a can of coke! (For anyone curious I was fixing the idling revs of the engine but it was so hot you couldn’t touch it without pouring water on at the same time).
Boosting Anglo-French relations by repairing some French guys van. They were pretty happy we did.

Crossing the Millau Viaduct.
Me in front of the Millau Viaduct.
Sara and Andy at the Millau Viaduct.
Awesome double rainbow (photo doesn’t do it justice).
All in all it was a damn good trip and I will definitely be doing another one. Hopefully next time we can get a few mates to run a couple of cars and go as teams (a few people have already asked about next year). It’s a good chance to raise a lot of money for charity and with a bit of notice we could do a better job of decorating the car, etc. This time round I’d only met the people on my team a day or two beforehand so it would be awesome to do it again with friends. Everyone who came along this time is planning on being back next year so it can only get bigger and better! A cheap holiday, lots of laughs, new friends and adventures while helping out some really good causes… Brilliant! PS: The rest of my photos from the event are up in my gallery (here).