Our flight home was in the early afternoon the following day, so we decided to attempt to take Vicky to her final resting place that night. This turned out to go less smoothly than even I had expected. With a taxi driver that spoke no English, and the scrap yard owner that appeared to have one hell of a temper we managed to figure things out. Driving into the scrap yard on a crazy rocky path, there was a huge bang, the car cut out and there was an instant smell of petrol. After 1700 miles, we had to push Vicky the final few metres.

Luckily, Polish beer had a fantastic way of helping us over the trauma!

Barely 20 miles later we’re flagged down by the Austrian police. We’d some how forgotten to get road tax! Luckily they accepted credit card for the 150 euro fine!

We arrived at the foot of the Grossglockner pass with the car running perfectly once again. Not a drop of water had leaked. I was the “lucky” driver that got to drive the alpine road. I can honestly say, I didn’t look at the view (which was aparntly spectacular) once!

But once again, the car was holding up well. Until I saw smoke come through the dashboard. I pulled over immediately grabbing the fire extinguisher on the way out of the car ready for the worst. We popped the bonnet and….nothing. We think in removing some cable ties to fix the coolant leak we caused the clutch cable to rest on the head of the engine. Naturally this got a bit hot and started to smoke! Easily fixed, and on our way again. Our £100 had made it up one of the most demanding roads you’ll find!

The way down was possibly even more treacherous. Matt was next to drive, sitting the car in second and using the brakes as little as possible. About half way down we see Team Baywatch in a layby with steam pouring from their wheels. We pulled in too, although I think we could have made it in one. We we’re shortly joined by many more ramshacklers whose breaks were struggling with the descent.

The drive to Slovakia was still pretty long. We were also advised by the rally organisers that we removed the spike from the car. Aparently last year a team was let across the border, not told about the need for road tax then pulled over and heavily fined for the mods to the car and the lack of tax. Now, coming from an extremely laid back organiser, we took this pretty seriously.

We didn’t reach the Slovakian border till late. We were unable to get road tax before the border, so to be quite honest we were pretty concerned. We passed through pretty smoothly and got tax at the border. However, it turns out our concerns probably weren’t unjustified. A fellow ramshackler dressed as a cow was stopped in Bratislava and asked to show his passport. Not having it on him (I can only assume a cow suit doesn’t have pockets) he was arrested and had the wrong end of a baton across his shins. Oh and the hotel! Simply creepy!

This was the first day that we travelled in convoy with the awesome Team Baywatch, The Pink Team (as we called them, sorry lads I don’t know your team name!) and the Dollies. This was definately the way to travel.

As this journey passed through and near quite a few countries, the task was to try and get a photo of a policeman in as many countries as possible with your team and your car. Oh and bonus points for making bunny ears behind their head! So first off was the Austrian border. Job done, policeman loved the attention but none of us really had the stones to go for the bunny ears. We then took a detour through Liechtenstein to get another snap with a policeman. If you only bother to look at one picture on this blog, make it this one…

This has to be the best picture taken on the rally. In case you didn’t catch the key to the photo, take a look where Sam is pointing; at his other hand that is holding the policeman’s gun. Bearing in mind his colleague (equally armed) is standing no more than 20m away! Well done Samuel!

Well to be honest, in classic chinese whispers style, this figure may have been altered ever so slightly, but aparently the driver was banned from driving in France for life and fined 750 euros! So I think the crime matches the punishment!

Towards the end of drive, despite the car not overheating even a little, we noticed we were completely out of coolant! Seems Vicky had a slight leak. Anyways, we’d leave that till the morning to fix! It was beer time, well acutally not for me, I was Des that night (designated driver).

The first stage of the trip was getting Vicky down to Calais to the start line. The car ran perfectly and attracted quite a lot of attention. We had a few people take pictures of us, a few people give us very strange looks, oh and the obvious police attention. We were followed for a good few miles on the M25 by a police car in fact!

We even bumped into so fellow ramshacklers in the services on the M25, making a spectacular entrance into the car park as we scraped over a speed bump with our sheet metal bumpers! So we left the services in convoy with The K-Team.

The ferry was definately quicker than I remember as a youngster! Didn’t even get time to waste our last pounds in the arcade, although that was partly because there was a little French kid on the machine who wouldn’t move despite my best efforts. And by that I mean politely asking him to move in my best French then resorting to swearing after he rudely said ‘non’.

So the old girl made it to France. A few pints later and after meeting some awesome people, it was time to hit the hay in preperation for the start.

A few more alterations tomorrow and we’re on our way!

Whilst making some minor adjustments to the front panel with a hammer, a stray swing took out the light.. Oops!

Whilst the painting was underway we also set out to create a new front bumper. As always it started life as sheet of metal!

Not gonna need the tow hook are we? It was getting in the way of our brilliant creation so had to go!

Welding the front panel on…

Yes, it looks like we’ve just welded a sheet of metal to the front of the car, but once we’ve bent it into shape and added the side panels it’ll probably look very adequate.

And here’s another view of that back!

Formule 1 – Calais

According to TripAdvisor.com one guest was woken by the sound of an explosion in the car park as a car was set on fire! I wonder how flammable our car is now it’s covered in hammerite? Hope we don’t find out!

Ibis – Strasbourg

Quoting from TripAdvisor “although the rooms and food were good I would not recommend this hotel for school parties as some of the staff can be unpleasant towards children.” Wonder how they’ll deal with 4 blokes with a combined mental age of about 15?

Hotel Engl – Innsbruck

“The buffet breakfast is included in room rate but the choices are very limited and the waitress is reluctant to replenish the food in the buffet. I would not recommend this hotel.” Hmmmm.

Kyjev Hotel – Bratislava

Described as “12 Storey Nuclear Bunker”. “As a place to get your head down after a “large” night out – it did the job, but with a hand held shower (no shower curtain) TV on the floor and carpet that I can probably best describe as “alive”, it had most of the qualities of a North London squat.”

City Hostel – Krakow

We splashed out a little extra here to get a private 5 bed-room instead of sleeping in the dorm style accommodation for fear of waking up in a room full of sweaty psychopaths. At least this way I’ll know the sweaty psychopaths I’ll be sharing a room with!

So, we added 5 exhausts (i know theres 4 in the picture!) to make this (remember to click the images for a better view)…

… then added a few more sheets of metal held on by, you guessed it, more rivetts…

… 1 tin of black hamerite later…

These pictures aren’t very good quality as they’re only taken from my phone, but we’ve also now added a new paint job to the car and began work on the front bumper so should have some better quality images from Mike coming soon. Oh and a couple of shots of my handywork with a hammer!