When I signed up for the 2014 Travel Crusade at the back end of 2013 it all seemed a long way off. From the pictures and stories of the inaugural event in 2013 it seemed like the teams had had too much fun to miss out on taking part in what looked likely to be the last event. Any recent charity fundraiser seemed to involve running marathons, cycling ridiculous amounts of miles or taking part in muddy assault course races, so the idea of raising money while driving round Europe sounded easy! Looking back now I couldn’t have been any more wrong.
The first challenge was to buy a car), the choices were “You could take your own flash wheels in the Travel Shrine category or less flash wheels for the Travel Standard category or a recently purchased rust bucket costing no more than £500 which would be perfect for the Travel Shed Category. You can take your own vehicle but it won’t earn your team any bonus points. We’d recommend that you challenge yourself and buy something rubbish or unique that will earn your team bonus points. You can also decorate your vehicle in a unique way too!” so as I was never going to be able to afford a Shrine, it looked like it would have to be a Shed!
Several failed bids (oh all right then, a lot of failed bids) and I finally managed to secure a little red N reg MGB VVF for £499. I set off very early one Saturday morning trekking across to Essex to collect it and that was when the dramas began. it was one of the hottest days of the summer so far and a mile after collecting it and not even on the M25 and I smell a strong burning smell. After a bit of a wobble I pulled myself together and decided that this was just the first of what would be many hurdles on the long road ahead. I made it back to Sunvil HQ, albeit at a very slow 50MPH!
Team Sunvil inferno, as we had named ourselves, had a theme of Disco! So it was time to set about blinging up the car. I had a set image in my head of a disco ball and despite calls of “impossible” I was adamant it was achievable. So the next weekend I set off on the 500 mile round trip journey to a friends in Southport to set about the decoration. In hindsight this extra 500 miles probably wasn’t the best of decisions but hey, it was all about the decoration and if there was anyone I knew that could help me achieve the desired look it was Gaz of Southport Sign Shop.
Well it took the whole weekend, early morning to late at night, and we ended up roping in more applicators but the end result was amazing. Cruising down Southport promenade late on Sunday afternoon with the roof down we really turned some heads! Worried about the glare on the motorway from the afternoon sun, I decided to leave the journey home until after sun down. Yes I know I had a 2,500 km road trip across Europe ahead of me but this was only day one and I was shy! The shyness soon evaporated the following morning when a police interceptor pulled alongside before giving me thumbs up and speeding off. I had my seal of approval from the cops!
We decided to book her in for a quick once over prior to departure and I really wasn’t expecting the call I received from the garage. “Sorry Mr Wright, you probably won’t even get to Dover, let alone around Europe. The head gasket has gone.” (Gone where?) Well, on a car that was only worth £499, a potential repair bill of over £1000 just wasn’t an option. Trawling through the net I came to understand that it was a known problem on this car and as such there were a few specialists out there that claimed to be able to do a mobile fix for around £300. After a lot of pleading one such specialist confirmed he could do the fix the day before we departed. Slightly nervously, I reconfirmed with him the night before and he was all set and confirmed that he would be here at 08:00 and it was a quick job.
08:00 came and went as did 12:00, 14:00, 18:00… No sign of our mechanic and on further investigation it seemed he had a bit of a reputation for doing this. So, what should we do? Well we had come this far so there was no turning back. Some more googling and we managed to come up with a series of flatbed trucks from around the course that we could call on. If the worst came to the worst, we would complete the rally with the car on the back of a truck!
The morning of the off came about a bit too quick but after a final push with applying the logos (thank you to our sponsors) and with only 2 hours sleep, we were off. Issy, my co-pilot, had sourced some amazing fancy dress outfits and that, together with the loan of some disco lights, it completed the 70s disco look.
I took the first part of the journey and we reached Dover in no time at all. Sunvil 1, Garage 0 – we had made Dover! There was no doubt she wasn’t running at her smoothest but as long as you were driving over 70 mph you were fine (this became our set phrase over the next three days for differing reasons).
The rest of the journey was uneventful and we finally pulled into the Holiday Inn Lille, the first vehicle to arrive. Sunvil 2; Garage 0. Being video’d as we pulled into the parking lot, it finally started to sink in what we had let ourselves in for. It was a long afternoon waiting in the rain watching all the other cars pull in and in hindsight too many beers were probably consumed! The early bravado of “Yep, we stand a good chance of best car” soon disappeared as some amazing creations pulled in. The clear winner even this early on had to be “Toy-Tastic” from Jayne Pierce Recruitment which comprised of hundreds of little toys glued to the car. Truly amazing!
When the alarm went off at 06:00 I realised not only was it torrential rain outside but I had agreed to do an early morning boot camp with some of the other competitors. The initial sluggishness eventually passed and we emerged feeling much better for the exercise, raring to go and ready for the challenges ahead. The other guests at the hotel didn’t know what had hit them. A group of 50+ people all in amazing fancy dress – sat in the lobby waiting for their instructions! Everyone had made an incredible effort. It was so good to see as well as being quite a relief that we weren’t the only ones in such interesting garb throwing shyness and inhibitions to the wind – comforting reticulation!
DAY 1’s challenge – get a picture of the team with a saxophone and, what came to be our downfall, “make up your own challenge”.
Undeterred by the rain, we set off in convoy horns and disco tunes blaring. It was quite an emotional experience being part of such a convoy. I’m not sure the residents of Lille felt quite the same emotions though.
Issy took the driving seat today and so it gave me a chance to get on the internet and start to investigate the home of the saxophone as we headed into Belgium. Mr Adolphe Sax, was born in Dinant and the town is awash with saxophone sculptures and paintings and, well anything that can be made to look like a sax. It’s a good tourist trade. At the first photo opportunity we realised we had no memory card in the camera and no charger. Spent an hour buying both (it took this long because it wasn’t shaped like a sax!) and then we espied a bronze statue of Mr Sax and probably to the consternation of the local residents (we didn’t dare look) dressed him in my TTC t-shirt, wig and moustache and then Issy sat on his knee and I stood behind looking like I was naked. Photo-shoot done, we then headed off to purchase an expensive choc sax and a biscuit sax. Having thrown aside all inhibitions, we took loads of photos of saxes as we posed nonchalantly nearby. Lunch on that day made me remember my time of living in Belgium. Not famed for their food but certainly for the home of the saxophone in this town.
During the afternoon stop for petrol, I realised the camera had gone in the bag with the choc sax and the credit card. – i eventually managed to lick enough choc off the card to pay for the petrol much to the disgust of the waiting drivers behind. The camera was another matter. I stood in the services for an age cleaning it, the only way to get it off was to lick it off honest! I should have delegated this to my co-pilot but if one is not prepared to get down and do the dirty work oneself, well …..
As we drove off, we heard an ominous clunk which we thought was the gearbox (which by this point was getting noisier by the mile and we seemed to be losing 2/3 gears). It turned out later the clunk was the camera falling off the roof. SH**. Our entire day’s worth of photo evidence for the challenge gone in a flash. Undeterred, we tried to salvage it by rigging disco lights up in an underground carpark and having a disco to Disco Inferno music, much to the amusement of locals. At least one challenge was completed today. We ended Day 1 in first place much to our amazement. Well, it was a good sob story and we couldn’t have invented it! Sunvil 3: Garage 0.
Day 2
Leaving my co-pilot asleep in his bed, I was up early for another boot camp before we set off on Day 2. The weather was better and by this point we had realised where we went wrong on Day 1 – we stopped everywhere but there wasn’t enough time to do that so we adopted a new and additional mantra “Just get a shift on and get the challenges done.” We made it to Montreux – an amazing, lovely city, which was in the throes of hosting the Jazz Festival. The challenge we set ourselves was to get ourselves onstage at the jazz festival – not easy at 10:00 in the morning. If only we’d been there 24 hours earlier, we could have joined Jamie Cullum. Looking hip and groovy rather than smooth and hot, we managed to bribe some of the security guards and leapt onto the stage like young Jimmy Earls and got on stage. Unfortunately the pic taken didn’t do us or it justice but, undeterred, we had a caricature done for the “Draw a Pic of your Team” competition. (Thank goodness we were wearing costumes and would be able to disown that drawing back home!) Vaulting into our lean silver machine, we headed off to Italy. This would gain us extra points for getting into the 6th country of the weekend and more points for going via the SS27. Did I mention by this point there were no 2nd or 3rd gears and as it was my time to drive, I was dreading heading up (and down) the mountains with those numerous hairpin bends. I managed it but only by double de-clutching to the sound of grating gears, and we headed over into Italy a little greyer under the wigs and with whiter knuckles than when we had started out!
We approached the Mont Blanc Tunnel which our reliable sat nav told us was closed and would take a 7 hour detour. We ignored that instruction (fortunately) and came out the other side to Chamonix. It was an amazing drive. In my haste and enthusiasm, I didn’t read the instructions properly that said “either go to Italy OR Chamonix” so after removing the white platform boots to provide a more stable footing, we headed up Mont Blanc anyway and had our photo taken disco dancing in a glass box for more points. The lady in the ticket booth who had tried to dissuade us from making the cable car trip was correct – the clouds were very low so the views weren’t as spectacular as they might have been, but hey, we had made it up there in flimsy disco outfits unlike the “normal” tourist wrapped up to the nines against the cold! No southern softies in Team Sunvil Inferno! We’d had the car roof up and down all day coping with the extreme weather changes but we were safely hooded up for the last drive of the day which was in torrential rain, and we made it to our hotel. It had been an epic day with the highs of almost performing on stage at Montreux Jazz Festival and lows of our silver girl struggling as we pushed her on and on. The efforts were worth it and once again, we finished in 1st yellow jersey day for us. Sunvil 4: Garage 0. We rounded the evening off with a lovely dinner in Annecy with the other Crusaders exchanging stories, anecdotes and tales of woe from those whose cars had coughed, spluttered and died during the day.
Day 3
The last bootcamp was canned amidst text exchanges of “too tired”. Everyone was still in great spirits or maybe it was hysterical laughter from exhaustion? We assembled in the car park on edge of town for the final day. Our challenges were to get a photo of the team eating Dijon Mustard on something unusual; a pic with Mickey Mouse outside EuroDisney; and the usual “own” challenge. There are some advantages to only having two on a team but the creative “own” challenges were getting harder. Two heads may be better than one, but those teams with four certainly had the heads up on us. We got lost leaving Annecy and ended up having to pay a toll just for going round in circles. If we’d had a girl on the team, she would have stopped the car and asked for directions but you know what we boys are like…. The Europeans really like their road tolls and it was becoming rather expensive now!
We drove to Dijon where everything looked shut for Bastille Day but, undeterred, we managed to find a nice square with a restaurant willing to serve strangely attired disco dancers. Research on the iPhone advised us of a 70’s TV prog called “Waffles”. Which one of us thought that Dijon Mustard would go well on waffles with chocolate. Mrs Cropley from the Vicar of Dibley would certainly have approved of our recipe and, because it seemed nice at the time, we ate the lot, only to feel very sick once we were on the road again. Even the thought of it now makes me heave!
We had a long, long way to cover to get to the end at Euro Disney and by now the car was getting more and more poorly but we managed to keep going “as long as we kept going over 70 mph”. We talked to her lovingly, reassuring her that we only had to get through the day before she could have a well-earned rest. At this point, we were running out of time to fit all the challenges in and we disobeyed the sat nav for the second time and attempted the “cross country” route. We got to our hotel early and managed to set disco lights up in the circus- themed room. Did they think we looked like clowns?? We are the proud owners of a video of us boogying on down with Mickey Mouse, hopefully completing two challenges in one. We chaps can multi-task, you know.
It had been a gruelling third day after equally gruelling first and second days and we were absolutely exhausted, but got ready to party and after dinner we anxiously awaited the prize ceremony to see if we had maintained the lead for the final day. I’d be lying if I said we hadn’t put any pressure on ourselves and our silver girl who was equally as tired-with-a-capital K as we were!
There were whispers abounding that our competition, the Mario Brothers, may have pipped us at the post with some amazing challenges over the last day. In the words of Dick Dastardly of Wacky Races “Drat, drat and double drat”! Yep – they won, we came second by one point, one single point. We were gutted but still very proud. Our old silver girl also came second in the Best Dressed Car Award, with “Toy-Tastic” being the deserved winners. Sunvil 5: Garage 0.
After a night of mild celebrations (we were all too whacked to do anything else), we were up early for the drive home. The weather was finally lovely and we set off in the old girl, although we hadn’t realised it was quite so far to Calais!! 5 miles out from the port, we started to look at each other as the gearbox started making some noises. The only gear we could get was 2 which was rather ironic after not being able to find it during the last 3 days! We decided to try and nurse her onto the ferry – we were so near yet so far. Coasting into Calais port, we could even see the ferry ahead, then BANG – the wheels locked and lots of smoke started belching out. “Come on old girl, don’t leave us now!” we cried. We jumped out and I held the fire extinguisher ready whilst Issy made the call to the AA. She had done us proud and given us all she had. We could have asked no more of her. We bravely waved at lots of other Crusaders trying to look cheerful, but it was with very heavy hearts that we had to leave the old girl behind watching as she was winched onto a French recovery vehicle to be laid to rest in the fields of Calais. Dabbing the virtual tears away, we slowly made our way to the ferry as foot passengers. The game was finally over. Sunvil 5:Garage 1.
There was a reason behind our madness – ABTA Lifeline – the donations came in and we reached then overtook our £2,500 target thanks to the generosity of friends, family and the Sunvil team as well as £500 from TTC for coming second!
The question is, would we do it all again? Yes, Yes, YESSSS! It was fast, fun and flamboyant. In other words … fantastic!
Chris Wright
Sunvil’s Managing Director
