Day minus 1 - Saturday 28th July 2001

"JB7 visits"

With only one day to go before we set off for Big Phil’s place near to Portsmouth, we hadn‘t done any packing at all. It had been hot the last few days and neither of us could really be bothered. Work was getting us both down… mine because my project was being delayed by stupid processes & procedures that I’d never heard of, and Joanna’s because she was still temping and wants a "proper" job.

We’d heard JB7 and Helen were staying at her family’s house in Derby last night, and were due at Allan Taylor’s place in Oldbury-on-Severn tonight. This meant they would be passing us sometime today. Whilst still lying in bed in the morning, I sent JB7 a text message asking him if he fancied popping in sometime today. A very short time passed before an enthusiastic YES was sent back. Don’t know how I got "enthusiasm" from an SMS message. Perhaps it was me that was enthusiastic. J

My parents came over just after lunch to see us before we left, and we sat in the garden soaking up the sun. A little later, JB7 and Helen turned up with their Westie sitting atop a trailer, which was behind their Volvo just out front. We impressed my parents with tails of bike engine replacements, power and speed. My Dad is especially enthusiastic about Se7ens, having once been a "driver" himself. He can no longer drive through reduced visibility caused by Diabetes, but remains enthusiastic nonetheless. They were leaving at this point anyway, so JB7 moved the cars to the side of the house then he and Helen came in for a chat.

We spent most of the rest of the sunny afternoon in the garden. I’d cut the grass before my parents had come round and reflected that between us all (my parents - keen gardeners, Joanna and myself), we had got the garden looking rather colourful. My part is just the grass cutting though. The real hard work being undertaken by anyone/everyone else…

We got talking about foreign money and JB7’s lack of shorts in his packed items of clothing. He claimed he’d not got the room as Helen had packed for more like 2 months and not 2 weeks, but the truth was, he’d forgotten. Neither of us had yet sorted our foreign money out so he and I declared we were off to Solihull to buy some cash and shorts, returning some time later with said items.

We had a look at the tour polo shirts and baseball caps that JB7 had had produced. He let us have ours there and then, as it would help us to pack appropriately, and in return we filled up his Volvo with my helmet, a spare 8 inch ACB10 and the box of roadbooks I’d only finished binding the previous night. I was glad to see the back of the roadbooks to be honest. Between Joanna, Allan, Peter Wehrmann, Andy Robertson, Big Phil, Mike James and myself, I’d hate to imagine how much time we’d spent on them and I still wasn’t happy that the information contained within would be useful to those trying to read it. Mostly the problem was with Microsoft AutoRoute which gave lots and lots of information but not in a format that was in any way useful. It certainly made me more appreciate Johnty’s, Vinnie’s and JB7’s versions on the previous tours.

You need a roadbook that tells you to turn left or right at a particular road, and then gives you plenty of confidence-building reference points even if you are staying on a straight road. MS AutoRoute doesn’t do that. It tells you to turn onto a road and then says for 16.75 miles (whatever) with no further references to places or landmarks on that road.

Anyway, JB7 and Helen left a short time later, giving Joanna and I enough time to pack our clothes for tomorrow. We managed to get everything we needed into 2 small hold-alls which fitted neatly into V7’s boot, wrapped in an old shower curtain to stop the bare aluminium of the boot inner from leaving black aluminium stains on the two bags. Then, shoes went into one hood bag which sat behind the hood in the other hood bag eaither side of the rollbar. Joanna’s cosmetics/hairdryer/etc went into a rucksack and the car documents, maps, odd spanners, stopwatch, fuses, AC-22 and other "garage stuff" went into my "Orange" bag (a freebie from Orange phone network). Both of these were strapped to the roll bar on either side, giving me top visibility through the centre part of the roll bar. Joanna would only need a handy-sized rucksack at her knees once we got in.

We were ready and excited about the start of the trip.

Day 0 - Sunday 29th July 2001

"Leaving Home, and Big Phil’s place"

Allan had extended an invitation of "coffee and buns" at 10am to those people travelling down past his place on Sunday morning, so we left home a little after 9am, taking the M5 all the way to Oldbury-on-Severn (Junction 14) where he lives. We’d have enough time to play on twisty roads during the next 2 weeks.

I noted that my front wheels were still not balanced properly, and rued this fact given that I’d have to suffer them over the next 2 weeks. I’d taken them to BMTR on Friday, a round trip of 2 hours, only to have them declared perfectly balanced already by their fabby computerised balancing machine. Damn. Wonder if they’re not "round"? At 100mph my hands suffered loss of feeling as the steering wheel vibrated quite violently, forcing me to drive one handed and to keep swapping my hands over as they became numb.

As we drove down to Allan’s we enjoyed the cool air, but we both acknowledged that the day would be a hot one later judging by the Sun which was already warm on our faces.

We got to Allan’s a little early and pulled into his drive. He has a fabulous house which he shares with Anne. Anne must have heard us arrive (I wonder how) and was standing on the drive to greet us by the time we’d levered ourselves out of the car. She offered us both coffee and buns, which I had been eagerly awaiting since Allan’s offer during the previous week. JB7’s car and trailer took up most of the driveway, and for the next half an hour we milled about waiting until Allan was ready and Gavin turned up.

Allan’s Se7en was parked on the driveway, and his mobile phone, which was sitting on his tonneau, started to ring. Anne answered it, and said it was Gavin, so I took the phone and started to direct him to Allan’s house, but he lost his signal a minute later. The phone rang again yet the display said it was Ross calling, but as I’d just been speaking to Gavin I wondered if Allan had mislabelled Gavin’s telephone number with Ross’s name. I proceeded to direct Ross to Allan’s, thinking he was Gavin. Remember, I’d only met both of them once before, and that was in May on the Haggis Hunt.

A few minutes later Ross turned up in a tin top and really confused me. I asked him if he was coming after all, remembering he hadn’t yet obtained an SVA pass for his Westie, but he said not. Shortly after that, Gavin turned up in a Cavalier and he and Ross exchanged an engine hoist or something which cleared up the reason for them both meeting at Allan’s that morning. Ross looked sad as he’d been all for the Euro tour until recently when it became apparent to him that he wouldn’t have enough time to get his car ready. I felt sorry for him, and felt that if I could make him understand just how much fun the tour was going to be, he would probably want to come with his Westie anyway, regardless of a piece of official paper.

It wasn’t to be.

At about 11am the convoy of Allan (in Se7en), me & Joanna (in V7), JB7 (in Volvo with trailer) and Gavin (in Cavalier) left Allan’s place headed for Tesco’s in Thornbury where JB7 could fill up with petrol.

On arrival at Tesco’s Gavin jumped out of his Cavalier and immediately opened the bonnet, responding to a few whiffs of steam coming from the trailing edge of the bonnet. The engine appeared to have shed a few litres of water somewhere although the obvious clues as to where were not apparent. He refilled it and then we all set off. Gavin was in front, then Allan, V7 and JB7. On hitting the roundabout only 10 metres from Tesco’s, Allan and I lost Gavin somewhere so headed off on the direction Allan knew to get to the M4. I looked round only to find JB7 was nowhere to be seen either. Allan and I stopped to let him catch up, but he didn’t. A guy in a car who had been behind us at Tesco’s stopped and said JB7 had taken a different exit off the roundabout so the remaining convoy of 2 cars went towards the M4 together.

The journey was hot, leading V7’s occupants to conclude that the WHIMPS weren’t such a good idea in weather like this. At a garage about 3/5 of the way to Phil’s we stopped for fuel, water (to drink) and to remove the WHIMPS. It was cooler and more comfortable thereafter. We acknowledged that it had been a good idea to bring along 2 old towels to sit on. The leather seats and lack of carpet on the central tunnel can make the heat unbearable when wearing shorts.

We got to Phil’s after an entertaining but too-hot drive and welcomed the ability to get out of the car and walk around in shade. Some of the other tourers were already there, enjoying the hospitality of Phil and his wife, Judy. We were offered a cool drink which was gratefully received and proceeded to say hello to Kev & Gaynor, Trevor, Mick & Gloria (who had just popped in even though they were taking the other crossing), and Roy & Linda (who just popped over to say goodbye and wish us well). JB7 and Helen were already there too, as was Gavin, all having taken the motorway to Phil’s.

Phil’s own children ("children" doesn’t seem justified as they’re all in their 20’s) were at home and had kindly set up the PlayStation with an F1 racing game for people to play with. Mick and Kev seemed most impressed by this as they tried to learn the Magny Cours circuit ready for our time there next week.

We all gawped at Phil’s new MegaBusa but most were more impressed with his lawnmower which is of the sit-on type. Timed laps of the garden was suggested, but it didn’t happen, despite Phil’s apparent agreement. People were more interested in Judy’s cooking which had just been announced. She’d laid-on a huge pot of curry, another huge pot of chile and a mountain of fried chicken all accompanied by rice, enormous flour tortillas and salad. Fabulous!

A little time later Rob Day and Marie joined us and we all had a look at the latest DVA conversion. Once again, another tidy installation with a marvellous bark from the induction. This is another 1.6K with 180bhp, similar in spec to Johnty’s, Tor’s and Kev’s.

Time was pressing on and everyone started to get itchy about leaving. Rob Morley, our RatRace mechanic hadn’t arrived yet but had telephoned to say he was close by. Peter Wehrmann had called Allan to say he was at his ovenight stop near Fecamp, but had experienced clutch problems. Our combined K-series knowledge concluded that he probably has release bearing failure and I immediately volunteered one of the 2 bearings I’d brought with me in my Orange bag. I was only too pleased to be of some use.

Rob Morley arrived in a RatRace liveried van so we all shook hands and introduced ourselves, and people unloaded the excess luggage from their cars into the van. I remembered that I still hadn’t received anything from Marcus at EasyTrack about the Magny Cours day, so Phil let me check my mail on his PC. I still hadn’t received anything so sent Hoopy an SMS asking if he might chase this for me. He graciously accepted, and sent me an SMS a little later to say he’d received everything from Marcus.

Phil provided everyone with an AutoRoute printout of a map from his house to the docks at Portsmouth, and soon after we all set off. The route was fun, as we blatted along interesting roads, and then dual carriageways. Andy Ish had arranged to meet us at a pub just before the queuing area for the docks, and as I drove around that pub I nodded ironically to myself that I had just missed the turning. I returned a wave to Andy and continued on to join the queue for the ferry. Big Phil followed Rob Day and a couple of others in behind me, and then we remembered that Allan had the tickets so we left space in front of our cars and I guided other people around us, allowing them to move on up the queue. It was getting dark now and I was looking forward to the cold air-conditioned cabin for a comfy sleep. I sleep well on ferries.

Within minutes the rest of the crew joined us, including the van and we all went through the check-in. The dopey people guiding the cars split us all up into different lanes, but when we moved from those lanes to the ferry, a rather more intelligent official separated us again from our lines and regrouped us, allowing us to board and park on the ferry together. While we waited to board, we noted that only a limited number of cabin keys had been handed out. This seemed to completely contradict my experience of previous crossings where there had been least 2 keys per cabin. On other occasions, each person had received a key. This was a nuisance, but nothing more.

A lot of people write that Se7ens have trouble boarding ferries because of the limited ground clearance, but in my 3 years and dozen-or-so Se7en-crossings experience, this is just cobblers. It did look tight, so Joanna got out of V7 and we crossed the threshold slowly and problem-free, parking up in a couple of lines on the ferry.

Everyone unpacked the cars and made their way to their cabins. We were in with JB7 and Helen and the 4 of us made our way straight to the cabin where we allocated beds and dropped the luggage. JB7 and Helen went out for a drink, and Joanna went to find a scarf to wear round her neck. V7’s harness was chafing at her neck. I, on the other hand, had a shower and jumped into bed to enjoy the coldness of the cabin. The last few days had been so hot I’d not slept very well, so this was very very welcomed.

I’d heard that JB7 and Helen have a snoring-habit, so I pressed into service the earplugs I use when in V7 and closed my eyes…

Day 1 - Monday 30th July 2001

"Getting all the tourers together"

I slept fabulously, but could have used a couple more hours. We woke up impossibly early because the ship docked at something like 6am UK time. No time for breakfast but this wasn’t to be a problem as we were meeting Mike James and Martine who would guide us to a breakfast-stop, and to the other stop-offs for the first day. Martine is French and during his many visits to her, Mike had fully recce’d this morning’s route for us.

V7 wouldn’t start on the ferry, which was an embarrassing moment as the other cars queued up behind. The immobiliser got all confused again, but after patiently clicking the right number of sequences, I managed to get it started.

We all collected at the parking just off the ferry, and some went off for petrol, returning a few minutes later.

Mike and Martine took the lead and we headed off in glorious convoy. I remembered some of the layout of Le Havre from last year’s Le Mans visit with my friend Mike Evans. We’d arrived about 4 hours to early for the ferry so had gone to explore the town.

Mike James directed us to a small coffee shop where we were to have breakfast. As it happened, this shop didn’t serve anything other than coffee but the shop round the corner sold croissants so Martine went to buy a packet for everyone. I was very hungry, so I went too, with the intention of buying a few more, and came away rather pleased with myself that my ability and confidence to communicate in French appeared to be improving. I’m tempted to invest in some French lessons, but will have to find some Polish lessons first or my wife won’t be too pleased. J

We had coffee and croissants (pain au chocolate for me) and then asked Rob Morley if I might have the keys to the van, so I could borrow a screwdriver. I’d been informed that my brake lights were intermittent and assumed that it was the fault of the switch. This is a common complaint on Caterhams and is a simple fix, but Rob wouldn’t hear of me doing it myself, and immediately jumped into action, adjusting the location of the switch for me. I felt guilty about dragging him away from his breakfast.

We left the breakfast stop and headed towards Fecamp. On the way we passed the appointed lunch stop, which was actually on the way to Fecamp. Although we would be coming back this way for lunch at midday, Mike turned into the car park around a guy who was waiting for us at the entrance of the car park, waving. On jumping out of V7, I discovered that this chap was Peter Wehrmann, and we shook hands and discussed his clutch-troubled car. He appeared to be a thoroughly nice chap and wasn’t too upset by his car’s apparent distress. I explained what I thought was the problem, and said that if we could find a friendly garage in Fecamp, I’m sure they could swap the bearing for one of the pair I’d brought with me. I reckoned it should take a garage about an hour judging by other people’s comments at having done so on the Se7ens list. We resolved to find out on our arrival.

It must be noted that we didn’t at this time believe this was a job that Rob Morley could have or should have attempted. We had contracted RatRace to perform roadside repairs, and this definitely wasn’t a roadside repair. This would most likely involve the removal of the engine and RatRace hadn’t packed an engine hoist for the reason given.

I smiled with the feeling of irony, as Peter’s car didn’t appear to be suffering too badly as he wheelspun out of the car park on the way to Fecamp. I acknowledged that it would probably be a short-lived component now. Peter had indicated that it had become noisy and gear changing had become difficult. It definitely wouldn’t last the next couple of days of the tour.

We lost half of the total group as we entered Fecamp. Those of us left in our half of the group parked in the car park which was sign-posted for the use of those visiting the Benedictine Monastery, a distillery of Benedictine liquor where we had a visit planned later in the day. We walked into town trying to find a garage that would accept the job of changing clutch bearing’s on Peter’s car. We walked round for ages, but no-one appeared to be keen, so we agreed that if we could just get a garage to let us use their facilities, we could do the job ourselves. We really needed a hoist, although accepted that some people have managed to pull the engine and gearbox apart in situ for this task.

During this time, I had been in touch with Johnty and Vinnie, both of whom were interested in the tour’s progress. I maintained regular contact with both of them during the trip, and hoped that they would join us in all future tours. It was sad that they were not with us. They are very much part of the touring aspect of the Se7ens list and were sadly absent. In fact, there weren’t many people that had attended all of the tours to date. Although Johnty missed the Haggis Hunt, he was there in spirit. But now there was Vinnie and Andy Robertson missing too, and it felt a little hollow on occasions.

Anyway, Peter eventually managed to convince the Director of a Citroen garage to let us use a small corner of his garage, and we went back to fetch the van and Peter’s car. I went with them, but left Joanna with the main group to visit the Monastery, promising to be back in time for the visit, a promise which I never kept.

Rob Morley squeezed the van in through a very tight gap and then he and Gavin very professionally started to remove bits of Peter’s car. I hadn’t realised at this point, only having met Peter that day, that he wasn’t actually very certain that this was a good idea. He’d not built his car and hadn’t been very much involved in car maintenance until this point, but he didn’t express any lack of trust in us English spanner-monkeys at work on his car and just chipped in with help when asked.

I’d left my sunglasses on, and my "real" glasses with Joanna. We’d been given a dark space to work in, in the Citroen garage, and I couldn’t see too much. This left me feeling a bit of a fraud, as I’d advocated us making this clutch bearing change, yet I couldn’t be of much help. It didn’t matter too much because with Rob’s specialist knowledge, and Gavin’s general all-purpose-never-say-die help, the car was slowly unbolted.

The garage had declared that they would be closing for lunch at midday until 2pm, which suited us as that’s the time our lunch had been planned for. At 12:00, we all threw the tools back into the van and jumped in, leaving Peter’s car where it was, and drove back to pick up Joanna and V7. We then drove to the restaurant where I managed to clean off the oil and grime on my hands before sitting down for lunch.

Just as we were ordering, Hoopy called me to say they’d got to the Monastery but couldn’t see anyone else. I explained we’d left there and gave directions to our current location. Some time later they all turned up making the whole touring party complete for the first time. Excellent..!

We had a very enjoyable lunch, where we ordered a lot of water and orange juice. I was dehydrated. We’d not had anything to drink in the garage, and it had been like an oven in there. The others on our table appeared to be thirsty too. The weather was fabulous, but perhaps we had been a little unprepared.

Peter handed out commemorative Swiss Army knives with "Euro2001" engraved on them. I though this was a marvellous gift for him to have arranged. He must have bought about 50 with him. I couldn’t imagine how much this must have cost him and accepted his very generous gift.

After lunch I informed the "clutch" crew that I wouldn’t be returning with them, as I was supposed to be on holiday with my wife and it wasn’t fair to leave her again, as I had that morning. They could manage without me. In fact they’d probably be quicker without me holding them back.

We paid for our lunch and watched with incredulity, as the credit cards presented so much difficulty to the restaurant owners. The paper ran out of the machine while mine was being swiped, so with nothing left to sign, she swiped it again. Then a mixed up conversation ensued between us which ended up with me writing my address down for them so they could post some cash to me should the 1st transaction have really gone through. This left me thinking that it was an expensive lunch and I’d have to cancel the 2nd payment with my credit card on my return… if that was at all possible.

As I was buckling myself into V7 in the car park prior to heading off again, the lady came rushing out of the restaurant waving some cash which she thrust into my hand. Apparently they’d managed to establish that both transactions had actually gone through and they wanted to level things off before I left. I thought that they had been rather decent about everything. The language barrier could have been used as an excuse for fleecing the foreigners, but it hadn’t been.

I’m having fun.

The van and 3 occupants disappeared back to Fecamp while the rest of us continued on towards that night’s hotel in Evreux.

It was a very very hot day. I’d thrown the WHIMPS into the van, not expecting to need them again. The group stayed mostly together as we traversed our way through the roadbook’s instructions. We stopped at one point in the shade of some trees to examine Kev’s exhaust bracket which had snapped. A few cable ties affected a temporary fix and we continued on our way, all the time looking for somewhere to stop where we could go for a swim.

We got the hotel in Evreux in good time. We had a shower and then went for tea. Joanna decided her shorts could use laundering as clothes in V7 get dirty very quickly, and she took them to the reception desk on our way to the restaurant. It was apparent that laundry wasn’t a service normally offered to the guests, but they were friendly and accepted the "challenge".

It was still hot so we both elected to pick from the salad bar. I confused the waiter by asking for 2 Diet Cokes. He delivered me 2 beers, but by calling the waitress over we got that resolved once I’d remembered in France they call "Diet Coke", "Coka Light". I don’t find drinking beer helps to quench my thirst.

Whilst we were eating I noticed Pieter Corts had turned up and was sitting outside talking to the others over a beer or two. I hadn’t seen Pieter since the JJ99 tour, and was looking forward to seeing him and Jan-Paul again. Joanna hadn’t finished dinner but allowed me to sneak outside to reacquaint myself with my friends.

After we’d both finished dinner, we went outside, and was shortly joined by the whole party. We had a good chat over a few drinks and investigated the route a little for tomorrow. The van-crew had turned up. They had found the clutch bearings I’d brought with me bore no resemblance to those required by Peter’s car, so they had driven back to Le Havre to a Rover dealer who supplied them with the correct bearing. I was quite annoyed with Caterham who had supplied me with those bearings, at quite a premium I may add. I’d bought the bearings off them as I’d assumed they would know which ones I would require. I didn’t fancy trying to buy one from Rover as I hadn’t a clue what the part number was.

Accepting my lack of stamina with good grace, Joanna agreed we could retire early, so we said our goodnights and went to bed.

Day 2 - Tuesday 31st July 2001

"JB7’s fun with oil"

The van crew left the hotel early to return to Fecamp to finish repairing Peter’s car. A little later we set off in convoy with JB7, Hoopy, Matt, John Gathard, Big Phil and Pieter (Kev & Gaynor too?). It was another scorchio of a day.

We were making pretty good time but kept losing members of our group. We pulled over in a little car park to regroup and noticed a hand pump water outlet. Everyone was so hot we took advantage of this, soaking our hats and washing our faces. Everyone noticed the faint smell of not-so-clean water, but we couldn’t be sure it emanated from the water we were pumping. We just resolved not to drink any. It looked clean, and was cold.

On leaving the car park we went to a cross roads and turned left, Then, as we rounded a long fast left hander all I could see was smoke coming from the car in front. It was JB7 and to me it looked like the Rarebird had grenaded. Oil was all over the ground, and in an attempt not to drive over it and to avoid any bits of engine on the road, I yanked V7 to the left and rounded the corner still on the left-hand side of the road.

JB7 pulled over and those behind him stopped. Big Phil and John G (and Kev if he was with us at this point) didn’t see the commotion and carried on. JB7 and Helen exploded out of the Rarebird and threw off the bonnet. Hoopy, Matt, Pieter & JP and Joanna & I all crowded round to see what a mess had been made of the engine bay. We were all surprised to see the engine in one piece but all feared that the sudden oil loss must have meant there was a scrap engine in there. The big ends must have seized. Surely..?

After much investigation, JB7 determined that the oil pipe from the Accusump to the engine had come off. The pressure from the Accusump was responsible for depositing several litres of Mobil’s finest onto the road inside a second or two. On seeing his pressure gauge reading zero, JB7 had immediately killed the ignition, but still had a fear that he had run his bottom end bearings dry.

We called for backup from the van but found them about 2 hours away, having successfully fixed Peter’s clutch. We resolved to see whether JB7’s car was repairable by us (well, him) before calling them again.

We stood around for about 2 hours while JB7 re-attached the pipe, sourced a can of oil from Hoopy and another from Matt. At one point, good ol’ Hoopy went for a drive and came back with 6 bottles of very much needed cold water from the local garage for us to drink. JB7 restarted the engine and took it for a few gentle test runs, before one final run saw him howling up and down the road at revs V7 couldn’t dream of. It took a while to convince JB7 that the slight tappety sound of the engine wasn’t shot bearings. One becomes over sensitive to one’s engine when you have a suspected failure, and we were listening to it without the bonnet on. Things sound different without the bonnet on.

We called the van again to say we were on the move, then, having stood about on the bend of a road for 2 hours in the blistering heat with no shade whatsoever, we started on our way.

We’d decided to make best use of our time by taking the straightest route to Nevers. This meant using the dual carriageway. It didn’t have a Péage so I guess it wasn’t a motorway, although it felt very much like one.

After a very short run we stopped at a service station for fuel, much-required sandwiches and cold drinks, and we sat outside under a parasol while we contemplated JB7’s good fortune.

I was so hot I had decided to continue on the dual carriageway, but JB7’s renewed confidence in his engine twisted the arm of his conscience and he elected to return to the roadbook route. At first, some of the others said they’d go with us, and then one by one said they’d follow JB7 instead, except Trevor who’d also had enough of the heat.

As we pulled out of the service station we accelerated onto the dual carriageway and I looked back to see where Trevor was. He wasn’t there, so I kept looking for about a mile until I could no longer see the service station. Trevor later said he had tried following me, and that I was very much in his sights as we accelerated away, but I swear I couldn’t see him.

It was a long drive to the hotel, and as we approached Nevers on the dual carriageway, I found myself starting to nod off at the wheel. We stopped as we entered Nevers to consult the roadbook and a map in detail and discovered that the hotel was very close to where we’d stopped. We remembered Allan saying that we would park in the train station car park this night and also remembered John Gathard telling us to look out for the word "gare" which means "station" in French.

We found the station and I parked V7 up in the only available space, which was quite a distance from the hotel. Joanna jumped out and went to bag a parking space somewhat closer to hotel. If one became available in the next few minutes, she would call me.

While I sat waiting for her call, I tried calling JB7 to see where they were. He answered, and he said they’d only got 3 miles from where I’d left them (over 100 miles ago for us) before his pipe had come off again. The van had caught up with them at this point though whereupon Gavin and Rob Morley set about engineering a kind of flange on the pipe, so the jubilee clips would have something to grip against. This had apparently worked brilliantly and he never had this kind of problem again.

Joanna called, so I turned the key to start V7 only to find it had caught the "starter motor of death" syndrome. I tried a couple more times before I heard a loud "pop" as the fuse for the ECU blew. I’d had this problem before so I recognised it immediately. Fishing around in my Orange bag I found a replacement, but noted it was the last 20amp fuse in my collection. I replaced the fuse in the fuse board and then felt a little apprehensive as I tried V7’s starter again. If this blows the fuse this time, I’m knackered, but no…. it started. I parked V7 in the space where Joanna had been standing and I unloaded the car and put the roof up to secure it for the night while Joanna went in parking ticket. I asked her to see if there was anyone selling cold drinks nearby as the heat had seriously dehydrated me by then. I was actually feeling sick from the heat.

Joanna came back with a ticket and a drink for me. She was like an Angelic vision to me at that point. We then picked up the luggage and made for the hotel reception.

Our room was cool and after a shower we lay on the bed and just soaked in the calmness around us. After the madness of the day, the hotel room felt like sanctuary. It was cool and quiet.

A little later we dressed and headed off to find something to eat. The hotel didn’t have a restaurant that was open in the evenings, it only serves breakfast, so we were left with the only option of exploring the town.

As we left the hotel we saw most of the tourers who had arrived at the hotel sitting around a number of tables on the pavement, belonging to the bar across the street. We joined them for a minute, intending to just say hello and then to go and find food, but we got caught up in the day’s conversations. I gratefully accepted Big Phil’s offer of a beer to celebrate his becoming a grandfather for the first time only a week ago.

After the beer Joanna and I joined Rob Day and Marie in search of food. Allan, Mike and Martine were also on a food hunt so we all joined forces, until we’d gone so far and Allan, Mike and Martine announced they were walking some way across town to a place they knew of. We weren’t so keen so fell back to a pizza place right next door to the hotel. The woman in there was a little weird, not very friendly but not unfriendly. She seemed almost as confused by the French language as I was, or maybe she just wasn’t used to dealing with foreigners. Whatever it was, we had good pizzas and Joanna introduced me to Lipton’s Ice Tea. A canned drink I’m as addicted to now as I was to Battery after Scandi2000.

Once again I made my excuses and retired first amongst whispered rumours that we were off to bed first because we’ve not been married long. The truth is less inspiring… I was tired. Must be getting old.

Day 3 - Wednesday 1st August 2001

"Magny Cours"

We got up early (again) and met some of the party already having breakfast. "Little" David Gathard wasn’t happy at being up at this hour of the day. I’m amazed at how tall he is. He must be 6 foot something, yet on JJ99 I had an impression that I was about the same height or taller…. Wow..!

We packed our bags and checked-out of the hotel. Walking across the road we watched as some of the early-risers drove out of town, waking everyone in Nevers for miles around. Se7ens are not quiet.

We packed the car and started off, in a small convoy of 3 cars; Andy Ish, Trev and us. Magny Cours was only about 8 miles from Nevers, and the trip was uneventful. Actually, the trip was an eye-opener to anyone who will have queued to get into and out of Silverstone during the F1 weekend any year you choose to mention. The road system surrounding Silverstone is so badly out-dated that it simply cannot handle the capacity of cars due in on the Grands Prix day. I’ve heard the FIA is considering whether to grant Silverstone a licence to run the F1 next year due to this very reason. By comparison Magny Cours is excellent. The roads are very wide, straight and very well sign-posted.

We got to the circuit already understanding that we would be using what is known as "Petit Magny Cours" this is not the F1 circuit, but a purpose-built track and test circuit that had been opened for only 20 days. Marcus from EasyTrack had explained to the track’s organisers that I should be the primary contact that day, and in due course I was approached by one of the officials. It is to my discredit that I didn’t remember that gentleman’s name because he was very courteous and seemed genuinely pleased that we had come to his circuit. He introduced me to Michel (Michael in French) who would be our security and head marshall for the day. Michel didn’t speak English but Peter Wehrman speaks perfect French so we had no problems thanks to him.

The circuit organisation couldn’t be more different to English track days. For a start, the circuit is easily the best surfaced circuit I have ever run on, and as for the layout, it rated on a par with the 2 middle circuits we had in Scandi last year and way better than anything I’d used in the UK, Silverstone included. The run-offs were massive, and the corners seemed perfectly suited to Se7ens. It was a reasonably complex circuit to get right, and at times required 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th gears. I never quite made it into 6th, but the speeds were very high at one part of the track. I’m sure the circuit diagram from the roadbook will find its way onto the web site at some point. Everyone was very relaxed, and they left it to us to decide how we wanted our track day to be run. Get that? Our track day. Just like it was in Scandi.

Michel supplied us with a large board onto which a map of the circuit had been laid. There was a large marquee-type structure which served as the changing room, briefing room, kitchen (well there was a fridge) and any other room except the toilets. The circuit is so new that there were no permanent buildings on site yet, although work seems to be carrying on. It didn’t matter. The facilities as presented were perfect, except maybe the toilets, which I don’t want to talk about.

Using the circuit diagram I explained to the tourers that we had been asked to use both chicanes to keep our speeds sensible, and we’d been asked whether we wanted to use the long 180 degree left hand loop or to bypass it. We elected to use the full loop and I conveyed that to the group.

We were joined by a guy called William who was an English Elise owner, now living in Switzerland. He’d heard about the track day and had driven up especially for the day. He gave me a cheque for his part of the day, which was payable to the Se7ens Society. Marcus from EasyTrack had tried to get a lot more people to the circuit to help pay the costs, and William was the only taker. To be honest, it didn’t matter. William was a nice guy and our costs were behind us now anyway.

It was another scorchio of a day and so to get things moving, I asked Michel (through Peter) if he’d mind it if we could have a parade lap without helmets and at sensible speeds to see what the track looked like. He volunteered to drive his Toyota 4x4 in front of the precession of Se7ens to show us the circuit, and we all lined up after him. It was marvellous. Big, open and wide spaces. Massive run-offs with barriers so far away I couldn’t have hit them if I’d deliberately driven at them. As I said previously, the surface was amazing. It was a hot day so tyres were warm and grip levels above anything I think I’d experienced with V7 before.

Joanna sat with me, so I was trying to shout my opinions of the race-line and what to look out for, to her, but I think she was more concerned with the fact that we were, by now, moving at quite a high speed. She didn’t have a helmet on. Later she would receive proper instruction from a master (definitely not me) and we would watch her lap times drop by an amazing amount.

The first session started, so I took to the track. Within 3 laps we’d been red flagged so we all came back in. I’d taken a chance that long sleeves and trousers wouldn’t be asked for, as the other rules imposed on English track days seemed to be ignored (more in a mo) but Michel asked us very politely if we could cover up. I wasn’t the only transgressor. In fact, only those with race suits had the suitable attire. Everyone else had elected to "try it on" like me but we’d failed in our sneaky plot. I hadn’t packed my race suit as we were marginal on space and it was too damn hot for a fat bloke like me to wear one anyway.

So, suitably covered up, we all took back to the track and enjoyed a superb series of ever-faster laps. After a while I came in and picked up Joanna, and then took her for a few laps too, which she appeared to enjoy.

I spent a fair proportion of the day with my stopwatch at the pit wall. Remember this is definitely not allowed at UK track days, but on spotting me noting some people’s times down on my roadbook, Michel came over with one or two of the other marshalls for a look. I explained what I was doing, and he seemed pleased and interested. I explained by gestures and occasional common-to-English-and-French words about the bike engined cars, and the power of V7, and saw the delight on his face. Nice guy.

Vinnie turned up after a while with his boss, both in a diesel BMW 3 series. Vinnie was soon all ready for the day in his red race suit, and I asked him to sit with Joanna while she took V7 out on the circuit. I saw her lap times cut by 16 seconds over only about 5 laps under Vinnie’s instruction, and then I saw V7 take the fastest time of the day (to that point) as he drove it round with Joanna as his passenger. She had a great big wide grin after coming into the pits after both hers and Vinnie’s runs.

I’ll post the lap times up separately on the web site.

Pieter Corts spun on the track and his exhaust blew a flame out that set fire to his wing. It was all rather Keystone Cops at one point as the marshalls raced to put his fire out. Very funny, but the spin and the heat had upset the Lotus’ carburation, and Pieter couldn’t start the car again for about an hour, until it had all cooled down. Pieter was known as BBQ-Corts for a while… until he did something even more spectacular a few days later.

The low-point of the day was when Mick Smith blew his engine again. Mick’s never really had a lot of luck on tracks since he did his own DVA-inspired conversion, and today he’d run his bearings again. It transpired that he had purchased a kind of insurance which allowed him to have his car shipped to anywhere of his choice, so he elected to have it shipped home and to continue the tour in a rental. We had all asked him to consider having it shipped to Fredy Kumschick’s place where we felt certain it could have been repaired. In fact, we later discovered that the main Se7ens list had got together to arrange a replacement crank and bearings which they were going to ship to Fredy’s for him. It never fails to amaze me what this list does for its members. We have Johnty, DVA and Tor to thank for that one apparently.

Anyway, Mick said he only had one shot at having the car shipped somewhere, and if we couldn’t get it repaired at Fredy’s, or it failed again, he would have used up his "shipping rights" so elected to have it shipped home. A sensible move, even if it did mean our first complete failure of any tour.

Mick, and Gloria continued the tour in a rental Corsa, and over the next few days the list of things both he and I want for our cars grew as we discussed dry sumps and oil coolers and Stack tachos and duel gauges, and….. Oh, the list is enormous. Anyone want to sponsor us?

We were informed that the circuit was closed from midday until 2pm, so at 12:00 we all got ready for lunch. Nothing had been arranged so Vinnie and his boss agree to drive Joanna and I into town in their air-conditioned car. How pleased we were at that..!

We came across a little restaurant, and the lady/owner came to greet us, but on seeing how many people were there recoiled and said she had planned a closure soon, and had only bought enough food to last until then. She didn’t think she could accommodate us all and went out to check what stocks she had available. I commented that she should cook whatever she had left and close early, and this raised a chuckle, but to her credit she came back and said she could supply us all with steak and chips and drinks, all of which she provided in remarkable short order.

Joanna said she thought V7 was low on fuel after her laps in it with Vinnie, so she would go to the petrol station on the Magny Cours site to fill up. As she pulled away I worried that she was on her own, probably without her phone and V7’s starter had started to play up. She seemed to take ages, but eventually I saw her returning, to my great relief. I had no idea where this petrol station was, nor even if she’s definitely gone to the one on site. Blimey, she’s a big girl now and can look after herself..!

I went out for a few laps more, and tried to set a new lap record. No way Jose. Vinnie’s record was well out of reach, even though he’d been in V7 with a passenger at the time.

A little later, Vinnie was in with Big Phil for quite some time, helping to show him the lines and later took over the driving himself with Phil as passenger. After a number of laps they came in a Phil got out, looking a little whiter. Vinnie is FAST. I complained that I’d not managed to get a lap time on Vinnie during that last run, so Phil magnanimously allowed Vinnie to go out for a few laps on his own. This is when he set the fastest lap time of the day. He came back into the pits and declared that the MegaBusa was "the one" for him. This, despite having always been an SLR lover since he drove V7 a few times previously. I always felt that a bike engine would have suited his flat-out racing style better than an SLR, and had tried to explain such to him. No need any more. He’s a convert.

At the end of the day, aware of the fact that we had about 100 miles to the hotel, we packed up. To be honest, I had enjoyed the few laps I’d had and worried that I might break V7. With so much of the tour ahead of us, I didn’t want that to happen, so in convoy with Peter Wehrmann and Rob Day (any others?), we took off, saying goodbye to Vinnie and his boss, and to Michel with our thanks for a great day.

On leaving Magny Cours I noticed how badly V7 was running. A similar problem had happened after a hard thrash on the Haggis Hunt, and I could only trace the problem down to it appearing after such a hard thrash. It usually only disappeared a number of days later, as long as the car had either been used gently, or not used at all. The problem seems to be one where I have the first 10% of throttle response, and then anything more seems to flood the engine. I’d say this was not possible with an injection engine, but the last 5% of throttle response seemed to clear everything up and I would get full-on 197bhp in one, unhelpful, gob-full.

I had begun to wonder if the problem was temperature related, and had previously noticed that Rob Day’s DVA conversion had an air temperature sensor not yet screwed into an airbox, which made it easily accessible for a "test" sometime later. I was sure this would have to be it. I resolved to try it if the problems didn’t go away in the next day or so.

As we approached Beaune, our overnight stop, we passed fields and fields of vineyards. We were most definitely in wine country. We stopped for petrol just before we got to the hotel, to ease our journey the following morning, and when I went inside to pay I was astonished at the racks and racks of wines for sale, which covered one entire wall of the mini-mart

We checked into the hotel, and had our customary end-of-day shower. Then we got dressed for dinner and headed downstairs again. The hotel staff hadn’t asked us if we wanted a table for dinner when we checked in, and now seemed entirely unprepared to serve us anything. We just sat down and asked to see a menu, but were told some of our party had booked a table and it was the one we were sitting at so we asked for another and we were moved to another, at which point we finally got menus. Dinner was OK, but marred by the unhelpful service. Sometimes I feel it is a French-English thing, and the French service industry is just unhelpful to us English, but then, by way of contradiction, we enjoy service of the like not found in England and I realise I’m just being paranoid. Nowhere in England has anyone at a trackday made me feel as welcome as those guys at Magny Cours did earlier.

So, we ate dinner, but none of the others came down to join us which we thought odd. Perhaps we were just earlier than the rest? After dinner, we asked to have our dinners added to our room bills, but the unhelpful staff wanted payment there and then. This hotel was one of a chain that we were staying at throughout our tour and I know that this wasn’t their policy, so once again it was just this lot being unhelpful. I hadn’t got my wallet on me, so I walked to our room to get it, and noticed all the others sitting in a little corner together. After we’d paid we went to sit with them, but minutes later they all stood up and went off to eat. It looked a little odd, but as they were in the majority, perhaps we’d got it wrong.

Rob and Marie stayed, so we sat with them. Rob had installed his video camera onto a number of roll bars during the track day, so we watched Daren’s impression of a fish (tail wiggling) as he tried to keep his orange Caterham on the track. Funny. Rob bought us a drink, and once again, we retired early.

I had started to wonder at what point Andy Robertson would join us. I knew he hadn’t originally intended to come along at all, but more recently a rumour between the organising committee went round that he’d join us after the first few days of the tour. It was about this evening when I sent him an SMS message asking whether he was still coming, and when. To my disappointment he replied that he wouldn’t be coming at all. I had been looking forward to him coming along.

Day 4 - Thursday 2nd August 2001

"Sbarro"

When we left the hotel this morning, I was instantly aware that V7 was running badly again. I had hoped it would have calmed down overnight, but it was as bad as yesterday. Damn. I really must try to diagnose the problem.

The journey was without much to report as I was struggling with V7 so much I didn’t take in much of anything else. We arrived at Sbarro feeling very hungry and although Joanna is no fan, we went to MacDonald’s which was a half mile from the Sbarro museum.

Once we’d eaten we went inside the Sbarro museum. Peter negotiated a slightly lower rate for our block booking and we filed in one by one. The place was very odd. It was as quiet as a library and was filled with mock-ups of design ideas. I don’t know what I expected, nor to what purpose the Sbarro enterprise satisfies, but it all felt like an exercise in futility for a while… and it clicked. This place served as an advert for a design house and design school The designs here weren’t "ends" themselves. They were a "means" of demonstrating the kind of thing they could do there.

The famous hub-less wheels were there too, and it was fun applying my limited engineering experience in trying to analyse them. They appear to be pointless (in an engineering context, not a design idea I must add) to me, and would be heavier than a conventional hub. The rotational speed of the bearings would be far greater too, which must mean they really could not have a place in the real world. Interesting nonetheless.

The car that was essentially 2 bikes strapped together looked interesting, especially as it was designed to lean as it entered corners. I’d like to have a go in that.

There were a lot of other "designs" which bore closer inspection too. A number of them claimed to have monster engines in them, but our inspection revealed there was nothing behind the mass of air intake trumpets.

I hope this doesn’t sound like I was disappointed or that I was trying to pick holes in the displays there, because this would be wrong. I saw exactly what I’d been reading about in magazines since I was about 15 years old, and that was a dream fulfilled. Even back then, the magazine and story authors warned that a lot of Sbarro’s work had not benefited from R&D and was purely an exercise in design. Having said that, I’m sure some of the work was sold to rich Arabs or some such.

I had a good look round, and then opted for diagnosing the problems with V7 in the car park outside. Rob Morley thought it was over fuelling and I had to agree. You could smell the excess fuel and the way the engine died as you pressed the accelerator harder was exactly the same way a carb’d car would have if you tried to run with the choke out once the engine was warm.

As previously mentioned, Rob Day’s DVA’d engine had an air temperature sensor that was left dangling and he let me try that on V7, but there was no improvement. I took Rob Morley for a spin round the car park to show him the problem but neither of us could say what the problem was unless we could get a diagnostics tool to read the ECU. Rob thought Mark Oliver and Paul (2nd week’s mechanic) may be bringing one when they came out over the weekend.

Rob repaired John Gathard’s starter motor, which prompted me to tie-wrap the spade terminal on mine more securely.

We left Sbarro and headed for that night’s hotel in Besancon. God-only knows how we found the hotel. I can’t even remember who we’d been following, but the route through the town confused me immensely. We appeared to be on the far side of the town to the direction we’d entered but it involved us passing through a long tunnel which was fun. Everyone did the by-now-traditional revving and racing through the tunnel to make full use of the fantastic acoustics on offer.

On arriving at the hotel, I elected to investigate the problems with V7 some more, while Joanna checked-into the hotel. She shouted to me a few minutes later and I looked round to see her leaning out of a ground-floor window just behind where I was working, so I passed our bags to her through the window.

My diagnostics of V7 included (Gavin) measuring the water temperature sender’s resistance and comparing the results with another car. This was found to be in the same ballpark so I took the car for a spin up and down the adjoining road, but there was no change in V7’s temperament. I changed the spark plugs for the new ones I’d brought with me, even though I’d resisted using them until then as the originals looked perfectly fine. The subsequent test trip proved that that didn’t work either, so we resorted to checking the dizzy cap. On removal, which is not an easy thing thanks to the proximity of the dry sump conning tower, the central sprung pin broke off. We couldn’t be sure if it was already broken, or whether we’d broken it during the removal, but it was the closest indication that we may have found the problem. From the back of the van another one was sourced, although Gavin was certain it wasn’t a new one and fitted to V7. The road test was just the same. Nothing had worked.

Whilst we were playing with V7 and a couple of the other cars, a French guy stopped for a look at the cars. He had been on a motorbike with his girlfriend or wife. He seemed very interested in the cars and spoke excellent English so during one of my numerous road tests, I offered to take him for a spin. On hitting the main road I immediately knew the car wasn’t working right still, so decided instead to give my passenger a full throttle indication of what a close-on 200bhp Caterham can do. His eyes widened as he said "Zis is ama-ziing" in a Monty Python accent that made me laugh so much I had to tell everyone I talked to that evening over dinner.

After a shower and change of clothes, we all sat down for dinner. Joanna and I were next to Gav and Rob Morley. The meal was excellent but totally overshadowed by a series of "party pieces" that someone had suggested everyone has a go at.

Apparently, earlier in the day, Marie had called to a couple of nonchalant horses in a field with a horse-like whinny. They came trotting over to the fence near to the junction at which our group of cars was waiting at, to turn onto a main road. Joanna & I had thought it funny at the time even though we’d not heard Marie’s call to them. We wear earplugs in V7. The horses just looked interested in our procession.

Rob Day had carelessly mentioned that it was Marie who had called over the horses, so everyone tried to bully her into doing another impression for us all around the table as her party piece. Marie was understandably shy about doing this, and declined, so someone suggested (maybe her) that if we all put our napkins on our heads she might do it for us… so everyone did. Everyone.

She was till not keen, so Allan, still wearing napkin atop his head, dragged Marie outside (we were sitting just inside a set of open patio doors) and cajoled her into a fantastic impression of a horse as was ever heard. A roar of humorous applause went up from the table.

JB7 connected a video camera up to the TV that sat at the end of our table and played scenes from the Haggis Hunt and rollbar-mounted scenes of Daren slipping his way round Magny Cours. Very entertaining.

The air was hot and sticky, and very soon a huge and impressive lightening and thunder storm got underway, which was to herald the end to any dry days for the whole tour.

Rob Morley announced that he had to go home on Saturday which wasn’t the plan as we understood it. There was also confusion as to why the van wasn’t going into Switzerland, and why we were leaving it in Nantey, and then how we’d get the van-occupants to Switzerland. More confusion as to where Mark Oliver would be meeting us too. We decided it was best that Rob Morley or Gav call Mark Oliver early next morning.

Day 5 - Friday 3rd August 2001

"Missed Fredy Kumschick but got to the Wine Tasting"

There was a queue to pay for the rooms, and as Joanna isn’t a pushy person, she was the last person to pay. This wasn’t a problem though. There was no way we could have followed any of the first group of cars with the way V7 was running, so we left with JB7, Pieter, Phil and Matt.

Somewhere near to the French/Swiss border we stopped to put up the roof, as the rain had become so strong I couldn’t see. There might be some truth in the fact that it’s easier to see, even in the rain, with no screen at all, but this would mean me travelling on my own as Joanna wouldn’t want to go in the car. Where’s the fun in that? Not sure I fancy it either, particularly as Andy Ish confessed he’d found his screenless car to be a real trial in the rain during a discussion we had near to the end of the tour.

We got confused at a roundabout and went round it twice. On leaving the roundabout I quickly became aware that we’d lost Matt. Matt and I were last in our group, and I wanted to stop for him, but Joanna & I had left our roadbook in the Orange bag which was now in the van. I slowed, hoping Big Phil would stop, but he just carried on, and without a roadbook I was forced to continue too, so Joanna sent JB7 an SMS message to stop.

Eventually everyone did stop and JB7 went back along the same road for Matt. Helen felt awful as she’d heard Matt previously say that his biggest fear on this tour was getting lost. They returned a few minutes later with Matt, so everything turned out OK.

We crossed over into Switzerland and stopped in a pleasant looking small town for lunch. We took the hoods off again as the rain had stopped and it was becoming hot in the cars. As soon as we’d taken the hoods off, the rain started again, although only very lightly. We all put the umbrellas up over the cars.

The restaurant we found was served by a nice lady who spoke only German which gave Pieter and Joanna a chance to brush up on their German. Both performed admirably.

After lunch we continued to follow JB7. We stopped at some other point to put the damn hoods back up again as the rain turned back into a monsoon. Somewhere along the way we discovered we wouldn’t have enough time to visit Fredy Kumschick which disappointed both JB7 and me immensely. We were both really looking forward to that as we’d heard of the race cars he has there, as well as Peter Wehrmann’s Lotus 340R that was stored there.

Eventually we got to Seewen, but took a wrong turn and had to turn around. We performed this in a farmyard-type driveway, which was off the main road. I performed a huge half doughnut, spilling over into a field. I pulled back onto the driveway near to the exit, and apparently the others in our group performed similar doughnuts, just as a man in an Audi turned into the driveway. On leaving the driveway, we became aware that this Audi was following us back into town, probably out to get us, but then turned off quite inexplicably just when he could have confronted us.

We found Schuler Wines and parked out front all in a tidy order for the press photographer. The 2 ladies that were looking after us were both very pleasant and thanked us for taking an interest in their company. This seemed odd as I felt very much as though we were on the receiving end of good hospitality and should be thanking them.

The wine tasting was very interesting. I had worked for Victoria Wine many years ago and had attended a couple of short wine appreciation courses. It was a long time ago, so I have forgotten many of the terms used, but not the tastes. Over the years I have learned what I like in wine and what I do not, and was able to put this into practice here even if I couldn’t explain myself to the others.

They took us to visit their cellar, which was hugely impressive. Massive tanks that contain hundreds of thousands of litres of wine (when full) towered above us. A room full of new wooden casks also caught my attention, as the casks smelled so wonderful. I would have loved to have some furniture made up from that wood. The house would smell so good.

Everyone was very hungry and enjoyed the enormous cheese boards in the middle of the tables immensely. Before we left, Peter arranged the times that everyone should be in the hotel entrance for the next morning’s session at the skid-pan. Joanna & I had not been too keen due to the early morning start, and as V7 wasn’t performing properly we agreed to enjoy a lie-in the next morning and head straight for that evening’s hotel.

The ladies from Schuler advised us that it may not be safe to leave our cars outside Schuler Wines tonight as it was a Friday night and they were close to a pub. The offered an alternative location for the cars, for which we thanked them. We put all our bags into the van, which would go straight to the hotel, and we drove the cars to an Ice Hockey stadium, which was about the same distance from the hotel the other side of town to where we were now. The stadium would be for our cars only and would be closed for the night so they were perfectly secure.

On arriving at the stadium I was struck by how warm it was inside. The cars would dry out nicely tonight. We walked back to hotel in the rain. There were no pavements and my feet were uncomfortably wet in my driving boots. At the hotel we unloaded the van, checked-in and went straight to our room where we tried to hang up our wet clothes to dry overnight. I had a shower and changed, and then went to the bar to get us both a drink while Joanna showered. More Lipton’s ice tea. I took it back to our room and went straight to bed.

The hotel was located next to a very busy freight train line, which was very loud all night long. The main road also passed the hotel, and with the roads being so wet, the cars and trucks that passed sounded very loud too.

Day 6 - Saturday 4th August 2001

"Susten Pass and great hotel at Les Diablerets"

Everyone got up very early for the skid pan course leaving only Andy Ish and us behind. I got up with everyone else though, to pick up the car from the Ice Hockey stadium. I said hello to Mark Oliver who was waiting in reception and goodbye and thanks to Rob Morley. Mark was taking him to the airport. I then went back to bed.

I got up about an hour and a half later and from our balcony I watched Andy Ish zoom up the road.

We had breakfast, what was left of it, 3 bread roles and 3 slices of meat for me, and cereals for Joanna. I would have quite liked a full English fry-up at that point.

I paid the full hotel bill as Peter Wehrmann and I had discussed the previous evening that fact that it would be easier to reimburse me as the listers’ account is Sterling, and my AMEX bill would be in Sterling. The lady in reception was very pleasant and we discussed our tour in outline, and where we were going to tonight. She seemed not to have heard of Les Diablerets. I guess this is possible, as it was over 100 miles away.

We packed the car and, leaving the hood up because the sky threatened more rain, headed off in the direction of the mountains. Today’s drive would take us up the Susten Pass, which sounded delightful, but as we started to drive uphill V7 became very difficult to drive. Although I had enough power to cruise on the flat with the first 10% of accelerator travel, it wasn’t enough to maintain pace uphill. The last 5% of accelerator travel was all I had left, with nothing in between. On application of the last 5% of throttle, I was opening the engine up to all 197bhp. In the wet this was simply too much and we slid our way up a dangerous mountain pass. On my own, I may have had fun, but with Joanna I was just worried. I was also worried that car was getting worse, but on reflection it was the same, but exaggerated by the "lots" of uphill.

I became too scared to stop the car, despite Joanna wanting to take pictures of the beautiful scenery in the mountains. I felt awful at denying her this, but also felt unable to guarantee our safe arrival at tonight’s hotel unless I kept the car going. I didn’t share this train of thought with her though. At the time I couldn’t have found the words as I was pretty scared.

As soon as we passed the top and started to go downhill, the car was easier to manage. I stopped in big layby once, for Joanna to take pictures while I looked at the engine again to see if there was anything obvious. There wasn’t, so after getting back in we continued down the mountain road until we got to level ground. There was a petrol station with a toilet (which we both wanted to use) so I stopped and risked turning off the engine. There was no petrol at this station, but the car started again with no drama. We found petrol at another station later and the car continued to start as normal, so I concluded that starting and idling obviously had nothing to do with the problem.

We were both looking forward to this hotel as the picture in the roadbook made it look very impressive. Upon arrival it was no less impressive. We got there at about the same time as Andy and Hilary, who were in the process of accepting an offer of the under-hotel garage parking for our cars. Joanna checked-in and I parked V7 in the garage, then went straight to our room which was fantastic. The room was very big and comfy, with a fabulous bed and great balcony overlooking the entrance of the Hotel. The view of the mountains prompted Joanna into digging out the camera. I reckon we had the best room in the hotel.

We unpacked everything and laid all our clothes out to dry. I put all the other stuff (WHIMPS, tie-straps, hood bags etc…) out on the balcony to air then I had a shower and dressed for a trip to the pool. We took towels from the room to the pool but discovered there was a supply for use in the pool room. Looking at the people already in the pool (3 of them only) I noticed that they were all wearing a swimming cap. A notice on the wall caught my attention, which stated that such a cap needed to be worn by everyone in the pool according to law. How odd..! Caps could be purchased at reception for about £2 each, so off we went. While we were there we asked if they could launder any of our clothes. The Manager was present and said it was not a normal service they offered, but they would see what could be done for us, which we thought was nice.

We went back to the swimming pool and was followed in by the receptionist lady who told us that doing our laundry was definitely possible but we would have to submit our clothes now to enable enough time for drying. Apparently they didn’t have a dryer in the hotel and the laundry manager needed enough time overnight to hang our clothes out to dry. This was no problem for us, we were happy they’d accepted our request. Joanna went back to the room to get what we required to be laundered. When she came back, we had a bit of a swim until my allergy to chlorine started, so I showered and watched Joanna-the-Fish swimming effortlessly up and down the pool.

I had a play with the electronic exercise bike which was off to one end of the pool room, and resolved to exercise more… only when? Joanna showered and changed, and then we both went back to our room for a proper shower and a change into our evening clothes. We then went down to the bar to await everyone else’s arrival. It wasn’t long before they started to turn up in small groups. One by one they showered and changed and joined us in the bar. The hotel manager had informed us that dinner was at 7pm, but then Allan and then again Mike told us it would be at 8pm. We were hungry so favoured 7pm, but in the end so many people said it was at 8pm that we decided to go with the flow.

Dinner was good. There was no choice available to us. On booking the hotel, Peter had been asked to choose the food for us, and that choice was a good one. Mark Oliver joined Peter, Mick & Gloria and Joanna & myself for an entertaining meal during which I talked too much as usual, but enjoyed stories told by others, as well as the wine. I told Mark what a great asset the RatRace support was, and set his mind at rest that we would look after Paul who had a tendency to work too hard and too long apparently. "Diligent" was the word that sprang to my mind. Great..! He’ll be just the kind of guy to follow Rob’s bloody good example. I explained to Mark that Paul is one of the tourers too, even though he is touring in a slightly different capacity, and that we intend for him to have fun too.

We had a lazy morning planned into the roadbook for tomorrow, so I arranged a 10am appointment with Paul to look into V7’s problem.

We went to bed in a good mood. The mountains all around, the great hotel, fabulous dinner in good company and the small matter of enough wine to comatose an elephant helped me to sleep better than usual.

Actually, the scenario was exactly like we had imagined our honeymoon would be like.

Day 7 - Sunday 5th August 2001

"Late morning experimenting with MEMS and the fiascos of finding the hotel, fixing the brake light switch, the useless curry house and The Italian Job"

The weather was bright and dry this morning. The location of the hotel was simply fabulous, and looked like it could be from a scene from a James Bond movie. Someone suggested it had been. After breakfast, I went to the garage to dig V7 out (from the other cars parked in there too). Joanna brought most of the bags down so I packed them before moving V7 through the other cars that were by now lining up to be washed at the garage exit. JB7 had found a hose, which everyone was now trying to use.

I drove V7 round to the side of hotel and up the hill a little to where the van was waiting with Paul and Gavin. We took the bonnet off and investigated a few things including taping up the perished manifold pressure sensor pipe but it wasn’t until I tried Rob Day’s Emerald M3DK ECU that I decided once and for all that the problem was the MEMS. Rob’s M3DK worked better than the MEMS ever had, despite the M3DK having been mapped for a 1.6K. So, having decided it was the MEMS we set to investigating what it was that was at fault within the MEMS. Gavin assumed it was the MAP sensor within the MEMS as there was nothing else to go wrong, so Paul carefully levered the lid of the MEMS, asking all the time if I was sure I wanted to go ahead with this, which I did.

Talking with Mick Smith convinced me to see if I could buy an Emerald M3DK and get it shipped out to me. Mick got me in touch with DVA’s house and I spoke to Babs after confessing I was another car-wally. DVA was at an Elise day at Emerald, so I asked her to pass on a message to call me if he had a minute. We hadn’t got Emerald’s number between us so I tried Vinnie to see if he could find out what it was. He was driving somewhere but said he’d try to find out for me once he arrived at his location. I tried both Johnty and Roy Booth too but both had their phones switched off. About 5 minutes passed before DVA called and passed me over to Karl. Karl accepted my plea to jump in the queue for a new M3DK and took my credit card number. He said he’d ship it with Steve Butts’ VHPD map already uploaded, a disk with the software and a few more maps on, the cable and instructions. I told Karl I’d see if Steve Wiseman or Marcus could bring it with them on Thursday to the track day at Croix and once I knew who it would be, I’d let him know how I was going to play it.

Minutes later Vinnie called back with Emerald’s number. I told him I was a bit further on with my quest than during our previous conversation, and that I was investigating options to get the M3DK out to me on Thursday when he said he was flying into London later than night and would arrange to bring it himself. What a star..! Joanna SMS’d him DVA’s phone numbers and he arranged for DVA to take the M3DK home that evening from where he would collected it later that evening.

So we were set. We just had to nurse V7 to the next few hotels.

It was a nice day, so we started with photographs of the cars lined up outside the hotel, and with the manager/director of the hotel in the middle of us.

We drove in convoy with Peter, Rob Day, John Gathard, Trevor, Allan, and Mike. We drove into Chamonix but couldn’t find enough parking spaces for all of us, so we left Allan and Mike there and the rest of us moved on. A little later we stopped at the edge of another town at a café that served coffee and huge ice creams.

Since driving out of Chamonix, we were aware of the stunning scenery. Mountains everywhere and, for once, fabulous weather. As I’d not been able to stop to allow Joanna a chance at photographing the scenery as we struggled over the Susten Pass yesterday she had the camera already at the ready today. She must have taken 50 pictures of mountains and scenery.

Eventually we caught up with the van at the border by a petrol station. Gav had been sunbathing by the side of the road, lying on the sofa cushions that were ever-present in the van. He’d been bitten by ants during the 3 hours they’d been waiting. While we were stopped I experienced the magic of a self cleaning toilet seat in the petrol station. We then set off and proceeded to cross the border several times from France into Switzerland and back again, finally ending up in France.

The hotel at St Genis Pouilly was hard to find. The map, supplied by the Hotel and included in the roadbook, seemed to be work of fiction. Peter was out in front, then Joanna & I in V7, followed by the van and the others in our party. Peter and I crossed a roundabout and I watched in my mirror as the van and the other cars flashed their lights and sounded their horns and continued on round the roundabout to go the way we’d come.

They seemed so certain that they knew where they were going that I turned round too, and then crossed the roundabout back the way we’d come. Peter didn’t follow, even though I waited for about 5 minutes, so I decided to try to find the van and other cars while Joanna sent frantic SMS messages.

We went up and down the same piece of road for about 20 minutes without finding either the van, the cars, or the hotel. Eventually Joanna and I decided we’d just go back to where we left Peter, and on finding that road, found the hotel about another 100 metres further on. Damn. That was irritating.

Anyway, Joanna checked in and I messed about with V7’s brake light switch, which was playing up again. On removing the back panel of the switch I was dismayed to see it ping off into the depths of the van, and all the other stuff in the van close magically around it. I spent about 45 minutes trying to find it. I must have tested other people’s patience. I found it eventually though, and restored V7 to working condition.

I went to our room, showered and changed. Mick and Gloria had spotted a curry house on the way to the hotel, which was only a 10-minute walk away, so once everyone present at the hotel was ready, we set off… walking. Whoever said 10 minutes was having a laugh, but we got there eventually and sat at a table up one end of the restaurant.

About an hour and a half after setting foot in the restaurant, Daren Ball and Robert Grigsby came in looking not showered. They’d been on a round trip to Italy or something and had only just made it to the hotel in time to get their keys before reception closed for the night. Rather thoughtfully, they’d got the keys of the only other party that hadn’t yet made it to the hotel too, and then rushed to the curry house before it too closed.

We waited about 2 hours before finally being fed. The drinks were hard to get too. We had a good chat about things but when we eventually asked for the bill we were so fed up with waiting that Joanna asked for a discount. We got a 5% discount, but this still made it the most expensive curry I’ve ever had at something like £18 per head. Blimey, 4 people could eat for that in Birmingham.

Joanna and I paid first so we got up and made our excuses and waited outside for Rob & Marie. It was too hot in there and we were both tired. As the others paid, they too left in couples and small groups.

I had heard that the group headed by JB7, which included Pieter Corts and Hoopy had also gone to Italy, and on the way round Pieter had lost control on a tight bend, locked everything up, and dropped his 2 front wheels over the edge of the road. He’d come to a stop with his sump resting on the road. Rather amusingly, as Pieter panicked to get his car pulled back onto firm ground, the others in the other cars leapt out of their cars but not to help… no, not at all. They all went for their cameras. J

Pieter got nicknamed Pieter "Cliffhanger" Corts after that.

So, we went to bed knowing that one of the groups was still out somewhere, and this caused me not to sleep. Silly eh? Apparently they snuck in around 1:30am-ish, but I must have been dozing at that point and never heard them. They’d parked about as far away from our room as you can, but I was still surprised not to have heard them. I sent JB7 and Hoopy an SMS message at around 3:30am asking where they were, but no-one replied as they were all safely tucked up in bed.

This made me tired all the next day.

Day 8 - Monday 6th August 2001

"Nantey"

I hadn’t slept because I was worried about the "JB7/Pieter/Hoopy" party, and even when I’d tried to give up on them I was too hot and the pillows too soft. I just couldn’t get comfy. Joanna looked comfy but when I rose at 4am for a drink of water, she said she was cold, so I put the duvet on her only.

I woke up feeling very tired, showered, dressed, had breakfast and packed the car.

Rob Day, Peter, John Gathard and Trevor were ready to hit the road at the same time as Joanna & I, so that was our touring part established for the day. On leaving the hotel we immediately went for petrol and then headed in the direction the roadbook pointed. We were all looking forward to visiting Peter Sykes in Nantey, especially to see his house as it was supposed to be amazing.

It started to rain again as we passed a rather spectacular dam and resultant lake. By now we rather seriously needed a pee so we stopped in a very small town, outside a hotel. It was closed, and no-one was interested in opening up so we jumped back into the cars and headed out of town. About 3 minutes later we stopped in a secluded layby with plenty of bushes for everyone to "admire".

Rob, Peter and I put our hoods up. John Gathard didn’t as he’d left it in the van, and neither did Trevor because he can’t see once the hood is up. I liked the half height side screens Peter uses with his hood up. Seems to stops you getting too hot and steaming up and looks like you are driving with the window down, although I bet you don’t stay quite as dry.

We got to Nantey and were directed to park our cars in a little lane. V7’s clutch is so heavy that I had to pause while doing a 5-point turn to rest my leg. The locals were standing in the road to greet us, and others were standing in a gazebo. All were very very friendly, offering us glasses of a fabulous wine, salami sausage slices and cubes of cheese. I noticed some people had gone for a quick look round Peter Sykes’ house, so I grabbed Joanna’s hand and dragged her round there too. Awesome..! The house was originally a water mill. When Peter Sykes originally bought it, it had already gone through minor conversion into a house. He showed me the development of the house in a photo diary he’d managed to obtain from the previous owner (who still lived locally). At the time Peter Sykes bought the place it was still the same size as the original mill, but since then he has extended it in every direction. No 2 rooms were on the same level (it seemed) and each room was huge. A feeling of space and light pervades, and the construction is of beautifully finished wood.

There was a "cinema" room, an enormous lounge, an indoor pool room, and in a section of hallway there was a piece of floor that had been replaced with a thick glass panel so you could see the stream that used to power the mill pass under your feet.

I was hooked.

We were asked to participate in photos for the local press, so we went outside again. The locals have a small collection of pristinely restored old cars including an original 1929 model T Ford pickup. It looked brand new. The owner started it up and I noted that it sounded as though its maximum revs would be about the same as V7’s idle. There was an old Renault too, and was I amazed to find it was right hand drive. Peter Sykes’ Lotus 7 was there too. Left hand drive and Pinto powered...! Very unusual. I wonder if John Watson knows about this one?

Dinner was announced. They had originally arranged a banquet outside, but the weather had forced them into the local town hall. We met the mayor. A happy-looking chap. I wish I could have understood him as he sounded quite an interesting person to talk to.

There were 2 long tables in the hall. Peter Sykes asked us not to sit in one group so the locals could mix with us. Every time I’m in this position of being with non-English speaking people I rue the fact that I didn’t pay more attention in French lessons at school. There were plenty of lovely people, and fortunately one or two who spoke English. I managed a conversation by utilising the English speakers, and told them how Joanna and I had met only 1 year ago on the previous tour. They seemed to like that. In fact, I remember I talked about Joanna quite a lot.

The last group to arrive was those with JB7. He’d snapped his gear selector cable and completed this leg of the journey stuck in 3rd apparently. The others in his group wondered why he needed the other 5 gears as 3rd seems not to have limited him that severely. He was still topping 90mph at times..! J JB7 reported that there was already someone working on a replacement for the broken cable in the UK, and would have it sent to tonight’s hotel so he could replace it in the morning. Everyone agreed that this was an impressively quick response.

The food was served which included a starter of a pate and salad, followed by chicken in a mushroom/cream sauce and sauted potatoes. Then there was a peach/apricot tart for dessert. I’m afraid I have never really learned the difference between a peach and an apricot, but I loved the tart nonetheless. In fact the whole meal was great, and as I’m such a greedy git, I ate plenty.

The locals had made up a few stickers for their local motor club, and had handed them out to us all, so by way of a return compliment JB7 presented the Mayor and Peter Sykes with T-shirts or caps of our tour. It got me thinking that the list in general ought to do something like the Lotus 7 club does, and that’s keep a stock of polo shirts and/or caps. Not only can we respond immediately to people whenever they decide they want to buy something, instead of waiting for the next batch, but we could use them as presentations in this manner. I talked to JB7 about this, and we both resolved to find out prices on our return to real life and approach the Bank Account Trustees to see if they approved. I guess that’ll be my job, as I’m one of the Trustees.

After dinner Robert Grigsby arranged for another look round Peter Sykes’ house, the chance of which I jumped at. Robert plugged his video camera into Peter’s wall-sized TV in his "cinema" room. The footage was of Robert chasing others in his touring-group around mountain passes, which was entertaining. The room had filled up with most of the Euro Tourers and it was becoming hot so one by one we left the cinema room and had another, "unauthorised", look round the house. I could have paced through this house all day, jaw firmly scraping on the ground. In the early ‘90’s, when the UK lottery first took off, I was at university and I was utterly convinced that I would win one day, so I set about designing the type of house I would want build for myself. Peter Sykes’ house is nothing like the one in my imagination, but there are lots of elements of his house that I would have borrowed from him especially the fabulous use of light and space.

It was nearing our time to leave, so I went outside and as the weather had brightened up again, I took off the hood. Everyone else started to collect around their cars too, and soon we started on our way, in the same convoy as we’d had this morning (Rob Day, Peter Wehrmann, Trevor and John Gathard). As we passed Peter Sykes, who was waving everyone off, I slowed to thank him for a great afternoon.

It started raining within a half hour, so I pulled over into a garage to the left of the road with the intention of stopping under cover and putting the hood up. Trevor and Peter Wehrmann were behind me and they reported later that they'd watched me move into the left hand lane where I apparently waited for a while. They thought I was trying to overtake, and at the last minute decided I wasn’t going to make it and pulled into the garage. It didn’t help that when Joanna and I decided that the garage didn’t afford enough of a roof to keep us dry as we put the hood up, I pulled back into the flow of traffic without really stopping. Both Trevor and Peter must have been cursing me even as they watched somewhat perplexed.

A little time later I found a "proper" garage and pulled into it. Rob Day and John Gathard went on ahead, not noticing what we were doing. It didn’t matter. The rain was so strong I couldn’t actually see where I was going so I had to put the roof up. It always amazes me when people refuse to put the roof up. I can see OK with the hood up, and as I wear earplugs anyway, it’s no louder. It seems perfectly sane to me and doesn’t dull the experience. I can see well enough that I could happily use the car that way if it rained every day.

Anyway, as I stopped, a girl came over to me. Her intention was presumably to fill the car up with petrol. Using my best gesticulation, I persuaded her that I wasn’t here for petrol, so she smiled and returned to her friends who watched as Peter and I put our hoods up. They must have thought we were mad. Trevor was the odd man out again as he was forced to endure the rain through the same lack of visibility as before. Although I think he’s mad, he is certainly persistent.

As we approached our destination I was starting to feel very very tired again. At one point I was approaching a car in front of me too fast so gently pressed the brake, only I was still on the accelerator and leapt forward. I pulled to the left to avoid the car and hit the real brake that time. That woke me up. A little later I pulled out at a junction right into the path of an oncoming car, and then to compound the error, only did it to the next car too. Boy, I was tired. I will admit that the heat from having the roof up probably contributed to my state of semi-consciousness.

Later, at the hotel, we experienced rather shoddy waitress service, but we believe it was because they just weren’t organised rather than any intended rudeness. Joanna and I sat with Trevor, Peter, Mick & Gloria and Rob & Marie.

We started a new tradition at dinner tonight. Peter, Trevor, Joanna & myself ordered a couple of bottles of wine between the 4 of us. Then, I returned from the dessert buffet with 4 different desserts. Peter came back with 4 too. We called this Dessert Storm, and repeated this, and the informal "wine tasting" each night that followed.

After a very nice meal and chat, I went to bed early, as has become my trademark.

I slept very very well.

Day 9 - Tuesday 7th August 2001

"Hood up all day"

Having become so bored with putting the hood up one minute, then taking it down, then putting it up again over the last couple of days, I announced to Joanna that I was was going to test the Gods and leave the hood up all day today. That way at least I could guarantee it wouldn’t rain. J

I packed the bags and watched as JB7 and Gav stripped the Rarebird with the intention of fitting the new gear selector cable that had arrived, as promised, that morning. With the selector now working JB7 had access to the reverser box and could see what was causing the vibration he had lived with since he’d had it installed. The output flange, which joined to the propshaft, appeared to have destroyed its bearings. Either that or it wasn’t tightened up properly. Big Phil had managed to bring a spare reverser from Westfield on a sale or return basis, but they were £800, which meant JB7 wasn’t going to make this change without careful consideration. He called the guys who had converted his car to the bike engine, and explained the problem. They were brilliant and explained that as far as they were concerned, the problem was a warranty job, and he should go ahead and use the spare box. They would all sort it out on JB7’s return to the UK.

Sounds like a good company to deal with.

Up until this point, I had waited in the car park for JB7 to finish. Gavin had expressed a desire to go in a Se7en today and Peter had offered, and was waiting for Gavin to finish with the Rarebird. We’d been waiting now for 2 hours and were getting a little jumpy. We had 161 miles to go today and V7 wasn’t at its best. The ECU problem was making it less fun to drive spiritedly, but it was OK as a tourer, so I agreed with Peter and Hoopy (a new touring party) that we’d take a fairly direct route to tonight’s hotel, but I was going to leave now. Gavin left Paul with JB7, a combination easily able to repair the Rarebird, and jumped in with Peter, and the 3-car-loads of us set off.

We stopped for lunch in Chaumont (I think) and parked up. On leaving the cars we noticed the group ahead of us (including Rob Day and John Gathard) had parked their cars just around the corner from us, so we called them to see where they were. They had found a nice restaurant somewhere in the middle of town so we went to join them, only to find they were just about to leave. No matter, we enjoyed a good lunch there on their recommendation.

On rejoining the cars, Hoopy had found a problem associated with his windscreen washer. Every time he squirted it, his legs got wet. The nozzle had broken, and on inspecting it he had broken it completely. Now, when he hit the squirt-button, his car shot a jet of water straight up, just like a whale. Very funny.

A little later, Peter and Gavin, who were leading our group, turned off the direct route we were taking and took us all round a farm track. I said to Joanna that if they deviated again I’d continue on the direct route. With about 15 miles to go to the hotel, they did it again, so we carried straight on, giving them a wave as we separated.

In the town where our hotel was situated, Joanna and I stopped in a car park to check the map, and on pulling back into the traffic noticed Hoopy and Peter in front of us already. I raced up behind Hoopy as he was braking and sounded my horn. This threw him into a panic and I laughed as he swerved all over the road. Very funny. I couldn’t imagine the words he probably used at that point.

Before dinner we sat and had a few drinks in what passed as the lounge. Pieter Corts was there too, and this was his last night with us. I had expected to see him at dinner, but he must have gone elsewhere because I never saw him again, much to my sadness. We never got to say goodbye and wish him well.

With (another) 2 bottles of wine between 4, and another Dessert Storm, I expected to sleep quite well, but we were close to a military airport, which was noisy all night. It was also very hot in the rooms, even with the windows open. Hot and humid night.

It rained a lot overnight.

Day 10 - Wednesday 8th August 2001

"Direct route and speeches"

I heard Pieter Corts leave at 5:30 this morning. Although he couldn’t hear my thoughts, I wished him a safe journey and hoped he kept his car on the road. J

We took another direct route again today, this time with John Gathard, Rob & Marie, Mick & Gloria in the Corsa and Paul in the van. We took the hood off today. We had decided that we should only use it is was really raining because it was simply too hot with it up.

The 3 Caterhams led the way, but never really losing the Corsa or the van. Both kept up quite admirably. We speed ahead often, but paused at appropriate places to let them catch up. Gloria admitted Mick was really pedalling the Corsa, although she didn’t use those words.

We stopped in a small town North of Reims for lunch. We parked on the hill leading up to the town and then walked to the other side of the town to a restaurant. The menu looked good, and the service was quick, except when we came to requesting the bill, which seemed to take ages. In the end we got up to leave which prompted the waiter to pull his finger out.

It was a fairly uneventful drive, and we arrived at the hotel at around 3:30pm to be told we couldn’t check-in yet, as we were too early. The rooms weren’t ready yet.

We had coffee and arranged for a table for everyone for that evening. At around 4pm they announced that our rooms were now ready and we could check-in, which we did. I had a shower and wrote some notes from the previous days for this diary while Joanna had a sleep.

That evening, the whole party sat together except Andy Ish & Hilary. I’m not sure where they went. Peter and I arranged more wine for the "4 wine tasters" again, and indulged in more Dessert Storm tactics after which I stood to give a short toast to our absent friends and read out the list of failures that Gavin had been noting over the course of the tour. I also noted that we’d had our first RTA (Road Traffic Accident) as Robert Grigsby had run into the back of Kev & Gaynor causing minor panel damage. Kev seemed quite at ease with the situation and didn’t mind my announcing it to the amused crowd. I’d checked before I made that particular announcement.

JB7 stood up when I’d finished to make a funny observation that the members of the touring party could be seen as famous people. Joanna & I were known as Jennifer Aniston & Brad Pitt. Hmm. Hilary & Andy Ish, sadly absent, were allocated Posh & Becks. Everyone roared with laughter.

Rob Day stood and announced that earlier in the week he had asked Marie if she would marry him. They had kept that quiet until tonight. Everyone toasted them and Rob offered to pay for a round of drinks in celebration. They looked very happy. Everyone wished them luck.

The restaurant was set to close at 11pm, so for once I didn’t look like a party pooper as I headed off to bed. To be honest, we were having quite a laugh and would have enjoyed a later night that night, but… well…

Looking forward to tomorrow. I get my new ECU. Mick said he’d help me to check the settings out using Robert Grigsby’s laptop, so it should be fun. We’re due a start at 8am which I’m not keen on and would happily stay in bed longer, but as Vinnie’s coming to the track, I don’t want to be late.

Day 11 - Thursday 9th August 2001

"Croix, Elises, ECU’s, rain, motorways and parking whilst drunk"

The circuit was only 46 miles away according to the roadbook, but our convoy which included Rob Day and Peter Wehrmann got it wrong and we took about 60 miles to get there. We were still early though, and got there as the second group. Peter and me got lost in the circuit-grounds looking for the pit area, as we were apparently directed round the back of the circuit by Gavin who was gesticulating wildly. He had been trying to intimate that we go round the back of a particular building, but he’s a big lad with big hand signals. I though he was directing us round the town. J

Anyway, the weather looked OK, and the track was dry. I elected to wait until Marcus got there, as he would be running the day, before venturing out onto the track. I prepared the car for the track by removing luggage and side screens etc. Vinnie sent me an SMS to say "they" were just leaving Calais.

In no time at all, all the Euro Tourers had arrived, and I explained that Vinnie and Marcus were on their way, when out of the blue Vinnie turned up, in a Lotus Elise with his brother in the passenger seat. They’d hired the Elise. I bet the hire company had no idea to whom they were hiring it, nor to what purpose the hirer would put it. Heh heh heh.

I asked about Marcus and Vinnie had said he wasn’t coming, so we elected Vinnie as our man in charge and he gave the group a briefing based on the rules we’d established ourselves at Magny Cours, then people started taking to the track.

I took my new ECU out of the boot of the Elise and plugged it into V7. Mick sat in the passenger seat and we tweeked the settings at idle to ensure a rich, rather than weak, mixture. Then we went for a brief run round the car park. Within minutes the heavens opened and we experienced rain of biblical proportions. Mick and I headed back to the pits where there was a half car’s width of roof-cover to park under. Everyone else rushed to waterproof their cars, and people came in off the track. Everything was soaked. I’d put the umbrella up over V7 but the seats, belts and floor were soaked.

When the rain stopped a short time later, I started to mop the car out, but again the heavens opened and this time I elected for a more waterproof solution and put the hood up.

I watched people take to the track in the rain, slithering their way round. In particular I was interested in what Vinnie could make the Elise do. Both he and his brother, Simon, had said how disappointed they were with the Elise, and as I watched Vinnie gently coax it round the 1st corner, I could see what a handful it must be.

A little later I saw the Elise back in the pits, facing the wrong way. I believe Vinnie had encouraged it into a big "off" into the gravel and the tractor had pulled it out and back to the pits. Having not been round the track yet, I asked Vinnie if I might have a go in the Elise as the ECU in V7 wasn’t yet ready. Vinnie graciously agreed but warned me it was a rental. He must know what I’m like on tracks. Wonder where he got the info from?

The Elise was a revelation on the track. This is the 4th Elise I’d driven and each one I’d tried drove completely differently to the previous one. This was the first I’d tried on a wet track (very very wet) and it was as much as I could do to keep it in a straight line and get it to corner without swapping ends. It was horrible to drive. We later reckoned the hire company had put some crappy tyres on it in an effort to make them last longer. Well, the tyres may last longer but I wouldn’t be surprised if some unsuspecting hirer stuck it into a ditch because of them.

The track was interesting though. I’d been warned that there was precious little run-offs, but it seems the track owners have been working hard recently to open up the run-off areas. I can’t say whether they were totally successful in their redesign because I was concentrating so hard on keeping the Elise on the track. I did about 5 laps then came in, somewhat relieved not to have destroyed the car. Vinnie, Simon and I concurred that the car was virtually undriveable and it put to rest finally any thoughts I may have had on replacing V7 with a souped-up version of one.

Vinnie allowed Joanna a few laps in the Elise too. I was particularly excited about her trying it, as she was a fan of the Elise. She had recently been brought home from work in one, and commented on how it was one of the best looking cars around, and loved the power. We warned her about the slippery conditions then she got in, put a borrowed helmet on and took off.

She looked confident as she approached the first corner, but I could see the car was already sliding. She got round that corner OK, and then disappeared from view. A minute or so later she reappeared at the start of the main straight. That particular corner was unfriendly in the rain, and sure enough, as she opened the throttle, the back end caught her out and she performed a rather neat 270-degree spin. She seemed to stay on the track though, and those following her passed without drama.

She did a few laps, and I think spun it at least once more, but because you simply couldn’t go that fast in the Elise, she never spun disastrously. It was always slow and she always stayed on the track. I was quite proud of her though. Without wishing to sound patronising or chauvinist, there simply aren’t that many women who would enjoy taking a car round a circuit, and even less who would do so in the rain. And then, having already spun once, she got back onto the track and kept going. It was this spirit of adventure that had caught my attention last year as she spun Andy Robertson’s car on the Scandi tracks.

The ECU wouldn’t start V7 yet, so I reconnected the MEMS to warm up the engine, and took the roof off prior to taking to the track. I had about 3 slithery laps, which were utterly terrifying. Each time I applied the throttle I was back to the all-or-nothing situation I’d been living with over the last few days. In the rain this meant I would come out of a corner, fully straighten up and then apply 200bhp in one large wallop. Coming out of one of those corners I changed into 3rd and then stepped on the rocket pedal. The engine coughed then went into berserker mode and the rear wheels overtook me before I could do anything. I let it fully slide round, not actually going very fast and thinking I would sort it out as it came full circle, but I ended up on the grass, and then I realised I really was in trouble. At about 10mph the front left wheel ploughed into the tyres with a huge crunch and bending the wheelarch up towards the car.

It looked like I may have bent the chassis, so I spun the car round, and headed gingerly off to the pits. I parked and jumped out and surveyed the damage. Paul was there as was Vinnie. I looked on horrified and hoped Joanna would forgive me. Our cash flow is already in trouble thanks to me, and now I’d done this. Paul helped me to bend the wingstay back and I then went to tell Joanna the news.

I walked up to her, nearly in tears simply because I felt I’d let her down, and at that time I wasn’t sure whether the wishbone or chassis was damaged. I announced that I’d "bent our car, Honey" which she didn’t really understand. I knew this but couldn’t find the words to explain to her in any more detail, so just repeated the same thing about 4 times before saying "I’ve crashed". She didn’t even know I’d taken to the track, which made it worse. I should have told her, but it has seemed such a small thing at the time. The intention to warm up the engine.

She was utterly relaxed and followed me back to the car. Paul was still there and encouraged me to drive it round the car park to see if it drove straight, so I did. A minute or two later I arrived back in the pits a lot happier. It was straight. It was OK. A knackered wing was all the damage, and a bit of gaffa tape would sort that in the short term.

Joanna never showed any signs of disappointment in me, and for that I love her even more. It’s more than I deserve.

The circuit closed for lunch so we all adjourned to the café for sandwiches and drinks. Someone put another video camera on the main screen in the café and people watched that for a while. After I’d finished eating I agreed with Rob Day that we’d leave shortly, as neither of us wanted any more track time. He’d been experiencing a bit of oil starvation and that had scared him a bit. His newly build DVA engine was too precious to destroy and having seen Mick’s go, he was quite rightly being sensible.

There was a bit of time before we left, so I borrowed Robert Grigsby’s laptop again and sat in the driver’s seat of V7 with the hood up in the rain trying to get the immobiliser working with the new ECU. Dead easy. Once that was done I left the M3DK in place. We said a few goodbyes to the Calais-bound people, and John & David Gathard joined Rob & Marie and Joanna & I for the run to the hotel at Le Havre. We took motorways for the first time, which taxed our abilities to reach for a ticket at the Péage. It had really started to rain hard so at one service station I offered to help John Gathard to put up his roof if he wanted. John’s not as flexible as he once was, so to get in and out of the car with the roof up presented challenges above and beyond the call of duty, so he sat in the car while David and I put the roof up around him.

I was seriously nodding off at the wheel again, so I sent Rob a message that we should stop for food and a coffee at the earliest opportunity. He pulled over shortly after and I told him that I had been wandering all over the road on the previous few miles not because I was horsing around, but simply because I was losing consciousness.

After a coffee and a bun we set off again, and very soon came to another Péage where we sat and watched with much laughter Marie’s attempts to lean out of a be-hooded car to take a ticket. After what seemed like about 20 attempts she grabbed it and we headed off, only to follow Rob into a layby almost immediately. Marie exploded out of the car and we assumed it was because they’d had a falling out over the ticket incident previously. It transpired that this wasn’t the case, and that they’d had a lot of sweets fall out all over the car when Marie had been struggling with the Péage. More hilarity.

Eventually we entered Le Havre and found the hotel next a MacDonald’s as promised in the roadbook. We went the wrong way round the MacDonald’s drive-thru (MacDrive in France) and then back the right way when I found I couldn’t get over the speed hump, to the car park just outside the hotel. There we meet Peter Wehrmann who’d miraculously got there at the same time as us, despite us having left Croix much earlier than him, and taking the motorways. God, are we slow..?

We checked-in and asked for room for Peter (no problem), a table for the whole crew (also no problem) then went for a shower and change of clothes prior to dinner.

We had a great dinner with everyone left on the tour joining us. We started early on the wine and after too much for safety, we were informed we could park the cars in the hotel’s underground car park. So, armed with steering wheels, key and battery master keys a number of very drunk drivers (well, I was) started their cars and wheelspan and revved (JB7 particularly – that bike engine is LOUD) their way to a car park only 1/16th of a mile away. It was great fun. A heady mixture of fine French wine and 200bhp is very addictive. J

I remember telling everyone I wouldn’t forget the keypad number of the garage for the following morning, having repeated it to myself 2 or 3 times… At the time I wondered if that was a sensible boast.

Marie decided she’d been ridiculed enough for one trip and decided there would be a competition for the best horse-sound from the rest of us. As different people had a go from one end of the table to the other, Marie scored them out of 10. I don’t remember who won, but once it had been decided that it wasn’t me, I decided that the winner could pay for all the drinks. J

During the latter stages of dinner we said our goodbyes to Peter and thanked him for his hard work at setting up part of the tour and the Swiss Army knives he’d bought for everyone. I took his AP-22 off him to send back to Race Technology, and a number of extra presentation knives for other deserving people back in the UK. Then we went to bed.

Day 12 - Friday 10th August 2001

"The ferry home"

Another early start, as we had to get to the ferry terminal this morning. We had breakfast and then I walked round to the garage to see if I could really remember the garage door number. By the stroke of luck or genius (impossible to measure without a working AC-22 I’m afraid) I got the number right and the door opened.

On the inside of the garage, attached to one of the supporting pillars, there was a box with a single button to press to open the garage door from the inside. I saw Andy Ish on his way in, so I pressed the button. He helped me to push Kev’s car from where he had parked it (in front of mine) to a free bay in the garage, and then drove his own car out of the garage while I kept the garage door open using repeated presses of this button. Each button press kept the door open for about 30 seconds. As I’d left the hood up I simply didn’t have enough time to press the button, squeeze into V7 and then drive out before the door closed, so Andy ran back in to keep the door open while I drove out.

Back in front of the hotel, Joanna had brought the bags out and we loaded V7 up while others did the same to their cars and the van. Then it was time to head off. This was a little disorganised, and we ended up following the van, thinking we were in the lead until we got to the last set of traffic lights at which you turn left into the ferry terminal, where were saw everyone else in front of us.

Normal routine of checking-into the ferry, queuing and boarding. As we drove onto the ferry, we were directed into the centre lane but to avoid smashing the sump on the humps they use to attach chains for securing the lorries, I kept over to the right a little. The guy directing people in front of us kept trying to usher me over to the middle but I stayed where I was, trying to indicate what I was doing. At the last minute I pulled into the middle and parked. This guy looked really furious so I jumped out of V7 and told him the humps were too high for the sump, and he just replied "No, your car’s too small". Ignorant peasant..! Had I not been with Joanna at this stage I may have silenced him physically, and even though I was with her, the temptation was almost overwhelming.

This slightly altered my mood for a while, so once we’d found somewhere comfortable to sit on the passenger decks, I tried to go to sleep for a while.

I think I managed about an hour’s sleep before becoming aware of a terrible tragedy in the room next door. The tannoy announced that breakfast would be served for only another half hour which roused my attention initially, but that was quickly turned to the band next door which was trying to perform covers of songs. Their efforts sounded like a result of the Spanish Inquisition so after about a minute I could stand it no longer. Joanna had gone for a walk earlier so I went to look for her. I found her on deck, sunning herself at the back of the boat.

I could smell breakfast and asked if she wanted any, but she didn’t. She told me to go and get some, and to bring her a coffee. I went back inside and asked if anyone else was in breakfast-mood, and got a positive from Marie, Helen and David Gathard. JB7 was fast asleep. Helen said that he’d be most annoyed once he discovered we’d gone for breaky without him, but she didn’t want to wake him.

The 4 of us found a restaurant with a very helpful waiter. Breakfast was a buffet-affair where you paid once and ate as much as you wanted. Coffee and tea in limitless supplies too.

We all ate and drank plenty, and stayed talking for about an hour. JB7 came after a while and managed to get a freshly cooked breakfast despite them having actually stopped serving by then, and finally Rob Day came over too.

There was some confusion over our trying to pay for our breakfast because the waiter wasn’t used to using the till, and working in both Francs and Sterling, but it got sorted eventually. I returned to Joanna to give her the news that the coffee wasn’t a takeaway so she’d have to go to the restaurant to have one, and I’d be delighted to go with her. There we met John Gathard and sat watching the sea, other boats and the oncoming Isle of Wight. Then we went back outside.

It was a beautiful day to be at sea. The sun was out and the sea was flat. Joanna and I remembered our last day of the Scandi tour where we had sat outside on deck all day, not wanting the day to end. That was a year ago now, and so much had changed.

JB7 caught up with us outside and said it was the Cowes-Torquay weekend that weekend, hence the enormous number of yachts out on the Solent at that time. It made me feel that I shouldn’t live in the Midlands, the place furthest from the sea in the UK, and that I should find a way that Joanna and I could move closer to the sea. Joanna said it would be hard for her because this would mean moving further away from my family, and as her family was in Poland, I could understand this… I still resolved to do something different with my life, as I was becoming anxious about restarting work next week. I really didn’t want to go.

Once we docked, we arranged to meet up at the pub where Andy Ish had been at the start of the tour. We were called to the car deck and filed out one by one. As we approached the customs booth, Joanna handed the officer our passports. He claimed she should have filled in a landing card, as her passport isn’t English, but we explained that the visa and stamp from the British Home Office in her passport negated that. He said not and proceeded to be pretty rude about the whole affair which got me once again to the point where I was about to get out of the car, when he gave us back our passports and allowed us to proceed.

At the pub car park we sorted out what was ours out of the van and said our goodbyes to Paul Morley and Gav, and were about to leave with Kev and Rob Day when JB7 turned up saying they’d got through the passport control without passports. Apparently Helen had dropped them out of the car on leaving the boat, but this had been so speedily reported that the customs people were aware of it by the time the Rarebird couple had got there.

Kev led the way out of the docks-area and we followed, with Rob bringing up the rear. A little way up the motorway Rob flashed his lights and indicated that he was turning off, and then stayed with us. This turned out to mean we were going the wrong way, and Rob overtook us to lead us back the way we’d come and then in the right direction.

Kev’s car caught a black plastic bag at one point which slowed him up a bit. Rob slowed too, but by now Joanna & I knew which was we were going so we carried on, waving to them as we passed.

We needed petrol, and Joanna needed food, so we stopped at a service station some time later which had a Little Chef on site. Kev and Rob pulled in right behind us. We must have been really dawdling because they’d stopped so Kev could remove the bag and yet they still caught up with us.

They went straight on after filling up, while Joanna and I had something to eat at the Little Chef. On resuming our journey it felt really lonely as this was the first time during the last 2 weeks where I’d driven V7 without any other Se7ens nearby.

I recounted that on arriving home after last year’s tour I was seriously depressed as I’d left Joanna in Newcastle earlier that day, and I had no idea if I’d ever see her again. At least this year she came home with me… as my wife. Fantastic. Now, if I can just sort out a new job and live by the sea life would be perfect.

Our trip home wasn’t incident-free though, although the "incidents" were related only to my inability to guess which road I should have taken off the M4, adding an hour and a half onto our journey. We got home safely though and started thinking of next year’s holidays…

USA..? Spain..? Italy..?

I guess we’ll see in the fullness of time.