Ed & Sue's Adventures

Today, the route book says to be at the Piazza Europe in La Spezia by 11:45 and use your satnav! Why can’t all days be like this? The first task is to wrestle the bags back into the mini. Secondly, join the 10 minute queue for coffee and breakfast. The satnav says our journey should […]

This morning starts with breakfast followed by an inspection of the exhaust system, which has developed a worrying rattle that is getting worse since being grounded a number of times. It is probably all those meals weighing the mini suspension down. A bit of brute forces gets it straight again thanks to the service team. […]

Early start to get ready for another timed section. We can choose our start time but have to arrive 70 kms away at exactly 10:28:30. Everyone has to arrive at 30 second intervals after 10:15 to control the entry into this rendezvous. Clear? No it isn’t for most jobbers. We left the hotel and after […]

The day started slowly after last night’s celebration of our scoreboard success of not being at the bottom. We are free running today and take the opportunity to visit the Santerno Valley War Cemetery near Montanara, where my compatriots uncle was buried while taking part in the Italian Campaign. This visit was not, as many […]

Today starts with another short special stage where we are driving against the clock. We manage to get the start time right but are too slow, so our finish time wins more penalty points, and points don’t mean prizes. Once out on the road, we are travelling through a beautiful landscape on narrow winding roads […]

Today starts with a special stage, which needs to be completed in 10 seconds and also ensuring you pass the start line at exactly your nominated start time. I did not think I would be doing maths to calculate this so early in the morning. However, after the calculations, due to a communication error in […]

The first job after breakfast is cleaning the car. well, one does have standards, and then we drive to the scrutinering area to ensure the car is still safe to take part after its punishing drive from the UK. It is probably the drivers they should focus on rather than the car, as I am […]

Shortly after leaving Munich we have beautiful views of the Alps in front of us. They look daunting from inside a little mini. We cross the Alps through Austria. To use the motorways we have to attach a 9 euro vignette to the windscreen to avoid a fine from the police waiting for foreign cars […]

We decided not to wrestle all our items of luggage out of the mini last night, so we did not have it to wrestle them back this morning. I had decided it would be a brave thief to attempt it, and I was correct. Breakfast was taken overlooking the race track with cars circulating on […]

Early breakfast and then a short drive to Eurotunnel. We met up in the car park with old friends and new. Then, onto the queue for passport controls. Between the British and French passport controls our friends Steve and Wendy’s car, which was behind us, overheated, and had to be pushed through passport control. We […]