I’m back and here is my little diary of those 24 hours. Actually it was a bit a less as 24 hours, but I’ll get to that later on.
The following takes place between 1:26 am. and 1:10 pm. on the day of TOTB IV.
1:26 am and my alarm clock went off with a nice sound of the Black Eyed Pees. I took my clothes on cause without them it would be pretty chilly outside with the cold breeze blowing through the streets. I stumbled my way to the fridge, which I robbed some food and drinks from, enough supply to attack the next 24 hours. And I wasn’t going to forget the most important thing: my camera or actually my two cameras: one big one for the event and my little compact cam for taking pics while on the way. This all just left me enough time to eat a cookie and brush my teeth.
1:48 am, I jumped on my 2-wheeled petrol guzzling thunderstorm and floored it over the dark roads. Still quite a lot of traffic on roads, most of them people that were going. Really creepy to think they will still be partying until dawn and I already got up to attack some 1000 miles of tarmac (and a bit of train).
I wasn’t really lucky with the traffic lights, they all turned red when they saw me coming. This resulted in a slow time before I arrived at my next stop, which sadly was only the beginning of more unpleasant surprises. So at 1:59 am I arrived at checkpoint Charlie where I met the other two drivers. Time to swap my two-wheeled friend for a more comfortable four-wheeled BMW. And then suddenly the earth started to shake. Damn, it was a diesel powered machine. When will people learn?
Eventually we took of and headed to Calais. A good drive, nice average speed, no problems apart from the girl living inside the navigation system. She must have had her periods cause she was interrupting us constantly. Luckily some electronic duck tape can do miracles. Just before the Belgian-French border we hit a gas station to fill the car up with diesel. One of us had a fuel card with which he could fuel up without being charged for it (his employer pays for it
). The downside of it is the fact it’s only valid in Belgium. This meant we wanted to do the rest of the trip on this fuel tank. Which converts itself in not going over 100 mph to keep fuel consumption below about 6,5 l/100 km (44 UK mpg).
The last stretch to Calais over the French highways went fine and around 3:50 am we arrived at the Calais checkpoint, where we took the opportunity to visit the ‘tax free’ shop and buy ourselves some candy. Apparently the no taxes policy on alcohol and perfumes are counteracted by very high candy prices. Or the sugar price must have gone up the last 24 hours. A few minutes later we found out our train had been delayed or cancelled whatever. Damn.
About half an hour behind schedule the train started to move at last. As if the delay wasn’t enough the train also drove slower as usual. It would take us 45 minutes to cross the Channel. Were there road works going on under the sea or was a granny driving the train? Who knows? All what I know is we didn’t liked it. At least the lady welcoming us on board via the speakers made us laugh. First she said everything in English but then she, a native British, also had to explain everything in French, a language she obviously didn’t master. She must have red it from a paper with the pronunciation written onto it as well. Way to funny to hear
The drive from Folkstone (UK EuroChunnel station) went fine. Not much traffic on the motorways, except for the last leg: traffic was denser and there were a lot of road works going on. Due to our late arrival at Folkstone and the fact we couldn’t drive that fast keeping in mind the fuel consumption, we arrive also a bit behind schedule at the event. But in the queue to the parking lot we saw already some action: an older Ford overheating the engine. Not the same smoke-related action as we would see at TOTB itself. But smoke is smoke…
Back Home
We left around 4:15 pm GMT. Earlier as we wanted, but the trains leaving later were already fully booked. And there is a lot of traffic on the British motorways on Sunday afternoon or at least a lot of traffic blocking the fast lanes (and nobody driving in the slower lanes). Which is really annoying. The solution was to overtake on the left side, which prolly isn’t allowed by British motoring regulation, but it helps when slower fuckers just keep on blocking the road.
Not only traffic was against us, but also the girl inside the navigation systems thought it was payback time and guided us via motorways with a lot of speed cameras. A few weeks ago Richard and Jeremy showed a road map of Great Britain on Top Gear, which shows all the speed cameras in GB. As an example Jeremy pointed out two major roads almost parallel to each other, one without speed cameras and one on which speed cameras grow as weeds in an unmaintained garden. I guess we were driving on the latter one
Luckily after teasing the navi girl, she beeped every time a speed camera was nearby. So after a while it ended up in a game between the three of us: the first one who could point out where the speed camera was got a candy
Due to the heavy traffic our fuel consumption went up and our goal of getting to the French-Belgian border on this fuel tank was doomed. The positive side of this was we could drive faster when traffic allowed us to do so. So after a while, we were able to stretch the car’s legs:
Suddenly when hitting the 200 mark our navi girl said Beep Beep. Speed camera!! Brake!! But it was all for nothing. There wasn’t any speed camera, you naughty girl! We had to build up speed again, but sadly traffic became denser again so no point of really flooring the car.
Around 6:30 pm we were getting hungry and the car wanted some new fuel so we took the motorway exit to a service station. After about 3000 roundabouts we finally reached the service station. It wasn’t really a logical sorted out service station, we ended up in the lorries parking lot and couldn’t reach the fuel station anymore, so we had to drive back to the last roundabout to give it a new try. After some roundabout tyre squeal we finally ended up at the fuel station. After fuelling up we wanted to eat at the Burger King next to the fuel station. But guess what? We had to drive again all the way back to the roundabout at the entrance/exit of the service station to be able to park the car at the Burger King. This time we attacked the roundabout with a little drift, since we were very familiar with this particular roundabout by now
After the little pit stop we hit the road again and arrived 40 minutes early at Folkstone (where the EuroChunnel train leaves) so we could take an earlier train. Yippie! For some strange reason the guy sitting in the tollhouse asked us how many people were in the car. WTF? Are you blind, man? There are only three of us … expect of the 400 illegal immigrants hiding in the trunk. I really wonder why people ask stupid questions like that.
At 9:15 pm GMT we parked the car inside the train and at 9:29 it took of. This time it only took 30 minutes for the train to cross the Channel. And around 10:00 pm we were driving again on the right side. But apparently the blocking-the-fast-lane-disease had travelled with us from the UK. A lot of yellow plated cars (Frenchies, Dutchies and Brits) were blocking the left lane of the two-lane highway or at least that’s what it looked liked. Why oh why can’t people just merge into the slow lane after overtaking is done. Just leave the faster lane for the faster cars!
After a fuel pit stop In Belgium and a little detour cause the highways blocked by some crashed cars we arrived at checkpoint Charlie at 0:10 am. It took us 5 minutes to find a decent parking place and than I hopped onto my 2-wheeled vehicle and drove back home. I arrived around 0:30 am and after watching my pics I went to bed at 1:11 am. I wasn’t as knackered as last year, though I must admit I felt a bit tired
Disclaimer: this story is based on true facts. The characters and incidents portrayed are for real and any similarities to the character or history of any person or entity is intended and not coincidental.
1 event (TOTBIV), 24h, 1000 miles
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