You won’t want breakfast!

Saturday 24th January 2009
Time: 07:00 - 08:30
Distance: 2 miles (driven)
Rally Position: N/A

You won’t want breakfast

Yet another early morning alarm, but this time all we were required to do was load the car and head the 2 miles to the ferry terminal.

We arrived at 8.00am as requested by the rally organisers and were shepherded into our own loading area.

For the first time we were able to view some of the other competition cars and what a mix! There were many vintage cars present built in the early 1900’s through to a 2007 Nissan Pathfinder. Within our group we’ve so far sighted a Holden, Nissan 240Z , Volvo 240, Volvo P1800, Austin 1800 (Land Crab) and some MG’s but due to the dreadful weather (yet again) the whole list is not complete.

At the time of writing this blog we’ve boarded the ferry and found our cabin. The actual loading of the ferry has given us our first taste of Africa….. it was chaos and appears to run without any structure! We started queuing at 8.00am but loading began at 10.00am it was only once in the queue having rushed and gone without breakfast that one of the organisers said “You won’t want breakfast, it’s blowing a gale out there”

Well safely aboard with Colin on the car deck there’s nothing for us to do now but relax and enjoy the cruise across to Tunis…. well that’s the version I am trying to sell to Ces.



Sunday 25th January 2009
Time: All night….
Distance: Miles and Miles
Rally Position: Who cares…..

Looks like we’re in for a rough night.

As we pulled away for the berth in Marseille and headed out into open water, the was a real feeling of goodbye to Europe as our next stop was Africa or to be more exact Tunis the capitol of Tunisia, North Africa.





Once clear of the harbour walls, thoughts of Africa quickly faded and instead thoughts of The Poseidon Adventure filled my head. Would I really be able to remember which way to swim to freedom along an upside down stair case and would there really be a priest there to save me….



The drivers briefing after the signing-on procedure was promptly cancelled, in part due to the fact that one of the organisers had his head in a bucket for most of the time. There was no smell of Jeyes fluid in the air, instead something much more overpowering..

The upside was that there was no queue in the restaurant and my last European meal of chicken and chips (it sounded better in French) was fantastic, although the loos seemed permanently engaged. One of the restaurant staff commented that we were in for a rough night, and I thought you’re in the wrong job, you should be a fortune teller.

The local time is now 08:35am and at last the ship has began to settle, the rolling and swinging has stopped and we can see land.

That land is Africa!


We cleared customs in a little over an hour which was a huge surprise, but then had to wait for our police escort honour guard that would take us to the hotel! Apparently the local police chief is a car enthusiast and he insisted...


Once at our hotel some 5 miles from the coast we settled in and then reloaded the car in an attempt to reduce the rear end sag we'd developed.



Fingers crossed for tomorrow and the start for real. It looks like it's going to be a hard run..... And oh, it's stopped raining!