Woo, new video post; the night before leaving we packed all our stuff, chose our tools and headed to Zac’s house (closer by time to commute to Waterloo):
Oct 232011
There was a time when we’d take 6kg of tools with us on each trip, and generally suffer the consequences of being barely able to lift our bags in return. As we mentioned last month in a vlog, we decided that we’d up the ante a little and remove some of the safety nets that we’d been taking with us; namely the Toughbook and most of the tools. We thought long and hard about exactly how we’d put a restriction in place that would be balanced depending on how long the trip was while still maintaining a level of difficulty due to the restriction. What we came up with was this:
So our formula for calculating max points (if you didn’t watch the video), is:
Sep 292011
We’ve been vlogging again, as you can see, and have another trip planned for the 7th-10th October starting in Bournemouth. We need ideas though, a goal for the trip, as opposed to just driving a route; we’ve done lots of research but haven’t yet found anything that would be super awesome, so if you’ve got ideas, then let us know…
Sep 242011
We’ve come to the realization that we’re in desperate need of a pair of creative hands to help us with the planning and execution of what we do… Here’s the text from our gumtree ad:
Are you willing to do things that most people would think extreme or stupid? Creative too? If so, you’d probably fit in well with us.
We buy cars for less than 150 pounds and take them on long road trips with a high probability that they’ll break down and strand us on the top of some mountain or other while filming the results. Our last trip was 4000km around Europe, starting and ending in London, in a 1995 Honda Civic. It didn’t break down, unfortunately.
What we’re looking for is someone to help us out with the planning and editing of trips, and, generally, some fresh creative ideas to bring to the table to increase the viewership of our videos. We’re good mechanics, drivers and navigators, but, we suck at coming up with creative ideas.
We’re titling this as a production assistant, beginning with a few hours here and there while we’re in London, and eventually joining us on the trips themselves to film/produce/direct and generally help keep the quality of content high.
We’re not a business, and don’t make any money doing this, so it’s an unpaid gig. However, it is something that you could put on your résumé and have tangible evidence for… and hopefully have a lot of fun doing. I guess ideally we’re looking for a film school student.
You need to be in London, as we tend to do all of our planning over coffees at cafe nero, but aside from that there’s no real barrier to entry.
Drop us a line if you’re interested!
Do you know of someone who’d enjoy taking part in our project? Is that person you? If so, get in touch. The next trip is taking place on the 7th of October, so we’d ideally like to have someone on board by then… We can promise lots of coffee and delicious cake!
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We’re also looking for someone who’d like to join us on the next trip as a passenger and partner in crime; you’ll need to have the 7th-10th October free, be able to get to Manchester on your own, have a tent and a sleeping bag, and not mind the possibility of horribly adverse weather conditions; if that’s you get in touch :D.
Sep 222011
We’re changing the game a little to make things more interesting, and we’re also in the market for a volunteer production assistant to help us with planning and ideas and possibly video editing, maybe even going on the trips with us too, know someone who might be interested, or think you’re that person, then drop us a line. We plan on releasing a lot more of our content as primarily video now that we’ve got the technology to do so too, so subscribe to our YouTube as not everything is guaranteed to be posted here.
So far, we only have two challenges, and one only applies if it’s a 4×4, which means that all we have to do at the moment is spell out the manufacturer of the car with the first letter of town names as we drive.
This obviously isn’t enough, and when it comes to thinking up challenges, the people who have to do them aren’t always the best people to come up with them, so, leave us a comment on this post if you’ve got something wacky you’d like us to do.
We’ll pick the best 5 from the comments and attempt to complete them.
So, we have settled on our general route, and it comes to a startling 2315 miles (or 3725km). Interestingly, even with all this distance to cover, we have plenty of time in our itinerary to see things; such is the beauty of doing this over almost 8 whole days. Right now, I’m working on importing the gmap rendition into our laptop mapping system so that we can print off an A3 sheet with the complete routing on it, and so that we have a fallback in digital form should the routier atlas not cover the sections of road we need. In all, we’re much more ready for this trip now.
Below, you’ll see our rough routing. Point A is where we’re collecting the car from on Thursday, before catching the 22:00 ferry from Dover to Dunkerque. From here, we’ll drive down to point D, and then stop at a 24 hour services for a rest until the sun rises; after that, day 2 is a 7 hour journey directly South, taking in the Millau bridge before ending up at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, where we’ll set up camp for the night and relax. Day 3 consists of eating somewhere at point F, then going to a vineyard at point G before heading East past Monaco to find somewhere to camp at point H. After we’ve pitched our tent and night has fallen, we’ll drive the Alpine road down to Monaco (if you ever drive to Monaco, approach it from the East, it’s more spectacular that way).
Day 4 consists of us taking on 3 of the stages of the Monte Carlo rally:
- Sospel – Moulinet
- Moulinet – Col du Turini
- Col du Turini - La Bollène Vésubie
Google says each section will take between 15-18 minutes, which is the perfect length for YouTube! With those out-of-the-way, and hopefully the car still running and us still alive, we’ll head North through the Alps and Parc National du Mercantour. The going will likely be slow, as these are all single or double-track Alpine roads, with lots of twisty hairpins, and while I intend to get full enjoyment out of the driving of them, we’ll be stopping regularly to take photographs of the breath-taking scenery that surrounds us. Once we’re a little further North, and lost somewhere within the Parc National des Écrins, we’ll find a place to Camp on the night of Day 4.
Day 5 will find us continuing North and East through Tunnel Fréjus into the very bowels of Italian hell. We’ll then push North on the mountain roads, and attempt to recreate the opening of The Italian Job on the SS27 as we head for Switzerland, and we’ll make camp somewhere on the edge of Lac Léman.
Days 6, 7 and 8 will find us pushing further North through the border of Germany, through Luxembourg and eventually to our last stop at Brugge, before catching our return sailing to Dover.
The itinerary isn’t fixed however, and with this much time, we’re intending fully to allow the scenery and surroundings to change our pace as necessary – this will not be the complete blitz that Wales was.
View larger map
Aug 012011
Today I feel would qualify as stressful.
With only 3 days to go until our planned start date for the French Alps trip, with no car in sight, and having spent last night awake due to work, I was frantically emailing every car dealer in London in the hope that maybe, just maybe one of them might have a banger sat in their lot that they needed to get rid of. Of course, since we decided to change our minds about tackling Scotland on this trip, I’d been keeping one eye open on eBay for the perfect storm of car that was going un-noticed by the public and was Taxed & Tested (also abbreviated to T&T or TT, meaning that the car is road legal). It seemed for every 1 car that was T&T, there were 100 which weren’t, and they were all going for silly money. Why you’d want to pay £300 for a car that is a non-runner with no Tax or MOT is simply beyond me; parts perhaps. Whatever the cause, now is an excellent time to sell your non-functional heap of steel.
On Saturday, having been outbid left right and center on cars that I wouldn’t have expected to pay more than £170 for, I decided to recheck Gumtree. If you can pick through all the spam, there are a few diamonds in the rough. That afternoon, I ran across a Honda Civic, close to where Azemute lives, that had Tax and an MOT, and which the owner was asking £150 for. I immediately hit the “reply to ad” button and asked if it was still available. Several hours later, I got a reply back saying there had been a lot of interest in the car, and could we each give final offers on it, which the owners would then choose from. At that moment my heart sank a little; I had hoped that due to the amount of spam, no-one else would have seen the little car that stood to save my sanity.
Hastily, I hammered out a reply:
Wow, that’s a fair bit of interest! Here’s why I think you should choose us:
1) We’re super awesome!
2) The car will be featured on http://www.OneLastTrip.net in an adventure that will take it across to France, down to the French Alps (including Monaco and the Col de Turini), and then all the way back to London, we hope without it breaking on the way, but, that’s all part of the challenge.
3) Most importantly, the car isn’t going to go straight into the big scrapper in the sky.
4) We’re planning this trip around the 4th of August, so ideally would collect at some point on that day, but, we’re happy to collect before then – whenever is most convenient for you. In terms of price, we sold our last car for £30 more than we paid, so, the budget this time around can stretch to £180, paid in cash.
5) When we’re done with the cars, if they’re still mechanically sound, we make sure they get sold on to someone who needs a set of wheels, and not to someone who’s only interested in stripping them for valuable parts – we get sad thinking about all the poor cars taken off the road simply for their catalytic converters. In this case, we’d be happy to send it on to anyone else who showed interest for the same price.
Thanks for giving us a chance to put another bid in, hopefully you’ll pick us, but if not best of luck with the sale!
I figured it had to be worth a shot, and that perhaps they’d take a look at the site, be sufficiently interested, and let us buy their car. I didn’t hold my breath though; the previous week had been a constant re-run of defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory. Having not heard anything back all Sunday, I began to assume that someone else had put in an offer way above ours, and started thinking of other places we might be able to find something; our fantastic partner in crime, @timbotwich from West Way Nissan had mentioned getting in touch with dealers, and, while I’d been leery of reaching out to them without any sort of introduction, we were getting tight for time and needed some sort of miracle. A quick google told me that Auto Trader have a dealers listing on their website – absolutely fantastic resource guys, don’t change it! -, and so I punched in my postcode and began to wade through the process of emailing the pages of car dealers asking if they had anything. By 6am this morning, I was up to the end of page five. The one thing I learned from the experience, is that there are some truly terrible websites out there.
Arriving at work this morning, and still not having heard anything about the Honda, I began the arduous task of picking through eBay listings, eventually finding 5 cars to shortlist. My process is to skim read the description, close any that don’t have visible Reg #’s or T&T for the time period we need, or are in the wrong area, and then run a quick DVLA enquiry on whatever is left. From there, they get put on my watch list, and if they’re still within our budget with an hour to go, I’ll get a HPI check run on them.
Around 11am, I finally got a reply from one of the dealers I’d contacted letting us know they didn’t have anything on site, but would update us if anything came in, and wishing us the best of luck. Getting that email lifted my spirits, as it proved that it was still possible this could come together. The dealer in question is http://www.eurocartrading.co.uk/ - many thanks guys, that small gesture saved my sanity!
Shortly before lunch, one of the eBay specials was coming up to end, I’d got a bid queued up for it, and was hoping that the other people bidding would go away and let me win. No such luck, the car sold for £270, and caused my food to taste foul from the feeling of disappointment.
When we got back, I set to work emailing more dealers having quoted such things as ‘stands to reason’ and ‘law of averages’ to Azemute on the walk back to the office. Pages 6-10 of the Auto Trader list dealt with and yet more horrific websites experienced, it was time to recheck eBay. Paging through the list of auctions, my eyes landed on a Rover 220 D with zero bids starting at £175… a mere £5 under our budget. Better yet, it was located in Hythe, some 13.1 miles from Dover. Finally fate seemed to be smiling upon us. I quickly got a HPI check done on it, and with the news that it was completely clean lined up a bid for £180. Brimming with excitement, I began to play the game of not wanting to tempt fate, and kept quiet about it, only dropping a tweet to ask for everyone to cross their fingers.
An hour to go on the auction, zero bids. Thirty minutes to go, zero bids. Could it possibly be that we were actually going to win a car in the perfect place for the start of the trip? As the end of the auction got closer, time seemed to get slower, the paralysis of the second-hand being rhythmically interrupted by a jarring thunk as it slowly ticked the seconds by. Fifteen minutes now, still zero bids, a deep-seated anxiety mixed with defiant excitement. Concentrating on anything else was impossible, so I decided to have a cigarette. When I returned, I scarcely dared refresh the auction page for fear that I would jinx it, and we would lose.
Two minutes. Zero bids. From somewhere, I found a sudden urge to use the bathroom, an excuse to stay away from the computer screen, and instead sit with my iPhone in my pocket, waiting for the tell-tale sound from the eBay application to let me know that we had won. What felt like hours passed, no sound came. Suddenly, from no-where, a vibration and a chime. New email.
Turn to Page 2 for the conclusion…
As some of you have already seen from the closed poll further down this page, we’re going to the Frenchest of Alps. It wasn’t until a short time after the first few votes came in that it dawned on me the scale of the journey we’re in for to get down there; 1237km from Calais to Monaco, or 768.6 miles if you prefer. It rather dwarfs the journey to Scotland that we were attempting to plan, but the fact it involves a ferry crossing and Europe is new territory for us makes it a pill that is easier to swallow. In many ways, we’ve upped the ante a lot; the shortest distance the car will have to cover to bring us safely home is 1691 miles, or just over 2700km.
It’s rather exciting planning for a trip of this scale at such short notice, but it is equally frustrating and nerve-wracking. I’m the opposite in many ways to Azemute, I like having everything in order, carefully planned and re-planned until all contingencies are accounted for; that given any particular set of circumstances, we have the tools – be it metaphorical or physical – to work around those circumstances and continue. Being opposites in this way, we tend to have most of the bases covered for things that could arise.
It’s due to this that I’ve spent the last 3 days checking and re-checking ferry times and generally becoming more and more frustrated; not least of which to find a budget ferry, but, to figure out the best timing to arrive in the port of Calais. My biggest issue coming into this, is the lack of the many ferry companies that existed several years ago. Gone are Speed Ferries and Hoverspeed – my two ferry operators of choice – and all that is left is what appears at first, second and sometimes third glance to be a monopoly of archaic shipping companies with websites designed for consumption by anyone but a prospective customer.
Try using the P&O website to find the cheapest ferry for a given period; it’s akin to pinning the tail on a donkey with a long pole while blindfolded – incredibly frustrating and fraught with eye-gouging. It seems the cheapest day to sail out is sometimes a Thursday, and sometimes a Saturday. Sometimes it’s cheapest to sail in the morning, sometimes the evening, and on a few occasions the afternoon. Sailing back is always cheapest on a Sunday evening.
There are a few websites out there which attempt to bridge this gap and allow you to search across all the operators, but, they fall into the same issues where you’re unable to quickly view a variety of sailings to find the cheapest one. Heck, I’d give anything for a website similar to skyscanner where I could say ‘look, I want to sail at *some point*, and return around 7 days later, find me the cheapest way of doing this’, and be given a list of all the sailings. Yes, I’m well aware that I can do this by choosing specific days, but really, what use is that when you don’t care what days you travel on? Norfolkline at least offer you the ability to flip through all of their sailings to find the cheapest one with earlier/later functionality, and I think they are the company we shall end up using.
The cheapest sailing I’ve found so far is in the evening, and with it taking two hours to get to France, we’ll likely end up driving through the night and sleeping in the car on the first day or finding a camp site mid journey. When I lived in France I drove that same route many times, and it is perfectly doable in a single run, though you begin to feel the long-distance-driving effect around the time you pass Lyon. Luckily, there is a rest stop there which serves fantastic Steak Frites, and thankfully the French government lifted the ban on a very popular energy drink in 2008. We’ll likely hit the alps around midday of day two, and as we’re taking 7 days over this trip, that leaves us 4-5 days to do lots of sight-seeing and driving of incredible roads; that is of course, if the car makes it that far.
We’ll be planning the rest of our itinerary for the journey during the course of today, and should have route maps posted up later on. Also, we’ve got some really cool news to share about some fantastic people.
Following on somewhat from the post Azemute made earlier, we’re both of the opinion that Scotland isn’t feasible currently due to a lack of cars available. It’s not at all that we don’t want to do it, more that 400 miles per day doesn’t really make for interesting reading or viewing, as we’d literally see nothing. Therefore, we’re going to postpone the Scottish trip until such a time as we’ve got a few more contacts north of the border who might be able to source a banger for us in either Edinburgh or Glasgow – if you know people who fit this bill, we’d love to get in contact with them. Starting the trip up there just makes a lot more sense when you factor in the 650 mile return journey – 12 hours on the A1, 11 hours on the M6.
With that in mind, we’ve brought forward one of our crazy plans that I was talking about earlier, and we’d like your opinion – whichever gets voted highest is the one that we’ll do -, so, without further a-do:
In both of the following cases, we’ll be buying a car preferably in Kent, but, London is acceptable too, and then driving to Dover. At this point, we’ll hop on the cheapest ferry available to Calais. From there, it’s entirely up to you…
Option numéro un:
Monte Carlo - HerryLawford
The French Alps. Encompassing some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever laid eyes on, and a just stones throw from Monaco, we’d drive directly from Calais to Genéve/Nice. From there, we’d tackle the Col de Turini, possibly the Stelvio Pass, and some of the less well-known alpine roads that inhabit that part of Europe. We’d also visit Monaco, and drink grande crème in the middle of the night at a café the name of which escapes me.
The scenery is fantastic, the roads are absolutely stellar, and, there’s a huge question mark over whether the car will make it. My experience with the Alps in my driving career thus far has been: 1 x Peugeot 205TD’s radiator fans and loom catching fire, 1x Peugeot 405′s clutch cable snapping and 1x Setra Coach cooking its brakes. That said, all of those vehicles were registered in France, and that could easily be something to do with it. I can also converse in French – or rather, I could when I lived there 5 years ago, it is anyone’s guess whether I still can.
Option nummer zwei:
Nordschleife Colorkey - chris-sy
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Nordschleife; The Green Hell.
As ideas go, this is probably one of our crazier ones. Buy a car for £150, drive it to Germany, then, do several laps – I was thinking 10, but, that equates to 228km, and we’d probably be killed. It is however an idea that sprang to both our minds independently during last week; we were merely under the assumption that it would be several months from now. Interestingly neither Azemute nor I speak German. “Schnell, schnell!” is the extent of my vocabulary, garnered from watching too many WWII movies as a child.
I must say, it was a lot easier to write about the French Alps – nothing makes me shake with nervous trepidation more than driving a questionable car around a track known for pitching drivers into the nearest Armco, and having searched for some variety of pace-notes for the circuit and turned up nothing, my confidence hasn’t been improved at all. I expect if we do this, the first lap will be a recce so we can make our own.
So there we have it; our fates are in your hands, dear loyal readers. There’s a poll below that is open until midnight on the 31st, and whichever gets the most votes is the one we’ll hopefully not be killed attempting. The poll is now closed, and the results are in!
Also, should you have any challenge ideas for us, feel free to leave us a message.
Where should we take our next car?
- French Alps (80%, 8 Votes)
- Nordschleife (20%, 2 Votes)
Total Voters: 10
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