OneLastTrip.net

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.

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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…