Day 2 - Calais - Sarnen (820KM) 17th September 2010

The day started in the Mecure Calais where we had breakfast and stole half a cheese and about 5 baguettes for our lunch as we are cheapskates.

We met for the start line at 8:30AM sharp at an abandoned railway yard on the docks in Calais. There are about 22, 23 ish teams this year on Staples2Naples, and we got to know everyone. Clearly, there are plenty of eccentric fellows on the rally, and some of the cars were quite entertaining. Saying that, "The Leg" was getting all the attention, something we were very happy about.

Scoping out the competitors....

Some cool guys in a Volvo 850

Plucky skoda favorit. As of 9PM last night, this one was "just past Reims" with a blown head gasket. They were fitting it themselves.

The "jaeger bummers" all dressed in drag, great senses of humour

Proton auto with obligatory ferrari badge

RNLI geezers

These guys pulled up, started blaring out "Self Reservation Society" and sat down at a table (with tablecloth!!) and made some hot tea!

Soon enough it was time for us to hit the autoroutes (we did afterall have 820 kilometres to travel, which is about 550 miles).

We soon found that there was an annoying feature where the glovebox kept flinging open in a hilarious manner, which was getting annoying so we bodged it:

Bodge

And it then became a brilliant game of beeping like a maniac and waving like a loon every time a banger came past!

Some blokes in an old Granada hearse. We didn't see them last night, and according to Justin (the organiser) these have a 100% fail rate!

Admiring our fine vinyl job (video to come when we actually have decent internet!!)

 The challenge today was to get to an old race circuit just outside of Reims and document it as best as we could with our cameras. We'd then be given a questionnaire when we arrived in Sarnen. It was really cool, and it has recently been renovated in a 1950's fashion:

racetrack with our bangers lined up

bearing down on Switzerland

It was a bloody long day. The beers at the hotel once we arrived (at about 8PM after a wrong turn towards Zurich) were very enjoyable indeed.

There will be a video blog of each day going up (hopefully) but we are pressed for time now as we need to get to our next challenge (its Saturday now) so it'll go up later.

Video:


Wish us luck - we go over 7 mountain passes today.....

C+A