This section covers all the Ws: who, where, why, what, when, and, erm, how. 
A daily record of the plans made and the decisions taken. 
Click on the articles below for the latest news.

We visited Colour Create yesterday and met Barry and Kevin. I rambled on about the trip born from a stupid idea, fuelled by alcohol and fed by a 'you only live once' attitude. They initially looked at us like we were daft, I reckon they are right to be honest! I showed them images of what we would like. I explained my reservations about sticking a magnet over the contours of the car. They had a sample of the automotive-grade magnetic sticker, which was thinner than I expe

So my £13 t-shirt is back from Inkthreadable , and the old adage 'you get what you pay for' may be true. It isn't exactly what I was after, to be honest. That's not to say it is a complete loss, more that my expectations have been recalibrated. Let's start with the good. The t-shirt was cheap, but the quality is decent. It is exactly the right size, has good weight, and the colour is spot on. I am more than happy to order again if this is the base for the design. Now,

Now that it is confirmed that we will be crossing the Bay of Biscay on a whopping great ferry, I thought "why not knock up another playlist, this time celebrating all things sea, boat and travel-related" ?   That was all the inspiration I needed to hit Spotify and put together a half-decent playlist. This list includes songs about sailing, ferries, ships, tides, and the sea. Click  HERE  or on the image below to fire it up on Spotify. Tracklist: Sailing - Christopher Cross Sa

I've just stumbled across a company that will print your designs onto a t-shirt. Yeah, I know there are tons of those sites out there, but this one piqued my interest, as someone had linked to them from an Etsy store, meaning the user designs, Etsy provides the platform, and the printing company handles the graphics and shipping. Slick. So I had a mooch around to see what the process was for getting a design up to them, the method they used to put it on a t-shirt, the colou

I've been scouring the internet for a good, reliable local printer to see if they can help us with our livery. There are lots of choices, but I was struggling to find one that stood out and that I felt comfortable with. I was in the office and noticed our company had big displays, so I got in touch with our Communications Manager, who tipped me off to a company called Colour Create. She raved about their service and quality and advised me to drop her and our company's name,

We know where we are visiting on the trip, have a rough estimate of how many miles we will cover, and know what public transport we will be using, so we can start calculating the cost of our epic journey. Although we have booked some hotels, we still have a couple more to do. Therefore, there is no final cost for accommodation yet, so I'll keep that summary for another post. We have settled on the train to take us on to mainland Europe, and the ferry to bring us back. Based

So Ellis might be joining us on the trip. Well, an effigy of Ellis might be, anyway! While speaking with Sarah about the fundraising we were considering in Ellis' name, she said we should take him with us, which freaked me out. I was thinking there would be a tub of ashes or something, then she produced a little cuddle pillow thing with his face on it. Sarah had created a pillow with Ellis' face on it - something he would have hated, apparently, as his head looks massive!

I did a bit of browsing for gear today. I stumbled across the Porsche Martini Racing store, which was an experience. Adding the P word to anything instantly hikes the price. Want a branded t-shirt with the motor manufacturer and the sponsor on it? £50 that mate. Ouch. To be fair, the t-shirt was cracking, with the iconic striped pattern covering the whole garment and both brands' logos printed in white on the front, and the Porsche logo on the back. £50 is too much, but

With hotels booked for the official rally, the extended route locked in, and everyone committed to the trip (barring disasters), it felt like an appropriate time to let Sarah know that we were thinking of using the trip to raise money for New Start, the charity that looked after her husband, and our friend, Ellis. I'll be honest, I was nervous telling Sarah in case I was bringing back sad memories, or she had fallen out with the charity or thought we were being ghouls. I men

This post isn't about some rubbish film starring a fading Hollywood light, made on the cheap and deemed not good enough to be shown at the cinema. No, this is a cute little video showing the scale of the drive ahead of us. Putting names in a list is one thing; seeing them mapped out is quite another. Click on the video below for a peek at our journey (it might take a minute to load). The Full Pull...

Discussing the trip with my colleagues at work, one of them casually asked if I was fitting a dashcam to record the trip and add a layer of safety. I hadn't really given it any serious thought, but now it was in my head. I know nothing about dash cams other than that they are expensive and can be a pain to fit neatly. So I hit the internet and asked it to come up with some decent suggestions for an affordable, 4K unit, preferably with a rear camera too. I checked Auto Expre

We have just about decided on our trip; we know where we are going as part of the organised rally, and we have almost settled on the route home after Monte Carlo and Nice. If things go to plan, the whole trip will take 12 days and cover around 2,200 miles. Our current itinerary: Wed 10th - Driving from Liverpool to Namur Thur 11th - Day off Fri 12th - Driving from Namur to Freiburg Sat 13th - Driving from Freiburg to Menaggio Sun 14th - Driving from Menaggio to Nice Mon 15th

We have checked the ferry timetables and will be departing Bilbao at 13:00 on 20th June, arriving in Portsmouth at 17:30 the following day. It takes about 5 hours to travel from Portsmouth to Liverpool, so we will be home late Sunday night. We will be travelling on the Galica, the blurb says it is the first of the Brittany Ferries designed especially for routes to Spain. The Galicia showcases some of the very best of Spain with décor inspired by the beautiful region of northe

When Carl was arounf the other night I showed him the Sparco bag I'd found, which is both massive and fits in with the rally aesthetic. He agreed that it is precisely the sort of thing we need, and that we should be able to fit all of our clothes and toiletries in, and that it will fit perfectly in the back of our little Abarths. Lisa saw it and said it wasn't girly enough, so it was out. Back to the drawingboard for us. The difficult search for a large, pink, soft-shell b

With the apartment in Nice booked, that is where the official journey ends and our own path is forged. We discussed at length what the next steps were, banding ideas around, looking for the best way to get from the south of France back to Blighty. The direct route is right up the centre of France, up to Lyon, up to Paris, over to Calais, through the tunnel and bosh, back home. But what if we didn't take the direct route? I've been thinking about heading to northern Spain a

By this point, we are all very much on the way to being drunk, with the exception of Richie, who was on some mad, low alcohol beer, as he knew he would need a clear head for the award presentation he was attending the following day. His relative sobriety was a massive help as we headed to Nice on our hotel booking journey. Like the first day, we decided to spread the trip over two days to give us some time to decompress. As we were staying a couple of days in Nice, we compl

We were on a roll now, another round of drinks was consumed, the noise level went up, and people started to get visibly giddy as we had two hotels in the bag. The next stop on the route is Menaggio on the banks of Lake Como, and we knew this was going to be a wallet-busting stop! We ignored the Bust Rallies Bible this time. We knew exactly what we wanted and how much we were willing to pay. What we found was that Menaggio was a very popular spot for tourists in mid-June -

After another round of drinks, it was back into Booking.com to check out available digs, this time in the German city of Freiburg. Again, we dipped into the Bust Rallies Bible to see what they suggested and then completely ignored them! Namur is an old town which came to prominence in Roman times and is filled with quaint old buildings. Freiburg is much bigger, and the city centre is modern, so it was unlikely we would find another chateau to stay in, which turned out to be

We had a nice little get-together on Saturday night: a few friends, a few drinks and the daunting task of booking all the hotels for the trip. All we had to do was agree on four hotels that satisfied five people's individual needs!!! Straightforward, right? Actually, it was pretty painless. We first had to decide what day we were leaving, which changed from Thursday to Wednesday. This was to give us an extra day in Namur to decompress after the 8-hour drive from Liverpool

The new year has seen Carl ramp up the work on Bert, his beautiful black Abarth. The little fella was in for a service and MOT. What he left with was £1200 worth of work! Ouch! As part of the MOT inspection, the mechanic found a few jobs that needed to be done, including the strut top mounts on both sides, the wishbones on both sides, and the front discs and pads. The good news was that the parts were relatively cheap; the bad news was that the labour charges were crippli