156 COME FLY/DRIVE WITH ME...

There are so many moving parts to this trip that my head is spinning. We definitely need to book hotels and trains/ferries. We need to decide if we are having a week in a villa, find out who can make it, and then book that. Then there are the cars; they all need checking to ensure they will actually make the trip before we get busy with the decorations.

Then there are the drivers. Lisa and I are definitely in - barring any disasters at home. Carl is definitely in, but doesn't have a co-driver as yet. Then there is Richie and Rachel, who are definitely in but are not sure what they will be in!

Richie bought a car to make the trip in comfort. The event was postponed last year, and now Rachel is buying a new car, which she might use for the rally. Richie already has a golf holiday booked for the week after the event, so he might not be able to stay in the villa, which means doing a massive drive from Nice home in one or two goes - conservative estimate is around 18 hours.

This isn't realistically an option, so it is either spread the journey over a few days, as mentioned in this post, or find an alternative. On this score, he may have come up with a cunning plan which could save him time in the car and money on hotels!

As Richie needs to be back a couple of days after the rally finishes, the best thing for him to do would be to either buy a cheap car and scrap it in Nice - risky, as he would need to buy something that would make the trip - or hire a car that he could leave in Nice and fly home. The second option got him all excited!

He could fly to Brussels, pick up a fancy convertible at Euro Car or whatever, do the rally in comfort and style and then hand the keys back at Nice airport before skipping through to Departures. A win/win/win for him! He took it one further, though, how about hiring a camper van?

Think about it, an almost perfect solution. He and Rachel get to drive a vehicle designed for comfort so his hips won't crumble into dust, they get to experience the rally without all the messing around of buying and prepping a car for the journey, they can fly straight back after it has finished, saving the arduous journey home, and they save money on hotels! A win/win/win/win!

Last I heard, Richie was scouring the internet to see if he could hire a motorhome in Belgium, drive it through Germany, Switzerland and Monaco, and hand it back in France. A tall order, but not impossible!!!