194 COUNTING THE COST, AGAIN...

After another night of scouring Booking.com, we have secured our apartments in Séte and San Sebastián. It wasn't easy; there was much discussion, changing of minds, and back-and-forth between the five of us, but we have settled on two locations that look really good.

With the last places booked, we now have costs mapped out for the whole trip, and it is a pretty hefty bill!

We estimate the fuel will cost us around £500 in total, a figure we roughly thought before signing up for the trip. Using this much fuel has another knock-on effect: Team Dirty Martin and Team Just Please Squint will be filling up every day, since the Abarth's fuel tank is the size of a thimble!

Le Shuttle costs £153 if we opt for the flexible boarding option. We all agree this is the sensible way to go, as we are at the mercy of the British motorway network and a million idiot drivers using it.

The total for the hotels comes in at a mighty £1880! Sounds a lot, but we are staying in a château in Belgium, a Marriott in Germany, a 5-star hotel on the shores of Lake Como, an apartment in downtown Nice, a private villa in Sète complete with pool and spa, and an ultra-modern apartment in the centre of San Sebastián. Worth every penny.

The ferry from Bilbao to Portsmouth costs £650, but that is for two passengers, a car, and a cabin for the night.

We travel to Dublin via ferry regularly, and that costs £450 for a four-hour journey, so an additional £200 for an extra 28 hours seems like good value to me. £7 an hour isn't even minimum wage - bargain!

The biggest outlay will be food and drink. If we budget £100 per person per day, that is £2000 per car. That should hopefully be enough for three meals a day when we are on the rally, and a night out on the pop in Nice, Séte and San Sebastián when there is no driving the following day.

So the total is £5,183 per car and £ 2,591.50 per person. Carl quipped in our chat, "We could do a cruise to the Bahamas for that!" I replied that "we would struggle to get a cruise ship up an Alp, to be honest"! As we have said from the start, this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and everyone is on board, pardon the pun.

We are visiting the beautiful Belgian countryside, the stunning Black Forest region of Germany, crossing the Alps, staying on Lake Como, driving around the Monaco GP track, travelling the entire length of the Côte d'Azur, skirting around the Pyrenees, staying in the Basque region before crossing the Bay of Biscay. To me, that is much more satisfying than sitting on a floating gin palace, surrounded by pensioner tourists watching the sea most days.

The total doesn't include cash for souvenirs, a raid on the Duty Free Shop on the ferry, paying for trips to points of interest along the way or unforeseen expenses (car repairs, replacing lost items, medical treatment, etc.), so it may rise.

It also doesn't include costs for car decoration, outfits for the trip and sundries like Lisa demanding a pink bag for her stuff (sake) and essentials like an air freshener shaped like the Monaco Grand Prix track. The cost alone makes this a once-in-a-lifetime trip!!!