My Cannonball Story

Well this is my somewhat stilted and i'm sure inaccurately remembered story of the Cannonball Run Europe 2004.

The idea was to meet up at Lakeside, Thurrock Services for 3pm on the Saturday in order to then convoy down to the Sunborne Hotel for the start of the Cannonball Run. I arrived a little late(as usual) around 3.15pm only to find that noone had waited and they'd all zoomed off already(adrenalin pumping no doubt!) and before they'd even hit the A13 there'd been an accident when one of the 911 Turbos, t-boned a little old lotus elise.. End result? Elise had some major body damage but was drivable and the Porsche was a write off and had to be sent home!

I chased the pack all the way down to the Sunborne and saw them all make a wrong turn.. and so I arrived at the head of their convoy as they then saw me on a nearby road and turned round and followed along.. Anyway we arrived at the boat to see Motorcycle stunt riders going barmy in the car park (truly an amazing thing to see!) And a lot of other beautiful motors lined up in the car park, including a Lamborghini Gallardo and a Diablo VT, A Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradali, Porsche GT2's, Turbos, Carrera 4S, M3's, a GTO, Supras, AC Cobra 427, Lotus Esprit Turbos, Elises and an Exige, etc etc etc ..

I unloaded my stuff checked into the room and went out to soak up the stunning views and atmosphere. A nice afternoon ensued where we mooched around and chatted to other drivers and spectators..

Driver Check-in was supposed to be around 6pm, but I managed to do that a bit earlier and collected the rest of the stickers that needed to go on the M5. All that was left was to join in the party that was now starting in the Bar and try and grab a bite to eat!

The next day dawned and the weather was looking decidedly changeable with the wind still howling just like the day before. It managed to stay dry and we spent an enjoyable afternoon listening to other teams strategies, and opinions about the route. The adrenalin was gradualy building now and some people were really in pieces with nerves.

Around 3-4pm we all lined up for the start with final goodbyes said to families and friends. We then proceeded to wind round the car park and go through a waving chequered flag start point, with a massive crowd baying for burnouts and wheel spins off the line!!

Next thing i know we're at the start and we haul ass off the line with our newly acquired pace notes and directions for Mission 1 "Run to the sun". A few laps round the roundabout at the end of the start lane just to give the crowd something to shout about and we're off .. down to the M25 and across the bridge and next stop Dover.

The journey to Dover was essentially uneventful but it quickly became clear that whilst some of the machinery on show was frighteningly fast a lot of people didn't have the stomach for the speed and were taking it very easy on the way down. At Dover we sat waiting for the Ferry for 5 hours. (now the guys who took their time and cruised down didn't seem so silly!) The crossing was fairly normal but we had a chance to mingle in the restaurant and have a good chat with some of the lads and lasses.

Arriving at Calais saw some of the wildest noise and revving I have ever heard so much noise that it was truly deafening (still in the confines of the ferrry!) Not sure the owners of all the horses in boxes that were on our floor appreciated it. but we didn't even know they were there at the time of the revving up and cacophony of horns.

As soon as the ferry doors opened we nailed it and shot off on to the motorway ! Next stop Perpignon!(Playa de Argeles to be exact!) via Paris and lots and lots of Motorways!

We arrived 4 hours after the first cars amidst stories of some really really daft speeds. And i've since seen a video that shows a ferrari doing 180mph+ for ages and ages. No way to keep up with those guys and nor did we even try.

Arriving at the first checkpoint I was expecting a nice 5 Star hotel and some nice chilled beers by the pool. But instead, we were greeted with a crappy little beach a car park and a public loo. And our next mission pack which said, next stop Benidorm.!!!!

So after maybe 15 minutes break, with a quick sandwich and a head under the beach shower.. we turned it round and hit the road again!

The first stage of this route kept us on the coast road up and down the side of the big hills and cliffs that adorn the coastal part of southern france and northern spain. It was challenging driving and had some really really breathtaking views, but unfortunately also loads and loads of traffic and very low average speeds.

Soon we found ourselves on some much better "A" roads and this saw the speeds creep up again. At this stage we started to keep our eyes out for the Spanish Police and become aware of rumours filtering back about the now all to famous police road block!

Caught by Spanish Police ? Not likely..!!!!!!"

After some rather smoothe chat from me and my co-driver we managed to convince the first officers to pull us over that we were extremely responsible adults and hadn't done the whole of france on the limiter (155mph!) lolol..

We then immediately chucked a right off the A7 which was the only Motorway to our destination and spent 8 hours driving through the mountains on B and C twisty roads to avoid the police.. And all i can say is WHAT AMAZING SCENERY we have seen. We arrived 22 hours after the start in Calais in Benidorm and were the 11th car to arrive .. and no fines!!!!!!

Hit the sack about 12pm and woke at 0930 the next day after 46 hours of wakefullness the day before.. Never have I slept like that before.

Off to the track "Albacete" and that was about 130 miles a nice little jaunt along some very nice roads. We had the camera crew in the car on the way there and a lot of our footage from that day has already been included in a rough cut of the DVD which is blinding.

We were in convoy of A 911 Turbo, Lotus Esprit Turbo S4, Scooby, Pontiac Trans Am(2000). So when you see the footage of those guys you know it came from the filming done in the Beast! At one stage we had 140mph on the clock and the cameraman was out of the sunroof!! and the stills guy was out of the side window.. and the car was still solid as a rock.

On arrival at the track I saw a rather dispondent looking Jerry Mahoney(SP?)( an ex professional race driver!) sorry about the spelling of his surname! He hadn't yet been around the circuit due to his car having picked up some rubbish in a dodgy load of fuel and it was being fixed at the local BMW dealership and this was about 4pm, so I immediately offered him a go in the beast with me in the passenger seat (DSC OFF and SPORTS ON!) and lets just say HE was very impressed and so was I!!! Anyway after a mixture of laps with him driving and me driving i pulled over to let it cool down and when i went to start up again i realised the clutch pedal was stuck to the floor. On investigation under the bonnet I found a lot of hydraulic fluid all over the interior. Not GOOD!

BMW Assistance recovered the M5 to the same dealers that Jerry's car was at but they were already closed and the problem then was that they had a 3 week wait to service any major problems. (Allegedly) Anyway I picked up my hire care a citreon C5 and we did the run back to Benidorm in that. Feeling strangely optimistic still..

Anyway on arrival back in Benidorm we buried our worries about the rest of the event and donned our glad rags and drinking boots and headed off into Benidorm to enjoy a night on the tiles..

The next morning we started the long and drawn out process of trying to organise a chain of hire cars to get us home. We eventually found our next car a french plated Citreon Xsara Picasso in BARCELONA!! 500km away, so we hit the road the following day at 7pm.

We arrived in Barcelona Airport at 12.10am having been told the Hertz Dealer would be there till 12.30am, only to find he had left. And there was no car and no way of us continuing to Andorra the next part of the stage. You can imagine that we were very down at this point and in the end we had to settle for a Taxi from Barcelona to Soldeu in Andorra.

4.5 hours later we arrived in the Hotel at Soldeu at 06.30 am.. just as one of the teams in the Yellow Lotus were going down to the garage to grab an early start.

We started the rest of the process at 0930 that same day and this involved another taxi into Font Romeu(100 km's away and in the wrong direction). Where we collected our next hire car a Renault Megaine 1.9 TDi, not a bad motor to be fair and we left the hire car place at 2pm for the run to Paris. We arrived in Paris at the ring road 10pm, only to find one of the major parts of the route was closed (the A3) and we then spent 45 minutes getting lost on the way to the hotel. We arrived at The Radisson at 10.45pm many hours after the majority of the pack.. but ahead of about 20 other runners still.

The next day we were determined to give a good account of ourselves and leave early, but managed to over sleep and didn't get out of the checkpoint till it was closing at 10am, we managed to arrive in Brugges (the next destination!) at 12.15pm and apparently the checkpoint had closed at Midday(not 1330 as advertised in the pace notes!), so taking pity on us they let us out of the checkpoint first for the run back to Calais, we made it in 3rd place behind the Jones brothers in their GT2 and M3. Only to find that nearly half the runners had missed out the Brugges leg and gone straight to Calais or home via the Eurotunnel or a much earlier ferry.. Very disappointing in my opinion as the whole idea is to go through the checkpoints !

Anyway , after changing our hire care to a UK plate Focus 1.8 LX D, we then hit Dover and by now had acquired two other guys from the scooby which had done its bottom end and were four up and carrying everyone's gear and duty frees. We made it to the hotel at 2030 pm after the ferry was delayed by an hour!!

We had a great great party that night eventually crawling into bed around 6am.

The next day we emerged to a late late breakfast at 11am and found that there was a hardcore of about 3-4 Cannonballers that were still drinking champagne and had gone straight through from the night before!!!!!

Again I will post the pics when i have a chance and the rest of the story later on.