My Furball Story - Day 1

Brands Hatch, England - Bourg En Bress, France.

The leg from Brands Hatch to Dover was mostly uneventful, the hangover from the previous nights festivities gradually wore off and apart from being passed on the opposite carriageway by a lot of flashing lights, we arrived unmolested and in good time and boarded our Chunnel.

The leg from Calais to Bourg En Bress was a bit of a mad rush. The motorways in France are truly superb and the traffic is very light. The whole pack was able to keep up a really good average speed, I had one incident with a tow truck which nearly caused a major accident, but apart from that we had great fun dicing with the other beautiful cars and collected some really nice video footage.

Arriving at the hotel we were a bit concerned about the open car park, but a security guard was in attendance all night. After a nice dinner (which was a bit of a struggle to order in my schoolboy french!) a hard core group of Furballers waited up for one late arrival (GT2 Dan) who had left England late due to a wedding. We sat up drinking and chatting till he arrived around 4.30am. The chair graveyard was not a pretty site in the morning, but I do seem to recall a new European record was set for the Javelin.

Day 2

Bourg En Bress, France - Cannes, France

Stumbling downstairs at 9am, it was clear that a few cars had already left. We moved out in the main pack and headed for Grenoble on a short Autoroute stretch and joined a rather slow moving N85. As we hit the N91 the fun and games begun. With James behind the wheel we hit some of the most challenging roads i've ever seen. We had mountain hairpins, blind tunnels, masses of cyclists and caravans and truly breathtaking scenery. James got into the groove and we blasted up this road faster than anything else around us. Arriving at a nice big stop we pulled over to let our heartbeats return to normal and to wait for the pack to catch up. I turned around and suddenly realised right above us was a huge mountain peak still covered in glacier and snow. A truly stunning and somewhat surreal sight! We stopped and were just speechless for a minute or two.

Continuing to the main rendezvous in Embrun we arrived to find only the guys in the M5 already there. We hung around a bit, grabbed a beer, made some calls and found that the pack was way behind and only the Orange Diablo (Jan & Nigel) were ahead.. We decided to start our own mini-convoy and headed off to the last stop of the day. However, we were seriously delayed by the fall out of the Tour de France stage in Gap. We went round and round the town several times and tried our best to take about ten different detours and only managed to get into the main parade of promotional vehicles. (Serves me right for ignoring that diversion signpost!) We waved like royalty and grinning sheepishly allowed the Gendarmes to direct us back to the normal roads.

We eventually found the N85 again and with me at the wheel started to catch up on some of the lost progress. The roads were again superb, the turns and twists were seemingly endless and these were interpspersed with nice big fast stretches and smooth sweeping bends. During one of the straights, we pulled over for a bio break and the guys in the M5 finally caught up. They saw their chance to get a bit of an advantage and only slowed down to say "BYE!". We jumped back in the car and hit the road again, soon building up great momentum.

Shortly after this stop we passed Hethelred in the VX220 who had stopped for what looked like a civilised dinner stop! We took it easy through the next town and made a fuel stop and the next thing we knew we were coming up behind him on some of the hairpins.(We never did quite manage to find out how this was possible !) We managed to pass and started pressing on, and saw in our mirrors a white 3-series BMW so close to Heth's bumper that you couldn't see his headlights (which were on). We started to pull away from the queue and soon enough the BMW was right behind us struggling to keep up and pushing his car almost beyond the limits. After one nice large radius bend, the kind that the Porsche eats for breakfast, I looked into the rear view mirror to see the BMW very nearly up on two wheels. Anyway the guy was clearly pushing himself and his car beyond the limits that were safe and rather than antagonise him any further I pulled into the hard shoulder to allow him to pass. However, he clearly had different ideas and refused to pass me, flashing his lights furiously and waving me on . James & I decided the only way to get rid of this guy was to just totally embarrass him. So applying myself to the car and the roads we put in a fast couple of miles and it was with some satisfaction that I now saw no sign of him in my mirrors. We then slowed again to a more modest pace and forgot about him. Five minutes later he was back all bristling intent and flashing lights. Once again I gave the grey beast her head and this time as I and the car were nicely warmed up, we left him behind even more quickly and it was about ten minutes before he caught up. This time he had clearly got the message that he didn't have what it took to keep up with the Porsche and he kept a nice safe distance of the bumper and to a better speed. A little later we parted company and he left us with a friendly wave.

We cruised into Cannes and found our hotel with little incident. As we arrived a fresh showered and smug looking Nigel emerged clutching his beer and waving us into the garage. We were the second car in and soon found the bar for a refreshing beer. Turning down the offer of a double room to share with James, we soon switched ourselves around with Heth (I think) and got ourselves showered and changed into some fresh clothes for dinner.

I came downstairs to find most people had already buggered off and left me behind. Luckily Nick & Simon from the M5 were about as late as me leaving and we managed to stumble our way into town and after a couple of false starts ended up in a very cool restaurant that served really excellent sushi and superb mojitos. The fact that the whole place was totally crammed with just the most awesome supermodel quality crumpet was a bonus!! The night progressed and much fun was had. About two hours later the rest of the guys stumbled into the bar just as our trio were contemplating moving on! We managed to gain access to a pretty cool nightspot called La Palais and showed the locals how to do it Furball Stylee.