1 more sleep.........

Heading off tomorrow morning just after 9. 

Martha had a great trip to Edinburgh today and was very well behaved. What an awesome job you've done Comrie Garage.

Filled her tank with unleaded from empty .... £34, very little tank!

We have had an amazing amount of sponsorship in today. Thanks to the sportscotland tenants for donating and it was amazing to see a donation from Peterhead toppers.thank you all so much.

A few last minute panics, decided we would go for European breakdown cover, purchased. We had a slight panic about insurance as regular insurance doesn't normally cover Monaco, insurance company agreed to cover it for the day we are there, phew! 

Remembered to put in the tools

Mallet - if it should move and doesn't 

Duct tape - if it moves and it shouldn't 

I think we have every scenario covered 

Check Facebook for our daily competition, fab prizes to be won

We will blog as often as I can while away (dependant on data). 

Night x 

2 sleeps to go...........

What a day, what a FANTASTIC day!

We hit the £1000 goal today due to all our many and very generous sponsors. Lets see if we can get to £1250. If you've not donated yet it would be awesome if you would

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/Tummel_Tourists

Martha did over 100 miles today and behaved perfectly, apart from putting on her invisibility cloak when we were looking for her in Halfords car park.  We did read the manual thoroughly before heading off

We collected Denise Logan winner of the 'name the bear' competition. Ginny ( the bear also came too). We then went for coffee (and the greedier of us had cake!). 

We then went shopping to get some last minute supplies...... Mainly more coffee and crisps, bulbs for the car and ivy. (I'll explain about the ivy in a few days!) 

More sponsors stickers we put on the car and just as a saltire was about to be painted on the roof the rain came on. She has had her windscreen wiped several times today at junctions but that has nothing to do with the indicator controls being on the right!!!!!

Martha is now packed and good to go. She is off on a wee trip to the sportscotland building tomorrow and will hopefully get more money for the RNLI. 

Night x

4 sleeps to go......

Martha is now insured and taxed!!!! Inflatable cowboys ready to be collect ( find out about this in a few days,,,,,) and the lovely Judie Holliday visited today with the biggest box of home baked brownies you've ever seen and a little refreshment..........

Thinking that is 1 a day each for the rally ( unless of course we finish them all night 1)

The sponsorships have been flying in, thank you so much. Every penny counts

Competition..... As we are completing challenges throughout next week we a going to set some for our followers on the Facebook page, awesome prizes. Details will be posted early next week.

We are currently on 4 points, these are our starting grid points. Maximum 3 points gained by having the smallest engine, by a lot! But only 1 point as our car is only 10 years old! 

Check in again soon.......... BROOM BROOM

The excitement.....the countdown

5 sleeps to go..........

Lots more sponsors coming in which is totally awesome. Maps highlighted, snacks bought, packing started but most importantly Martha ready!

We have so many people to thank this week 

Comrie Garage have been totally awesome, they are always so busy with customers as they do such a fantastic job but they managed to do a great thorough job on little Martha, we cannot thank you enough 

Black and Williams and Abhaile for their generous sponsorship and car stickers.... It is indeed Jo and Angie's epic road trip.

Sailingfast , Suppliers of specialist sailing spares and equipment, and in our opinion 'best friends' in the dinghy park as they have the 'bits' (and usually some great advice and help too) to fix the boat and on the water again FAST have generously donated today.

ScottishSoup.co.uk, very yummy soups and pretty easy to pass off as home made - not that anyone would ever do that!!!  have also generously donated.

A mention should also go to Drew Sneddon (map reader extraordinaire) for his patience with his daughter (Angie) while route planning this morning. Sign of age when father and daughter are fighting over the magnifying  glass to read the map! 

Well, Mrs Sarah Milford, your are on our speed dial for translation purposes! Thank you so much for translating our accommodation information and most importantly organising 'a resting place' for Martha. Merci mon amie x 

Thanks also to the 'mystery' lady who stopped Jo in the street and asked her 'are you the crazy lady in the paper doing the rally' then paid Jo £10 for an autograph! ( what is it they say, don't let the truth get in the way of a good story) .... So she maybe didn't buy an autograph but did donate a tenner! 

Not had my Friday glass of wine yet so will sign off now but check in soon....

Pre Rally day plan

Leaving the ferry in Zeebrugge (can now spell it without looking up!)

We arrive at 0845 after a hearty breakfast and pockets full of supplies from the buffet table.

Leaving the port we are heading for Namur where we have to meet for our pre rally Registration. We are meeting in Cafe Havana in the Old Town which looks amazing. We intend to drop the car off at the camp site just in case there may be a sherbet or two being served!

Looking at the map we are planning to take the E40 then E411. it is 182km and should take us 2 - 3 hours depending on traffic. Fortunately we don't have to check in until 1900, so even if (when) we get lost we should still make it!

The fancy dress for the day is Wild West, we have our costumes already, photos will be provided!!!

Some questions

• Does that look like a sensible route?
• Is there anywhere cool we should stop in at on our way to Namur?
• How much Belgium chocolate do you think we can fit into Martha????

Check in again soon

Planinng ahead.........

Pre - rally checklist

• car       (we have the lovely Martha)
• MOT   (soon to have)
• Car tax   (soon to have)
• V5   (got it!)
• Car insurance certificate   (soon to have)
• Motorway tax (Switzerland)  (eek haven't even thought about that)
• GB sticker   ( mmmm trip to Halfords needed)
• Warning triangle  (yup, acquired from... ah you don't need to know that)
• Reflective jacket  (yip, lovely fluorescent yellow, apparently the spangly boob tube was no good although reflective!)
• headlamp converters  (on the halfords list)
• Breathalyser  (funnily enough we were donated a pack of these months ago!)
• Low emission zone sticker (Germany)  (a what, must google)
• Ferry booking  (yeh - have that and most importantly the voucher for dinner and breakfast)
• Accommodation  (once we've finished our Linguaphone course we will finalise the bookings!)
• Namur 
• Freiburg
• Menaggio
• Nice

We have our tent and old roll mats (bottle opener and cork screw!) which we will leave there as travelling back with hand luggage only.

Many of you said you had old bedding, old dog towels etc we could have, so here is a list of what we need, please let us know if you can help and don't need back

• pillows
• sleeping bags or duvets
• towels
• cooking stove
• torches
• disposable pants!
• European road maps
• crystal wine glasses and steak knives (ok, well maybe not)
• cake (to complement the brownies Judie is going to supply!)

more to follow soon...............

Teddy has a name...........

Thank to to all who took part in our name the bear competition on Facebook. It was a difficult decision to pick the best and he is too small to have lots of middle names!!!

...and the winner is, champagne glasses at the ready...........

Ginny - as suggested by Denise Logan. Denise has won a trip in Martha, a mutually convenient date to be chosen ( or basically as soon as Martha is ready), formal dress not required and bring your AA card!

Booking, booking, booking.........

It was Tummel Tourist travel agency at the beginning of the week, lots of paper, 2 iPads, credit card and a good since of humour.

The 2 iPads were to avoid cookies which we were told were a bad thing when booking flights etc, we normally love cookies, especially chocolate chip but we were happy to go with the advise on this occasion. 

We've booked the ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge on the Wednesday. Do you know if you google Zeebrugge to get the spelling the second suggestion is for the Zeebrugge ferry disaster of 1987. Kind of glad we chose the RNLI as our charity!!!

Flights were booked back from Nice to Edinburgh via Stanstead on the Monday.  Not that we are making the journey longer so we don't get back to being sensible parents too soon!!! 

We then looked at accommodation, which ranges, to quote the bible from camping to swanky pants! 

We are going for the camping option! Do you know how much wine and cheese we can buy for the extra expense of a hotel!!!!

At this point we realised that we can both barely speak English let alone any of the Languages of the countries we will be passing through! Belgium,Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monte Carlo and France!

Fortunately the bible has a list of 18 useful phrases in German, French and Italian.  These include, I am hungry, my car broke down, can you help and I love you. I guess 'I love you' will be important to tell whoever feeds us or fixes Martha should she need it! 

Remember to check in soon for more updates

We're back........

Firstly  a huge apology for going quiet over the past couple of months. We have been beavering away behind the scenes........

A trip to collect the promotion pack from the RNLI

The MCOB information titled -  Black Forest Gateau Rally Bible 2014 became available last week. It gives all the details of the route, places to stay, check in points, disposal of cars (very good section as long as you speak fluent French - help!) and most importantly dress up details and socials.

Our favourite part is the Monaco F1 Race Circuit Map - can't wait to drive around there! We will publish the top speed we get out of Martha! 

After much debate we have decided to track our route with 'map my tracks' or similar so you can see how many u-turns and wrong routes we take.

Details of the routes, arrangements and fun stuff that is happening will be blogged over the next few weeks.

A huge thank you to everyone who has sponsored us and our two main sponsors, these logo's will look great on the car. Please keep sharing this blog and encouraging your friends to donate. There is still a lot of space on the car for more company logos

And

Money, money,money.............

.......always funny, in the RNLI world.

Well, what can we say other than  THANK YOU (not for the music) but for the awesome donations

We are now sitting at a total of £420 for the RNLI. 

A big thanks to the individuals and 

Who generously donated £150, looking forward to adding your logo to Martha

also 

Who donated a massive £250! Bonnet for you Marcus (and thanks for 'encouraging' others!)

The RNLI have been really grateful of our support and we have received many lovely emails from them.

Please keep giving, there is still lots of space on Martha for advertising or just give a few pounds if you can.......

 http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/Tummel_Tourists 

More coming soon

.....and then there was three.......

A trip to Costco to purchase some plastic cups and plates for our journey proved to be very interesting! 

On our journey we were planning the things we may need and what we would absolutely have to bring back with us, coming home from Nice on a budget airline and too mean to pay for hold luggage influences our packing.

I mentioned having been in France last year I have a lot of what is needed to be legal on the French roads - yellow vest, alcohol breathe tasters etc.

"Ah but we are not going into France" states Jo!!!  At which point the decision is made, I will be the navigator and Jo can be the chief mechanic, she has the duct tape after all! 

I might add that I was so busy winding Jo up about not knowing Nice was in France I managed to go into autopilot and take the road via the airport rather than staying on the M9, M8 then onto the by-pass. I covered my error by explaining I was going to Morrisons at the Gyle for fuel! Don't tell Jo

During coffee and cake in Ikea we decided two things

1.       If we don't stop eating cake we will need 2 seats each on the flight home

2.       We should perhaps take someone else along with us 

So here he is, our faithful friend. He will be photographed at lots of exciting places through out our travels. He's much more photogenic than we are...no comments please....

Unfortunately he doesn't have a name. Can you please help name him. We are going to run this as a Facebook competition with an 'excellent prize'

 More coming soon.......

RNLI needs you money!

Hi

We have now set up our charity page. Any small amount would be greatly appreciated.

RNLI are a charity that saves lives at sea. 
In order to keep the fleet of over 330 lifeboats in service, the RNLI has to raise over £145M each year to maintain the service, which can see lifeboats launch around 9000 times and rescue around 8000 people.

A worthy cause if you've seen Jo in a boat! (Sorry pal!)

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Tummel_Tourists

Meeting Martha

Very exciting day.  After a walk round Comrie with the dogs and a planning meeting as we walked (oh, actually we were planning whether to eat our cake before or after lunch!) we went to visit Martha,

Martha is our trusty steed, well 2004 Suzuki Alto automatic! She is in amazing condition just needs a rear axel and a few other repairs. 

Comrie Garage t/a MGK Motors has kindly given the car and offered to do the work if we source the parts. How awesome is that, thanks so much Louise and Michael 

Martha has a CD player for our tunes and 2 cup holders in the front (unlike other people's car who only have one, you know who you are!!!!)

Convincing the families

Convincing the families

Fairly easy, we discovered if you talk a lot, quickly while handing out glasses of wine (even to the kids!) that everyone stops listening and as you hand over the glass look up at you and say 'yes'.
That was good enough for us so onto the website to register!!!

Register for the event

Should have been an easy task but being stingy Scots we were fully aware all 'girl' teams got a £50 discount. Oh what to do! Do we wait until the all female category is up and risk not getting a place or 'man' up and pay the full amount!
As you've probably guessed we paid the full amount. We did however email the organisers who very promptly refunded us, I think the money went into the 'eat as much as you like on the ferry' fund!

More to follow...... please keep looking

Hi everyone

Thanks for looking at our blog.

As you've probably guessed we are taking part in the Monte Carlo or Bust Rally. There are 2 routes this year but we are going for the June date as it is called 'Black Forest Gateau' . It is important to know this as 'cake' always features highly in everything we do!

So, what's it all about..........

Buy a car for £250 or less and hit Europe’s greatest roads and cities for 3 days to Monte Carlo.  Complete challenges, laugh lots and maybe raise some cash for your favourite charity (RNLI in our case)  Monte Carlo or Bust is the ultimate European banger rally adventure.

Find out more on the MCOB website

So what do we do first

• Convince the families they could do without us for just under a week.
• Register for the event
• Look for a car
• Organise donating to the RNLI