07 September 2002 - Well, we nearly made it out of the country......
The first evening of our latest, and boldest, adventure, finds us in the
rather Englishly named (and appropriately named) 'Pilgrims Rest'...

It sounds Englishly named because it's, well, if we're honest, in
England.

The day started off as planned - we set off on the long road to the
arctic around midday. Then it all started to go wrong.....

The traffic was a nightmare! Leaving a good 6 hours to get to our ferry
for a journey that would normally take only 4 hours... how wrong we
were....

To cut a long story short, we ended up in Doncaster, a mere 135 miles
from our ferry, with just an hour to go..... what a nightmare! With a
top speed of 125 the obvious decision was to sod it and find a Burger
King (It was 6pm and we still hadn't had breakfast!)

Realistically, it wasn't going to be possible to make that sort of time
up, so a decision had to be made... Dan suggested forgetting about the
Arctic, and going to Sicily instead, but Alex pointed out that this
mission had been planned for nearly 8 months and there was no turning
back now! Since the next ferry was not sailing until Sunday, the
prospect of spending two days in Newcastle wasn't particularly
appealing. We had to make a quick decision. Two days in Newcastle, or
drive back to Dover. So we set off for Dover!!! No contest...

Those of you who have known Alex for some time will be aware of the
'Froom Factor'. Never before has this been more evident than today.
Having made it back to London from Doncaster (ooh, what a fun day!) we
ran out of petrol. Dans fault entirely - I quote "nah, we can make it to
the next petrol station...'

So, here we are, writing this report, in Ashford.... We didn't even
manage to leave the UK...! 9 hours in a Mini, bad backs all round, a
pathetic 350 miles covered and still only 40 miles from home.

Arse.

Stop laughing...

More soon...

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