...Jo Backhouse's story of an epic journey in a Renault 5
My story is one of madness, insanity, blood, sweat and tears!
My friend Liz and I decided to compete in the Ramshackle Rally from Calais to Valencia via Italy in a banger in order to raise money for Water Aid. The rules of the rally were simple: Buy an old banger for £100 or less, then theme it and drive it 1500 miles in 4 days through 5 countries, across 2 mountain ranges, competing against 99 other teams.
It sounded like a distant jolly when we signed up in January of 2007. Little were we to know the carnage that it would entail. Almost immediately we were offered a free car! When anyone says the words free car just run away... The free car in question was a 26 year old Renault 5 Diesel that had been a farm vehicle from when it was new in 1986 (farm vehicle meaning used mainly off road across fields consuming only red diesel). Needless to say it was in an unhappy state and I will not bore you with the massive list of repairs it required to chance an MOT. It failed the first but with some more money, luck and new brake lines, the tester took pity on us and passed it.
Our team name was ‘gone to the dogs’ so the transformation then began. A lot of fur and adhesive later I had the dog car and some upset neighbors who also had slightly furry cars – a hazard of the communal car park I’d say!
Now for the rally itself
As soon as we got off the ferry we got lost. We remained lost for 1½ hours in Calais as the questionable sat nav didn’t appear to be able to work whilst we were moving. We called it ‘special’. In a quiet out of town Retail Park we reached our registration point one and we saw what could only be described as a breakers' yard that had gone bonkers - cars laced in fur costumes and fetching paint jobs. The rally was no longer that distant dream!
Day 1 Calais- Annecy
The was 8am at Cité Europe shopping centre. The scene: Hilarious chaos. 100 teams set out with running bangers as the horn went. Challenge 1: Find the destination of the famous monument, take a photo of our car with Diet Coke and Mento’s fountain on top. We teamed up with two mechanics called the Dudley Duo who had a map. We found the monument at the same time as approximately 50 another teams, 6 two litre bottles of coke later and a sodden R5 interior later (car had no water resistance. Rain outside = rain inside).
We were done. Our poor little car had a long way yet to go with its top speed of nearly 78mph (down very steep hills only). And on our way we went.
Tip: Never get lost on French Toll roads - we did this and it created great unhappiness for 1½ hours. During our lost time the Dudley Duo’s Granada dropped its guts out leaving a trail of gearbox oil up the motorway - needless to say they were out. The rest of the drive was long with only a ropey map of France we made it to register our score at around 10pm.
Day 2 Annecy- San Remo
Our battery fried itself and welded itself to the body within 10 miles of the start point which was a useful start to the day. After finding where the strong burning smell came from and with some help from some passing teams we found our destroyed battery and levered it off of the body with a crowbar. A hearty push start and we were away. About 10 minutes in to the journey the poor R5 stalled in a tunnel when we attempted to turn our lights on. A rolling shunt start from our new friends in the pink Escort cabriolet and we were away. We merrily traveled together sharing many a shunt start along the way. The trouble came when we got caught in a traffic queue for the tunnel through the Alps. Both cars were very hot, the pink Escort’s engine fan rusted off and fell out in Calais and ours hadn’t come on!
Crawling up a mile of steep hill was enough for our bangers to overheat. The tunnel fire brigade refused entry to both of our vehicles so we had to cool down and go the long way through the mountain pass.
Within an hour we had overheated again this time we used alpine waterfall to fill our radiators. After deciding our battery was obviously knackered we fitted our spare. The rest of the day consisted of playing the radio loudly, beeping, barking and generally using lots of power. It was during the last ½ an hour of our day's travel that it became apparent that we had a problem. I couldn’t seem to see the motorway very well and it just got darker and darker. It was then we knew. Our alternator had also fried itself, for the remainder of the journey we relied on the pink escort to drive in front of us so we could follow. By the time we pulled in to San Remo the R5 stalled in motion, so the lights had to be turned off. Good job that the city was well lit!
That was the start of a painful epic of relentless battery and charger smuggling in to our hotel rooms.
Day 3 San Remo-Perpignan
This was not a good day. We could not do the challenge, which would have involved stopping; we missed driving the dog around Monte Carlo, and we only turned the engine off once (Stopping for diesel) in the whole day, through the sheer terror that it might not start again. Day 3 was very hot and very dull. Drive, drive, drive, motorway, motorway, motorway, hot, hot, hot, no radio, no fans = no fun.
Day 4 Perpignan– Valencia
Day 4 was great. The challenge was motorway snooker (taking photo sequences of various colored cars). This we could do without stopping. We purchased a spare battery at the start of the day which meant that we could relax a little, although purchasing a battery in broken French can be complicated. The weather was scorching hot (not forgetting that electrical items were banned from use/gaffa-taped to prevent accidental usage). When we drove through Barcelona, the temperature in the car reached 40 degrees which was definately too hot!
The Dudley duo returned from the dead in a hire car so we followed their working sat nav. By this point in our adventure the R5 was beginning to show signs of tiredness. Apart from the obvious lack of electrics there were a few other concerns; the exhaust was literally hanging off, starter motor noise when starting, sad whining noise in 5th above 70mph, seats had no foam left so caused horrible back/ buttock pain, foam had turned to dust - not good for lungs, driver's window wouldn’t close, and the bathroom latch fitted to the front passenger door to act as a lock had fallen off. Aside from that the R5 was fabulous and the old faithful took us to Valencia as planned!
Day 5-8 Valencia - Home
With the rally successfully completed the other teams merrily scrapped their bangers. Unfortunately for us our job was far from over, we were both under pressure to start our new teaching jobs in 5 days! This meant that we endured a further 2 days of non stop pain and motorway brain death before we could catch a ferry home. I believe they call it character building.
The highlights of the rest of our journey were as follows; the fur covering the driver’s door coming off on the motorway, driving for a whole day of rain with no windscreen wipers (only allowed to be used when we genuinely couldn’t see any more), nearly running out of fuel, staying in ‘the Shining hotel’, filling the R5 floor to ceiling (and on laps) with alcohol to take home, and the battery/alternator warning light finally coming on when we drove off of the ferry in Newhaven!
Well that’s our story. It cost us far more than we had ever anticipated but was a real adventure and we did raise £610 for Water Aid. The R5 was stripped back and is now being used as a vehicle again on the farm that it came from. What a legendary little car?! And I’m already thinking about the banger rally of 2008!
Jo Backhouse
Jo's photos can be seen here (click on any thubmnail to get to the album):
excellent the photo album the last picture after all it went through just like the mini adventures
