It all kicked up with an obscene 5am rise. Already it was warm and the sun was streaming in. At 6.15am I was at the airport, expecting the same long stand for security as I experienced the last time I flew out for a car (the 406, circa Nov '21).
But not this time! At 6.30am I was standing in the departure "lounge" facing a 2 hour wait on a hard metal chair.
The flight was cramped and I could not make out a single word the flight attendant said over the intercom, but, hey, a £45 flight with Easyjet - what did I expect? Standing in the pickup spot in Manchester airport, I had a long wait to hear a welcome burble approaching, and I jumped into the correct - sorry, I mean the
right - side of the car. Off we drove to his borough and a carpark so I could poke my head under the bonnet and bumpers of the car to inspect the usual weak spots. Satisfied, we did the paperwork, and I handed over lots of paper money. I'd had some cash dolla's set aside for quite a while, ready for when I found one of these cars.
And off I set with a grin.
And every time I looked across my dash, that grin just widened even more.
Finally I have my very own...
A true trial of fire, I set off in this unfamiliar car, advised of all it's little foibles and issues, right into south Manchester weekday traffic. But with the help of the gogglemaps satnav on my tablet I plotted a scenic course over the moors to my next stop.
On the way I had to fill up of course, and as I tanked the car, I mentally prepared myself. This was going to be hundreds of miles and I was expecting / budgeting for about 18mpg highway. Ouch!
The first stop was an old friend, who I only realised when I was half an hour out, I had totally forgotten to tell him I was coming over! I'd been talking to him recently enough but hadn't actually told him my schedule, indeed even what day or what week I was going to be over. However it worked out OK, he was just heading home and got there not long after I did.
We chatted a while, had some lunch, and loaded the car with some wheels for the 406 he had picked up in the locality for me a few months previous. (And, while I was there, just before I left, the red parts for the Bini arrived at his house, conveniently!)
So then he wanted to go for a drive up into the moors again, which of course I was happy to do. And then the challenge came. "There's no way 155bhp could provide oneself with a stylish getaway!"
Well, hold my non-alcoholic beverage good sir, and make sure to have your cameraphone activated.
And that's when we discovered that it was definitely not equipped with a posi-track!
But what length!
Time it was to go and get off to my next pitstop, which was dinner and picking up more car parts a little ways north-west of Northampton. I had another car I wanted to go see in the area but smoking tyres had taken up a fair chunk of afternoon so I was tight for time by this point. I did however have a dirtjump bike to go collect, in Wellingborough. In my head I have travel times worked out and reasonable locations for English towns, but my allowance of half an hour from Northampton to Wellingborough did not include that I was actually 20 minutes further NE than NN1, and the bike was actually on the far east side of Wellingborough. Dope!
So that took a good hour each way and at that point I realised I really needed to hammer it.
Realistically I needed to be at the ferry in north Wales in three hours, and I was 4.5 hours away according to Susan. Susan then took me onto the M6 - and I realised I was never, ever going to make up any time.
Not with constant section closures and single file traffic. I ducked off the M6 altogether and tried going up the slightly more interesting route of Telford, Oswestry, Chester - but it was hopeless, I was going to arrive for my 2.15am sailing at 3.30am.
Which I did, eventually.
I knew this from about 11pm, but when I tried to call Stenaline to rearrange it, I found that their call centre closes at 11pm. Bah! So I had to resign myself to having to book again in the terminal in the morning.
I was exhausted when I got to the port. I'd been on the go from 5am Wednesday to 4am Thursday. I slept in the car until about 6 or slightly after, and waited in the ferry terminal until it opened at 7 or 7.30am.
I explained what had happened to a lady there, and she asked for my booking number. Before I had even had a chance to pull my wallet out, she had changed my sailing to the 9am one at no charge and sent me on my way! THIS is why I ALWAYS use Stenaline. Unparalleled service.
Just look at that view!
The ferry workers were so impressed they gave me my own lane.
Or maybe, they expected an old noisy car to not start again, and kept me to one side so I wouldn't block their boat up lol!
I got about an hours sleep on the ferry. Not my usual four, because it was so sunny and warm. But I least I could get some hot breakfast.
And then I was off, into Dublin.
And my next problem was fuel. Having driven through Wales in the wee hours, I hadn't stopped early because I was trying to make the ferry, and when I realised I couldn't do it, at that point all the petrol stations were closed (or inaccessible due to yet MORE roadworks).
So there I was in midday Dublin traffic (not the easy 6am traffic if I had made the earlier sailing), and my tablet could not pick up any roaming signal, so I had no Susan to tell me which unsigned road to take. I know the North side of Dublin a bit, but I was going south, and I had NO idea how to get through. There was one road I had been relying on, the only one I knew, that would take me down the coastal side of Dublin and meet up with the southernbound motorway. But it was blocked.
So, with the fuel reserve light boring directly into my brain, I picked my way up, down, across and netherward until I found the N11, and turned southwards. My internal navigation compass stood me well as usual, and even better then I soon came across a petrol station, and all those Euros I'd been carrying with me finally got used for go-go juice. But wait, I'd not filled up for hundreds of miles. What kind of trickery is this?
Off I set again into the gorgeous Wicklow mountains.
Except I couldn't enjoy the view. On the big English roads, I'd been ok. A small amount of town driving had been manageable. Dublin was tight for turning space but the lanes were wide enough, and the main roads again were spacious.
But once I got off the main roads and onto the village lanes and headed through Ovoca valley to a mountainside lodge, I started to think I had
really brought the wrong car. Like
REALLY wrong.
And when I started winding my way, finally, after what seemed like endless hours (probably 40 minutes!) of being shaken around in my stiff suspension'ed car, trying constantly to stay within a narrow lane, avoid tractors, potholes, trees and ALSO still having no idea where I was going and figuring it out by sheer willpower (like, genuinely, I didn't even know the address of where I was going, only the village it was NEAR and a picture of the lodge which told me nothing other than it was high up and surrounded by trees) - after all that, fairly stressful, trip I then discovered that my car was too long to turn around the corners on the lane up to the lodge!
But, at least it presented a moment when I was FINALLY able to settle myself and grab a photo of one of my dream cars, that I'd been hooning around in for quite some many miles now.
I pulled up to the lodge. The folks I was meeting there knew I'd be arriving in something different. They'd been told nothing only that "you'll know it's me". And just in time for dinner at 5. Well, not before they gave me a job setting up the sound equipment / system for the conference because someone else hadn't showed up in time. So no naptime, until I collapsed at about 11pm that night.
Was it worth it?
Well, the next morning at breakfast, the car was hot topic.
"Nice TransAm!", they said.
*Sigh.*
