miles completed since 11am thursday using 2.5 tanks of diesel.
Here's hoping she copes with an august bank holiday M25 on our final
leg back to oxfordshire!
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Welcome to the founding team of the Boomerang Rally's official blog. Here you'll find news of Brad, Katy & Ross's 5 day, 1900+ mile pan-European Boomerang 2011 adventure...
Here's hoping she copes with an august bank holiday M25 on our final
leg back to oxfordshire!
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So we're now sat in Coach 3 waiting foir the train to fill up, the
support car is in Coach 25 1/2 a mile away!
The next blog post should be from blighty!
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Current temporature inside the espace is 33 degrees.
We'll keep you posted!
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We averaged 42mpg on our first tank, which got us to austria! Austrian
petrol is the cheapest so far, liechtenstein the most expensive and
even the swiss is approx 1p cheaper than uk!
TomTom is saying 259miles to our hotel in luxembourg, ETA (without
stops and traffic!) Is 1300. Ross is driving first, then Katy, Tim and
finally brad.
Clutch is still 'sensitive' when pulling away, but doesn't appear to
be getting worse from what we can tell.
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Then one minute later we ran into a roadblock! They took our passports
to run a check for five minutes, the other cars got waved through!
Thank god we'd got the vignette on the window as its a 500 euro on the
spot fine!
I'm writing this from austria, 1 mile from the leichtenstein border!
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Hopefully the next post will be from another country...
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We've sent mike off to investitage with his high vis vest on...
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So timmy is now at the wheel, TomTom is saying straight ahead for 64
miles (the record so far is 135 miles without a turn after we left
frankfurt) so austria here we come!
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No mechanical issues to report besides the the clutch starting to slip
in first, if u keep the revs down its ok. Coolant temp working as
expected.
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Our nerves were tested when ross got behind the wheel for his first
taste of an autobahn and the coolant temperature flirted with the red
zone, queue a nice stint in the slow lane to let her cool off! We'd
been pretty lucky with traffic and did the 375miles in good time, the
only real problem was the rush hour traffic in frankfurt, and the
espace's clutch wasn't happy pulling away in 1st. Hopefully that was
just the heat and the effects of a long days drive.
The journey to calais went well and we all managed to get on an
earlier eurotunnel shuttle and were in calais an hour early. We
promptly checked it and then walked across to find a bar at cite
europe. After some quick price comparisons we settled on 8 pint jugs
of lager to quench our thirst!
So back to today... We've had a bit of a result, turns out there's a
sailing, beer and music festival on the banks of the river which is
right outside our hotel so we're all now enjoying a half litre of
german lager watching the sun go down...
Let's hope tomorrow goes just as well.
Driving Log for the day (1hr each) Tim > Katy > Brad > Ross > Tim
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You have to admit Google are good! They launched latitude a few months ago which allowed you to share your location with friends. Last night i noticed they’ve opened it up so that you can share it with anyone (provided you accept the world of privacy disclaimers!) so i thought why not use it for the rally allowing people back hope to follow our progress ~ or lack of it ;)
It works by installing the latest version of Google Maps on a mobile (in this case Ross’s blackberry) which then uses either the cell location (accurate to within 0.25 to 5 miles depending on how many transmitters are nearby) or in our case GPS (accurate to within 3 meters)
I’ve added five maps at varying zoom levels to a new page on the boomerang rally site which you can find here. Enjoy!
Below is our current location (see link above for more detailed maps)
Having been let down by technology in the past i thought it a good idea to invest in something a little more old fashioned as a backup, so thanks to amazon a nice big 2009 European Road Atlas is on its way.
However because I'm an idiot and left it so long to order it i missed out on the free super saver delivery option, otherwise its bound to have arrived at home when we were in Calais!
Hopefully TomTom will stand the test of our adventure but you never know…
Anyone who’s seen her will agree that the eSpace’s beauty really is something to behold, however since the paint job there’s been one thing stopping her from looking her best – the rear number plate.
In fact it was so bad we got an MOT advisory notice for it!
Ross and myself were in Halfords on Sunday and armed with the V5 and a Debit Card acting as ID we decided to splash out on a new one (£13.89). Also it means we don’t need an unsightly GB sticker for other EU countries ~ annoying we still do for Switzerland :(
Before: | After: |
And for those who want a close up…