Day 3 on the White Hat Rally

Day 3 on the White Hat Rally

I had slept like a log but is was still an early start and I really did not want to move when the alarm went off; still the evening before had been a laugh. After last night shenanigans the first thing I noticed when I opened the door was that Bailey and K had obviously decided to get revenge for Dad’s prank by moving a table and statue in front of our door which had to be negotiated before showering.

We went across the road to the posher half of the hotel for breakfast, for which I also indulged in copious amounts knowing that you are never sure when or what you are going to be able to eat later on the road.

During breakfast our table was approached by a random couple of foreign backpackers who asked to see our room keys. In my still pre caffeine hit addled state I was just confused by this request and complied, as soon as they saw our key they gave a nod and made some weird veiled threats about us “knowing what this is about”. I was very confused but shrugged my shoulders and continued eating.

Naturalement I was the last to finish my food and as I was walking back past reception to our side of the hotel, I saw the same two backpackers having a heated row with a poor old boy on reception who looked harangued and harassed. As soon as they spotted me they started pointing and yelling in foreign, I just shrugged my shoulders, said that I didn’t know them from Adam and continued past them to an aggressive shoulder bump from the male half of the couple.

I packed up and got ready to check out, half expecting the couple to still be at reception when I finally got there, which they were not, thankfully. I found out their issue from the old guy on reception; apparently they were complaining about noise created by furniture dragging and expected a free room out of it... Obviously they identified us by the room number on our key and the fact that we must have made the noise as we would surely drag a table in front of our own door before going to sleep. I didn’t hear Bailey and K anyway, but, as Dad later opined, they didn’t make any complaint at the time so had no real leg to stand on. They also didn’t help by massively exaggerating and being the only people to mention it on our floor; apparently we were doing it all night from midnight till 5am. Yea. OK. I think I spent a combined total of 15 minutes awake in that hotel the whole trip! My personal opinion is they were just hoping to get a free bed for the night when they spotted the furniture in front of our door.

Oh well, it was a beautiful sunny Mediterranean morning weather-wise, a very nice change from the previous two mornings. It was also ideal for the impromptu photo op organised on the Piazza the previous evening.

Bailey and K set off to fetch the tank while I mourned the thought of photos without our charismatic winged stallion atop the Tank. But when they pulled up they opened the boot to reveal… Pegasus intact! Those utter gits had been yanking my chain! I was so stupidly happy that Pegasus was whole that I wasn’t remotely annoyed with them for the prank :-) Anyway we got it remounted and drove onto the Piazza for the overly lengthy photo shoot, before we headed off in an attempt at replicating the convoy success of the final stage on the previous year’s rally.

 
In the Tank we were designated pace setters and convoy leaders, with our trusty (!) Satnav taking us in the wrong direction as soon as we headed off, telling us to right to do a U-Turn in the next junction, it did at least present a drive by opportunity with the water guns we had packed for such an opportunity! Managed to hit one of the teams right in the kisser, and got several others damp :-)

K checks the radiator for the umpteenth time

Again, Switzerland is a truly spectacular country and there were some amazing views over the glacial lake towards the Swiss alps while we climbed up some steep terrain which would be considered mountainous in Britain but was merely a hill in local terms.

Unfortunately our convoy did not last too long with the pace we set being too slow for a lot to stick to. We also took plenty of convenience stops which some became impatient with. Some embarrassing exposure due to a malfunctioning toilet door led one team to break off in a red-faced hurry also!

None of this stopped those in convoy from having a lot of fun, and we were glad for the hot weather as the water pistols were used to good effect on anyone who had the temerity to leave their window or sunroof open within range! The stewards were no exception. Our motorcycle steward went back to pick up one of the 3Ps and a Paul’s members to do some photography from the pillion seat, and so we slowed the convoy further to let him catch up.

However, we shortly hit the Italian border crossing, where we received possibly the most studious lack of reaction to the Tank by any of the border authorities. Shortly after that, we pulled over pas yet another tollbooth to let the photographer catch up quicker and lost some more of the convoy in the process but once we got going again the convoy worked really well even if it was a little on the small side compared to the number of teams we had had in it earlier in the day.
 

 The Italians do some things extremely well, such as race cars and boring your pants off at football; but their services and the coffee they serve somehow contrived to make the French rest stops look decent. They also managed to make Londoners look like considerate and safe drivers, and this is coming for an ex-Domino’s Pizza delivery driver! :-)

The motorway we were on had roadworks which were not signed, but just abruptly had a lot of small orange cones closing a lane on the motorway. One Italian driver was obviously not paying attention to the road ahead and was caught out, didn’t bother looking and just pulled almost straight into us. Poor K was driving by this time, by far our least experienced driver, and he had to slam on the breaks, change lanes to much irate honking, and just about made it through alive without a Volvo estate in our side panel! Good driving skills to be fair, I think he was a little shook up – I know I was!

Other than that most of the journey was occupied by today’s challenge which was a series of audio challenges based on Bond theme tunes, and a lengthy quiz on “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. The only question we got wrong on the written part was what does Bond read while waiting for the safe cracker to work in the advocate’s office in Bern – several joking answers were made but we plumped for Malcolm Marshall’s (senior partner at KPMG and a driving force behind the White Hat Rally) Expense Claim. Turns out the correct answer was another equally sordid tome suggested in jest: Playboy!

Anyway, despite the best efforts of various madmen we eventually made it to the finish line at the Novotel in Mestre one piece. We still had to check-in at our hotel though, however Bailey and K, as the money earning members of our team, had flights back to Blighty to consider for the next morning so we managed to wrangle a room at the Novotel that was vacated by a team who had had engine trouble on the way from Switzerland, because it was much more convenient for the airport. Thanks to the stewards for sorting this.

Many thanks also to one of the Stewards who agreed to follow Dad and I through the interesting one way system in Mestre as we made our way to our hotel to check in. Calling it a hotel is a bit of an exaggeration; much more of a hostel really! Dad didn’t look too happy it must be said! But we at least managed to wrangle gated parking for the Tank.

We got back to the Novotel via our lift and the stewards managed a sterling job of for the award ceremony, keeping it entertaining throughout despite the absence of our Marketing Manager to the Stars who had been unable to join us due to unfortunate personal circumstances. As you may have come to expect, we won the award for the best dressed car on the rally and received a bottle of Triplewax car polish for our efforts :-)

This left the final night out in the wonderful city of Venice. I had never been and was quite excited. It started none too auspiciously though as we ended up having to divert our taxi to Mestre train station due to an accident on the only bridge to the waterlocked town centre. This left a large group of us scratching our heads at the station, trying to work out which Mestre/Venice station we wanted tickets for. We ended up giving up on the machine and joining a lengthy queue, where some members of our group tried to pay €7 for each ticket, when it was €7 for all of us, haha! We had a short wait on the platform where we worked out that we needed to validate our little ticket stubs for some reason, and then the train arrived. Much excitement was caused by a double decker train, and we had to sit on the top deck, of course :-)

After a short ride we arrived in Venice and set about finding a place to eat. The place really is amazingly beautiful and despite relatively busy crowds, street performers and people flogging what essentially amounted to catapults with an LED lighted piece of ammunition to fire into the air, creating a very pretty display all around, everything about the place gave a fantastic sense of tranquillity. The small restaurant we ended up in was also busy but had reasonable service despite this and the food and wine was high quality and good value for money. I personally had the seafood platter, which was sumptuous although the large fish still had bones in. The experience sure made me appreciate filleted fish!

After the meal we took the canal bus to St. Mark’s square, which while very pretty, was pretty overrated compare to the myriad of tiny pathways which you could get lost in within 2 minutes without effort! The group reconvened for some late drinks at a random bar, The beer and conversation was excellent and everyone, especially the organisers, were relieved by the successful completion of the rally with no major disasters

Dad and I made our way back to Mestre by bus as our hotel was near the station, while Bailey and K made their way back to the hotel.

Time for some sleeeeeep, in preparation for the next day’s marathon…

Pegasus survives the trip!

 As always, this was in aid of charity. Please give whatever you can to Childline at uk.virginmoneygiving.com/portcullis. Thanks.

Day 2 on the White Hat Rally

Ooft, another early start, and that awesome Swiss beer had a bit of a bite to it in the morning!

Standard continental breakfast affair, though having gotten a tad hungry yesterday with all the motorway driving and little in the way of food beyond that available from France’s frankly appalling motorway services, I set about getting as much in me as possible. Feeling much better, I took the first short but significant drive to this morning’s meet. Unlike the previous day, we were one of the first teams there.

Anyway, this morning’s meet and photo opportunity was at Schilthorn, the site of Blofeld’s lair in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Well technically the meet was in Mürren valley, proper chocolate box type place and with the mountains surrounding us it felt extremely surreal. Beautiful, despite the constant drizzle.

And drizzle

More drizzle

Did I mention the drizzle?

Despite the weather the rallyers were in good spirits and we got some classic shots including the now infamous one with K and myself popping our heads out of the gunner’s hatch of the Tank.

Not quite so composed in this one!

Group photo! Tank front and centre :-)

Anyway, today’s challenge was another one based on the skills of a photographer. This time we were given pictures of scenery and landmarks along the planned route, and take photos of them, with bonus points being awarded for including team members in James Bond based disguise in some photos.

As you can see, there was some effort put into these disguises at least! To fit in with our T-405, we had our Russian hats. Because of the weather, and really that drizzle was soaking us rapidly, we minimised the exposure of our suits that we had travelled back to Hatfield for on Day 0 to the elements. I volunteered to be the man jumping out and getting wet when necessary.

Thick mist and temperatures of -5º meant no one was particularly keen to visit the restaurant atop the Schilthorn, however Bailey had been to this area before with his better half, and remembered some quite spectacular “indoor” waterfalls. They were created by glacial melt and cut through the almost sheer sides to the mountains. There was a mining elevator type thing up to the most spectacular falls, and the photographers amongst the rallyers had a great time trying to get the interesting lighting conditions working with the spectacular natural beauty within the cavern. Unfortunately ours haven;t come out too well, though this one taken by Bailey of the rest of the team is good:

7 falls in one spot. Switzerland really has some cracking spots if you scratch the surface.

After trekking through the cliff we had a relaxing cuppa at the falls café while some grabbed a bite to eat. Thanks to my indulgence earlier I wasn’t quite ready! Still, today’s pace seemed to be much preferable to the previous day. Then news filtered through that some of the teams who had decided to crack on with the challenge had to turn around because the planned route along the Furkapass (lots of funny names in Switzerland!) was closed due to snow. Undeterred we decided to crack on via an alternative lower pass, because the motorway really took us out of the way, the views would be spectacular and we wanted pictures of the Tank in the snow. We also wanted as many pics as possible for the challenge, which was much more interesting than the previous day’s, it has to be said.

After getting a few challenge pics in, we hit some rallyers returning from one of the passes, who had decided to adopt the motorway route, however we stuck to our attempt at the lower pass. Again, the Tank in the snow was our main attraction. So we bravely headed up a lower nearby pass, Dad at the wheel with his years in Canada providing him with by far the most experience with cold weather driving. Boy did it get cold, I really was glad of the extra layer my suit jacket provided, and the Russian hats, while soggy by now, were still warm :-)

There were some truly spectacular views on the way up but no real chance to photograph them due to the twisty nature of the road. As we passed through ha small village we could see the fields slightly uphill were beginning to turn white, but there was no sign of the road-blocking snow fall that was apparently occurring elsewhere.

On we went, and the snow started to get heavier. Dad said he was fine, and would stop as soon as he felt we weren’t safe. Slightly less than reassured I just shut up and ignored it. However Dad did start to test the brakes so that he knew we had grip and to be fair to him as soon as he felt it skid, he got to a safe place to stop and pulled over for the photo opportunity of the trip: the Tank in snow!

Snow driving skills

K doesn't feel cold!

The Tank in snow!

Russian hats were needed!

From Portcullis with Love

Anyway, we completed the turnaround and had got about 100 metres down when we went passed a snow plough driving the opposite direction. We were tempted to try and follow it but were wary that it may just be clearing a path between villages and not clearing the entire pass. Then we hit some rallyers who had had a similar plan to us – 3Ps and a Paul again! We told them of our troubles further up the pass and they decided to turn around and join us in a mini convoy.

Anyway, we hit the valley floor and sorted ourselves out with some fuel for the much lengthier motorway journey ahead, and refuelled our bodies at one of the landmarks, a diner with a great view along the valley floor and river. 

 

Turns out the 3Ps and a Paul also enjoyed childishly sniggering at Swiss place names and motorway exit signs (Ausfahrt) and had a walkie-talkie so we could spot them for one another as we drove in convoy.

Of course, once we had this plan the amusing names started to dry up, so after the hundredth titter at Ausfahrt we embarked on possibly the lengthiest game of multi-car eye-spy ever. Which, when large parts of your journey is ensconced in tunnels, can get fairly pernickety. Talking of tunnels, god are they hot in there! No use opening a window for breeze either as they you get cooked and fumigated by the atmosphere.

Eventually we hit what seemed to be the longest tunnel ever, and having gone through epic amounts of rain and a good deal of snow we now hit beautiful sunshine. 

The day really was, as Crowded House sang, like four seasons in 1 day.

The joy of bright sunshine after that long tunnel and drizzle filled day could only be mildly dampened when we hit a lengthy queue of traffic as we drove on towards Locarno, past some kind of skydiving event. As we hit the aerodrome we happened upon the cause of the queue and it was a Citroen with English plates on it… then we noticed the Rally stickers and realised it was one of our fellow teams in dire straits!

We pulled up down the road and ran back to see if we could help at all but apparently the other team had been taken to the nearest police station for questioning. So after a short period of heel kicking and commenting on the damage we continue on our way.

One of the last photo challenge pictures was of Versazca dam which was the site for the shoot at the start of Goldeneye, so we took a short detour towards it and thankfully even this late the place was open for the world's tallest non-purpose built bungee jump!

I practically raced out of the car to get a good look at the Bungee jump, I was really looking forward to it. I was crushed when they said that the manager had gone home so they couldn’t process card payments; I only had €60 on me and the jump was ~180. Massive thanks then goes to the rest of my team who lent me the required funds to do the jump, especially Bailey who was interested in doing the jump himself but said I was obviously keener than he due to my rushing!

I went through the training which is basically how to haul yourself back level at the bottom of the jump so you don’t hang upside down, and how to catch the winch hook as they lower it to you to bring you back up.

I was surprisingly calm at the top of the jump doing my Jesus impersonation, all I could think was “I cannot wait!”, then I jump I have about enough time to think “Weeeeeeeeee” and realise that the ground is rushing towards me very quickly before the deceleration hits and I’m bouncing at the bottom. You go back up quite a  way after jumping that distance! So I bounce a few times enjoying a massive adrenaline rush, and go through the procedure to get myself back to the top. 

Back at home base I got to watch the next guy in line standing ready for his jump, he looked much more nervous than I though he wasn’t really showing it too bad. The operators of the jump were pretty cruel too they made it build up for him much worse by making him hang around longer! Haha :-)

Anyway, bungee jump achieved, we proceeded onto Locarno where our satnav gave us some ‘interesting’ directions through a series of narrower and narrower one way streets with people in glass fronted restaurants giving us some very odd looks. We eventually turned around, ignored the satnav for a bit and ended up at the Grande Piazza that our hotel was on. It looked very pedestrianised so we were nervous about taking the Tank onto it to hunt for our hotel. Dad received a call from a fellow rallyer also staying at our hotel and asked directions. He got out and waved us onward to the hotel, so we proceeded nervously.

We arrived and Dad and I got settled at the bar while parking space was found for the Tank by Bailey and K. Bad news, they told me, they’d found parking but had broken the Pegasus statue that was becoming my pride and joy as it continually survived all the conditions we threw its way. I don’t mind saying I was pretty upset!

Oh well, I made a few barbed comments but I was enjoying the adrenaline after-effects too much to take it to heart. We met up at another hotel’s restaurant with the rest of our fellow rally teams to discuss what had been to varying extents, an eventful and traumatic day for all of us. I paid for the meal as a thank-you to my team for the bungee jump, and felt adventurous so went for something I didn’t know on the Italian language menu. Turned out to be fish and rice, which was very nice, but I was very jealous of Dad and K who both got a lovely thick and juicy raw steak, with a hot stone to cook it on to themselves

We carried on drinking well into the night, and even though the centre of Locarno is meant to shut at 12, persuaded the barstaff of the hotel to keep us in for more drinking before we returned to our digs for the night.

Once back at the hotel, Dad decided it would be really funny to stick a cabinet and large vase/flower pot blocking the door to Bailey and K’s room. With that last little bit of shenanigans, we went off to sleep.

Once again, this is all in support of ChildLine, please give generously by visiting http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/portcullis Please give generously :-)

Day 1 on the White Hat Rally

Eurgh I hate early mornings but who doesn’t? Rally organisers apparently. To be fair we had a loooong journey ahead of us today and I could have had an extra 10-15 minutes kip if I’d just remembered the registration forms the day before, oh well.

It really was very wet! :-(

After registration, the first continental breakfast of the trip was consumed. Breakfast seems to vary very little depending on country (France, Italy or Switzerland anyway!) with perhaps the quality of the ham and cheese on offer being the largest variance.

Hats off to Dad’s powers of recuperation, he was a trouper and offered to drive the first leg of the morning and so after breakfast we set off for the startline via our first petrol stop, even though we had over half a tank remaining - we didn’t trust that needle!

Once we arrived at the startline to much admiration from our fellow White Hat Rally-ers, we were slightly disappointed to see that we were the only team that had really gone for the themed car design in a big way.

 

Pegausus was affixed for the startline photo opportunities it was decided to leave the thing atop our tank to “complete the look” of the Tank from Goldeneye, even if I was concerned for our wings!

 Money in the bank for the best-dressed car award.

For each day on the rally a challenge was organised. Day 1’s challenge was along the lines of I-Spy except with cameras. We had to capture cars with make or model starting with a, b, c, d…z in order on the camera, with triple points if the car was silver. I think they learned from last year’s photo challenge when our significantly larger team had a massive advantage in spotting minis (last year was an Italian job themed rally) because all cameras on the team were allowed.

So we set off on todays epic motorway journey. Christ does France have a lot of toll booths. We started off the challenge relatively well, getting A,B and C within half an hour. In retrospect perhaps we should have gone for silvers in all of the categories, but we hit a massive stumblind block on D until we saw a Landrover Defender of all things. We weren’t allowed DAF, after checking with rally control (or Nicola as she was named by her parents) no lorries were allowed apparently which we thought was most mean.

Things got interesting once we hit E, one of the most popular Es in Europe is the Mercedes E-Class, which tends to be driven by people going hell for leather, which didn’t stop Dad’s heavy right foot from trying to catch them for a photo opportunity! A quick check through the sunroof assured us Pegasus had survived but I truly doubted the wings were still there at this point. At one of the many tollbooths I popped my head out of the window for a proper look and by jove Pegasus was still standing proud and tall! I have very rarely been so happy about something so trivial! We also witnessed some interesting driving - check this and remember what side of the road they drive on!

No, this wasn't stationary!

Once we hit F we had to leave the main-road for a while due to a Satnav shortcut which avoided Strasbourg and some roadworks. Some driving along roads of actual interest resulted for Bailey which involved more than following the monotony of white lines that Dad had endured during the morning. K was handed camera duties and duly managed to miss every Ford we passed. To be fair it’s a lot more difficult to get a picture of a car coming towards you than a car you are overtaking or is overtaking you! Still the amount of pylons we got pictures of was fairly amusing. I think it was literally hundreds.

Once back on the motorway we steadily worked through the next few letters until we hit I. Flipping I! Again no Iveco allowed, not even a little boxvan. I think Nicola was getting annoyed with ouir questions at this point. Still you’d have thought you’d get an Impala or Impreza in the hours we were looking, let alone a Seat flipping Ibiza! After we finally found an Ibiza we saw another 3 in 5 minutes. MOST frustrating.

We hit Swiss border control, purchased a motorway pass (much more dignified than all those toll booths France) and completed our objective of being the first tank to successfully invade the Swiss border! A relatively short journey later, and ending as we had proceeded through the journey by missing a last gasp chance at getting a Kia for K, we arrived at our hotel.

We were staying at the top of a relatively tall building in a small town called Thun which is right next to Thuner See, a glacial Lake. On one side we had an absolutely spectacular view… down onto our car along with some fellow White Hat Rally-ers!

Pegasus still standing at the finish!

And to some mountains. Boy does Switzerland do mountains well. I'm sure we took some pics of them but frankly can't find them.

We had some time before we had to be at the evening’s bar to have our challenge photos checked so Dad & K slept but Bailey and I decided to go for a walk to see the frankly beautiful town centre

After a walk back to the hotel which seemed to take much longer than the journey to town, we roused the two sleeping beauties and headed to Town where we had some awesome food as mentioned, I had the personal food highlight of my trip: Horse steak, which as is my wont, I added an awful lot of chilli too! I think it was meant to be for dipping bread into but frankly it went on the horse steak amazingly. The beer in Thun was exceptional also, and we had a good night in the bar with a couple of the White Hat Rally teams, notably “Three Ps and a Paul” and “The Procrastinators” who had somehow (by speeding I think and therefore passing many more cars than us) managed to get to Z with almost all silver cars!

One of the funniest moments of the rally came after getting out of the Taxi, which was driven by a lady of experience, when we left the youngest member of our team to settle the cabfare and when we asked if he was OK he sounded very much like he’d had a traumatic, perhaps even life defining experience with the cab driver in the 30 seconds they were alone together!

And so, it was off to bed where I did my best to get some solid kip despite Dad’s snoring

Day 0 on the White Hat Rally

Well, the day arrived that we were to invade the continent in our beastly chariot, the Peugeot T-405 Tank (or “the Tank” for short).

Bailey arrived in the tank, much to the general amusement of our colleagues at Portcullis! The rest of the team saw the turret mounted for the first time, much admiration was made of the combined efforts of Bailey and his father in law.


Last minute additions to the car were made, Pegasus was mounted for the photo opportunity and the Russian national anthem was played as we departed gloriously towards the border.

One slight hiccup - Bailey had forgotten the “vital” James Bond tux we “had” to wear for one of the challenges specified in the pre-rally instructions. This meant we ended up going all the way back to Hatfield before heading around Dartford, to get an early tollbooth in before we had even left the country, towards Folkestone. We had our first experience of the looks we could come to expect and almost take for granted –

• The sheer shock and then amazement of some people,
• The studied blasé some (especially Londoners and Italian men!) affected after an initial surprise they couldn’t hide from their eyes
• The unfettered joy of children seeing something they may never witness again, especially the Swiss in their own land! :-)

We arrived with plenty of time at Folkestone and the lady at the gate was nice enough to get us on an earlier train than the one we had booked. We rolled up to the French border (which is on UK soil, similarly to Ferry ports) and were pulled over po-faced by some very serious looking gendarmes.

Fearing the worst, that they would take some issue to the accoutrements atop our Tank, we pulled in and then let out a sigh of relief as they all broke into smiles and started taking pictures with their camera phones. Never let it be said that the French don’t have a sense of humour, the gits!

The actual train ride was pretty uneventful, we just performed the addition of the reflective stickers to the tank’s headlights (they have those right?!?) to stop us blinding people during our night-time manoeuvres.


K requested the first chance at driving on the wrong side of the road; being the inexperienced insurance liability he wanted to get the experience as soon as possible!

This left us all to relax and not worry too much (honest) when he didn’t use the right foot quite as much as he should have done. The rest of the journey to the starting hotel in Laon was pretty uneventful with the main highlight being the most complete rainbow I’ve ever seen:

That and the sheer quantity of toll booths on the French motorways. Car-tax is positively cheap if you use the motorway for more than a couple of thousand miles a year!


We checked in at the hotel and made our way into town to register our team at the bar/restaurant nominated by the organizers, but dipstick here had left the paperwork in the hotel room so we had to get up early tomorrow to do it instead.



While enjoying our meal in the restaurant, we had our second run in with French authorities. I may have parked in a slightly illegal spot, though in my defence the previous spot I had been in was fine but Dad was too lazy to walk 30 yards uphill. I was slightly disappointed with one of the rally teams for just laughing about the police attention and not alerting us to the fact that we could be in some bother. Still, what can you expect of some of the less reputable Pentest firms, eh?


Never mind, the police saw the funny side and let us go off to park in a space now available in the nearby carpark. We ended up finishing day 0 as most future days would end; drinking in a bar before collapsing into bed and falling asleep almost instantly.

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Anyway, hope you were entertained by this post. Again, this event was in aid of ChildLine and you can still donate to them easily at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/portcullis. Please give generously, the charity does invaluable work offering counselling services for children who have nowhere else to turn. Thanks.