Team Rough Runnings triumph in 2000 mile epic
Old Mercedes wins Calais2Casablanca event
Three Leamington Spa-based car enthusiasts have won the first Street Safari Calais2Casablanca rally in an old Mercedes.
Travelling 2000 miles through France, Andorra, Spain and Morocco, the trio consisting of Nathan Gore-Brown (29), Joe Williams (26) and Kim Palmer (26) contested the challenge in their 17 year old Mercedes 190E against 70 other teams - all travelling in cars worth less than £100. Notable entrants included an old Ambulance, a Ford Granada hearse and the ubiquitous Austin Allegro.
With ambient temperatures in the non-air-conditioned Mercedes reaching upwards of 35 degrees, Nathan commented: “As we crossed into Africa, the heat was intense, and we were watching the water temperature gauge with concern at times. Overall the car performed very well considering the condition of the Moroccan road surfaces.”
Team mate, Joe added: “There were some pretty hairy moments in the African inner cities, Tanger and Casablanca. Road regulations don't really carry any meaning there, and we found navigating through the traffic very intense and quite a drain.”
“Camaraderie between teams was excellent.” commented Kim, “On an occasion where we had to stop in the Spanish mountains outside Andorra to check a wheel bearing, no less than six teams pulled over to check that we were OK.”
The rally involved daily tasks, ranging from how many different items teams could purchase for 1euro to 'number-plate scrabble' where teams had to achieve as many points as possible on a scrabble board by using letters from 30 photographed number-plates. Team Rough Runnings achieved maximum points in two of the four tasks, and completing the rally in first position winning £1,000.
Kim continued: “We have been raising money for the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance and we always said that if we won, we would donate the prize money to the cause. We have now raised over £2000 for a life-saving charity that solely operates on donations and serves a population of 1.1 million.”
Joe Payne from the Air Ambulance based at Coventry Airport, said: “We are all really pleased with the team's achievement, they have worked hard in preparing a wreck of a car for three months to embark on this unusual adventure and in doing so have given back to the community. We are very grateful.”
Congratulations lads on a superb result.
Donations to the Rough Runnings Air Ambulance fund can be made through the team’s website:
Subtle plug of my pics from there, including said merc in the layby. The picnicing family there were less than impressed when 6 teams used it as a rest stop
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerrold/sets/72157600...
Jerrold: Team "Duct Tape"
Also doing Home2Rome...
Who needs a Veyron when you have a gold Volvo....
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fraid the c2c website is offline at the moment due to an error, which will shortly result in the hanging of a techie. me.
the event did go over millau viaduct, well, most of the event did ;-) some cheeky scallies led a few teams the wrong way.
next years calais2casablanca will be a bit longer though. 5 days was hard work, even for us marshals, so next year will be 6 days or maybe even 7 days.
again, well done guys!
The money raised was part of that fun. We wouldn't have extracted it from our friends, family, colleagues, clients & suppliers just by going round shaking a bucket. Look at the publicity our sponsors have got now :P
Thanks for the photos Jerrold. Our camera had issues with the memory card that day, so we lost the photos of everyone in the layby.
Smele - it needed a quite a lot of a fettle. We spent at least three times more in parts than we spent on the car...
I am thinking why is there not more of this in the US? I heard of one event on the East Coast, was something like a 1000 mile trip....
Hmmm, think I need to start something like this on the West Coast, Los Angelas to Vancouver or something, hmmmmmmmm.....
its a way of getting an adventure without putting yourself at too much risk. the adventure is getting a crappy old car to the end. the larger adventure becomes the problems you may or may not encounter on the way there.
the other reasons people do this is because they enjoy the drive, and for some, because they enjoy fiddling with cars. it sounds strange, but some people want an excuse to get under the bonnet of a complete no hoper to fix it. its a sense of accomplishment. the vehicle may not be part of motoring history like a ferrari would be, but they enjoy troubleshooting and then fixing that car. and because the vehicle is probably a mass produced vehicle the costs are low and shouldn't interfere too badly with their marraige either.
some people do these events for charity, which is absolutely great. however, we do ask that money they raise goes directly to charity, whilst the team funds the cost of the adventure from their own pocket. most teams totally agree with our charity position on this which is a credit to them.
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Did you give that statement any thought before you posted it?
Do you by any chance live in a cave by yourself?
half the exhaust fell off our 2.0 cavalier the other day which will save us at least 10 kg on the all up weight.
oh yeah since our reg ends in NOS we thought it would be rude not to adapt some kind of nitrous oxide system!!
any advice on the folowing...
we are going to use whipped cream nitrous oxide canisters connected to a solinoid and tube. We are feeding the tube into the air box to throttle body manifold / rubber pipe. Am I right in thinking this is the best place? presumably if we feed it direct to the plenum we will by pass the throttle body and get un controllable engine rev?
this is only for a celebration run in prague so it matters not if the engine expires on use!
we will be doing it for charity of course, macmillan cancer I think!
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