We are of the opinion that the car was owned by someone who didn't take it above 50MPH and kept it very low revs. Our educated guess was that the car had about 50% of the horse power it left the factory with. Rather a worry at only 105,000 miles. 105,000 miles turned over as we were nearing Dover The ferry was excellent with the Channel like a mill pond. It was at this point that Alec realised that he had left the paper part of his driving licence at home! However having accepted that our chances of getting into Slovenia were now very remote (not having a log book to show), we were then informed that we do not need the paper part. Panic over!-- We met with about four other teams and the organisers on the ferry, so followed them to the hotel in St Omer. Some very interesting decoration appeared. The best was an artexed Rover 214 that has been decorated and a Citroen Xantia that has been covered in “Green Grocer” grass! An old Escort painted in the 1980's Rally Colours of Martini sponsorship was quite impressive. The ‘best' car is by far a Volvo 740, M Reg, although it appears a bit too good to be worth a £100! However, rumour has it that the big cars do not like the Alps . We will wait and see. We all went for dinner together at a pre booked restaurant and were served beef, which later transpired to be horse! Early night, ready for the start tomorrow morning.

DAY 1 St Omer to Koblenz - The day started with formal registration and filming of the off. Most people checked over their cars and the Citroen (running on a mixture of diesel and vegetable oil) need quite a bit of hydraulic fluid. Good luck to them in the long run. We checked ours over and despite fearing that we had a major oil leek, the levels on all fluids were fine, after 280 miles; not bad. -We were given our challenge for the day and the address and local map of the next hotel destination. -Quote of the day was from a team who enquired whether they would need a European Road Atlas! Yes you do. All we get is the destination. The car started on the button, but struggled to 70MPH whilst warming up (for twenty minutes!). We planned a route and within three miles were on the wrong road. However, this turned out to be a better route so we stuck with it. At the first stop we fuelled up for the first time. We had a quarter of a tank left, but the car certainly runs more smoothly, the more fuel we have in the tank. 358 miles on the first three quarters of the tank. We stayed on motorways until we got past Liege . The car was Ok, but 80MPH is about the best you can do and every now and again it suffers from what appears to be fuel starvation and gets very shuddery! Our approach to this is to turn up the music and solve the problem if it stops! Highlight of this part of the trip was cruising on the Autobahn to the climax of Beethoven's 9 th Symphony!

This seemed appropriate in the middle of Europe . It was whilst filming this section that by chance the organisers came by, so we stopped at the next services for a coffee. They said we were the first they had seen that day, 1pm by this time! Graeme carried on driving until we got to Eupen. At this point we came off the motorway and followed the 258 all the way to Koblenz . Fantastic scenery through the Arden forest and valleys. The roads were very tight and windy at times, but nothing compared to what the Alps would be like. Luckily the problem of overheating we discovered at Dover docks yesterday appeared to be that the socket to the fan had come off. Yes it was, as the fan clicked in whilst in traffic - more relief. We arrived in Koblenz , turned the radio off and concentrated on getting through to the hotel. No problem. Freshened up and went out to dinner. We reported with our photographs at seven o-clock. All teams score points in descending order from the winner, down to 1 point for last place. The car was very juddery on motorway towards the end, let's hope this is not a growing problem! During the tour today, we travelled through France and Belgium in to Germany.

Apparently there is a plan to patch it up this evening, however it is 6.20 as I write this, the challenge deadline is 7.00 and we are only the second team to arrive. Having finished 7th out of 11 yesterday, today’s challenge was to photograph ..(blanked for future teams). along the Rhine valley, that not only had to match the set of photographs that had been given to us, but also have to be as close to the original as possible. This was a great challenge as we travelled down the valley at only 30MPH and really saw everything in magnificent surroundings. Our result in yesterday’s challenge was a respectable seventh; not bad.We duly found all seventeen and stopped for a bit to eat in a small village called Bacharach. After this we drove on motorways to about Karlsruhe, where I then took over the driving from Graeme.Once the challenge was completed we drove the rest of the valley listening to Wagner’s Ring Cycle! We therefore did about 250 miles on motorways and the car really seems to be getting better over every mile.

At 800 miles since we left Leeds, it finally hit over a 100MPH! Also speeds of 85 to 90 MPH are now common and the car no longer appears to be juddering. As we spend more time in the car, we inevitably are learning its little characteristics and can drive round them.Having passed the Nurburgring yesterday, today we passed Hockenhiem. As a Formula 1 fanatic this is akin to a holy tour for me.Had to stop at the border with Austria to buy a motorway pass or ‘Vignette’, seven Euros for 10 days, which is the least you can get. A few miles later we reached the hotel in Bregnez, after 312 miles hard driving.Today has been exceptionally tiring, and tomorrow comes the Alps! I wonder what state we will be in tomorrow evening?

Another team had an argument with someone else and it transpired that three of the teams arrived not talking to each other! On top of this, four teams were stopped by the Police, one for over an hour, but all arrived eventually, nine o-clock being the latest. This morning started with a very nice breakfast and the organisers assessed the other teams. Eventually we found that after a good day, we have moved up to fourth place. Then we had a little pep talk from the organisers. Apparently those who stayed up late played around and put the plant pots on top of other competitors cars. Luckily I was in bed and so have the perfect alibi, but added to the fact there was quite a lot of noise and a few complaints, the organisers had to pay an extra fifty Euros for the night-oops; and they wonder why the British get a bad reputation abroad.

Quote of the day: “Are there many petrol stations on the top of the Alps?”

What strikes you about Austria and Germany is how fantastic countries they both are. The streets in the towns are spotless, the motorway verges are constantly being maintained and the people are very friendly. Anyway, our task was to take the motorway to Innsbruck and then travel down the motorway to Bolzano in Italy . Graeme drove this section to Bolzano which took four hours and was fast! Of course it was only right to do this part of the journey listening to Strauss. The roads are very windy and you have to keep up with the traffic, he was exhausted at the end of this part, where I took over the journey. This was where our challenge for the day started. Again, photographing the images for real, that we had been supplied with from Bolzano to Canazie. The scenery is more than breathtaking, and taking this part at a steady 30MPH allowed you to really appreciate the surroundings. We found this to be very hard today and only managed about 50% of the pictures. This took about two hours. Then came the biggest challenge. Up until now we had been in the lower valleys of the mountains. Now we had to cross the Dolomites through three specific passes and photograph one of us by the sign of each one to prove we had done it. Unfortunately, about an hour earlier we spotted that the car was losing a huge amount of oil. Therefore I approached this drive with great trepidation. On the way up you never get above third gear and are mainly in second with hairpin bends every hundred metres.

We found the first one, ‘Passo Sella', and as extra points were to be given for amusing shots, I decided to be photographed in only my boxer shorts by the sign. The debate quickly developed into whether we would get docked points for psychological harm to the organisers! At the top the car was very hot, but not overheating and having not really used the brakes on the way up we continued to the next destination ‘Passo Gardena'. At this sign there were a lot of people about so I decided to stay dressed. Instead I climbed onto the sign. We went back to the car and the large amount of smoke coming from the engine bay suggested all was not well! Indeed it was not. In the ten minutes we were there, a rather large pool of oil had developed under the car and, with some landing on the exhaust pipe, was rather toxic, especially inside the cabin. With a hot engine, it is impossible to remove the oil filler cap, and despite the oil being hot I checked the dip stick and felt it would probably be OK. Engineers' most common phrase is “ah, it'll be all right!” Moving off with sunroof and all windows open to clear the fumes we headed for our next destination. The pass down to the bottom was like the giant slalom! Even I felt sick as the driver and Graeme was not doing too well. You can therefore imagine how we felt when at the bottom, and according to the map, we had passed the junction we needed someway back as the village we were now in was past the junction on the map. Engine hot, oil coming out and the giant slalom ahead, we turned back with glum faces. However, it wasn't long before we started to doubt the map, so being chaps of enterprise, we pulled into a local hotel and asked them. Guess what, the map was wrong and were going the right way all the time.Therefore with an accurate map the hotel had given us, we set off. It was now half past five and both of us were starting to get concerned about the time this was taking. However the engine cooled going down the valley and we soon reached the road for the final pass, ‘Passo Falzarego'.

Unfortunately all the way up this we were stuck behind someone doing only 20MPH. We were at the top before we could pass, still being very limited on horse power, but once past we made good time. Only to find that a mile down the road was the sign we had to photograph and whilst doing this he passed us again. After a few miles of being stuck behind the fore mentioned chap and now two others going just as slowly, we reached a straight, and it was downhill! I went for it, got past the first two at which point Graeme enquired with slight concern whether I really was going for the third…..of course I was! Past safely, braking for the hairpin and into the open yonder…..no! Half a mile down the road someone pulled onto the carriageway and didn't go anywhere! Hard on the brakes….which unfortunately by this point where a bit hot! We stopped in time, but there were rather large plumes of brake dust. The brakes didn't feel that spongy, but once I was past the stopped vehicle, I decided tat the best course was to ease off the brakes-not that I really had used them anyway. The old hand brake trick came into play and now we were only ten kilometres from Cortina. Down the valley all the way, using the hand brake a lot, and very worried about oil, they were the longest seven miles of the eleven hundred we had done so far. At quarter to seven we got here. Looked at each other and sighed a huge sigh of relief. Engine off and into the hotel. We were only the second team back to have completed the course! We were amazed as we had gone rather slowly across the Alps and had been passed by most of the other teams. Perhaps they can't read a map! Especially if it's wrong! Today was the longest day so far. We drove for ten hours, but it was also the shortest as we covered on two hundred and twenty five miles. In conclusion though, today has been magnificent. Hard work, worrying mechanical issues and hard challenges, but the scenery is unsurpassed and the experience is fantastic. Dinner at the evening to come, and then tomorrow into the old Eastern Bloc! Fun.

We ate in the hotel last night and all teams returned safely. Amazing really when you consider how wrecked some of the cars were. The group in the Renault Laguna arrived first-or did they? It turned out that they didn't do any of the challenges. They have been relying on sat-nav and haven't got a map. Therefore the sat-nav took them straight to the hotel and missed out all of the passes. You see; all this technology, but you can't go wrong with an old fashioned map! Graeme and I were concerned that we hadn't done very well as we only got 50% of the photographs on the challenge, but this morning we found out that we came second yesterday and the result of this has been to bring us up to joint second place in the overall rankings. Happy days, and this has given us more impetus to do well. The first thing we did on the car today was check the oil. As you remember from yesterday we knew we were losing a lot and sure enough, upon checking the dip stick, it was below the minimum. We filled it up, and actually slightly overfilled, and set off. We travelled out of Italy and back into Austria, via the first mystery village in the challenge, Beautiful, and the weather has now turned into bright sunshine. We had to fine a particular statue. We knew this would be hard, when we found all of the teams' cars turning up and people milling about all over town. Eventually we asked in a shop and were directed to the point. This statue was in the lake! However, the description on the plate did not match the name we had been given so we asked someone else and they directed us up town. Eventually I asked the same chap again who said that the one in the lake was the one we wanted and that it just had a different name.

We decided to get out our swimming gear as points are to be awarded for amusing pictures. When we got there we found a couple of other teams who had the same idea, so we were all plummeting into the lake and being photographed around this statue. The lake was great to swim in and we all had a good laugh.

Rather than a quote of the day, the most amusing part of the day were the team who refused to get out of their car and spent two hours driving around the town trying to find the statue. As you had to walk 200 metres through houses to get there, they didn't find it and all left cursing and moaning. So it just goes to show that a walk helps you in lots of ways.

Back to the car. Having been here for about an hour and half and time to check on the oil as the engine had cooled down nicely. It actually hadn't lost much despite the fact that it is still dripping quite quickly underneath the car and smoking off the exhaust system. “Ah, it'll be alright”, I said, and off we went, with Graeme taking a well earned rest and me driving for the rest of the day. So through the border and we find Bled. Beautiful. Slovenia , what we have seen so far is very similar to Austria . We arrived at the hotel and got told that the only room they had available for us had one bed! We were not happy and spent fifteen minutes arguing the toss, as the chap, who spoke reasonable English tired to tell us that it is normal in Slovenia for men to sleep top to tale in one bed and that they were completely booked up. We actually commented during this conversation that organisers could be winding us up, but the chap behind the desk was dead pan serious throughout. As we expected that one of us would be one the floor, we set off for the room, to find the organisers hiding behind the door, wetting themselves laughing. Quite an achievement to do a wind up when it is even in your language. The room did have two beds. The challenges are being judged tomorrow as we are heading into Bled for a meal at seven o-clock tonight. Today we have only travelled 197 miles and spent large periods of time in towns, so everyone is feeling quite relaxed after yesterday's exhausting journey. The latest rankings and the nights events will be in tomorrow's report. Tomorrow we have to get into Slovakia without the log book! Here's hoping all is OK!

So far, all cars have been 'done' on the nights by one particular team. Tuesday morning, we woke up to find ours covered in the hotel's plant pots. Tyres have been let down and wind screen wipers removed. A lot of photographs have been taken of people on the cars and all is done in good jest and heart. In fact at one of the stops where we met the organisers, they were explaining how the cars were worthless and we were doing it for charity to an American couple, at which point one of them gave a hefty kick to the wing leaving a rather large dent, with the phrase: “so that means you can do this”, whack! Were we upset? Of course not, besides it matches the dent in the other wing now! Another jolly moment was when I was getting something out of the car, at which point another competitor ran up the bonnet and on to the roof to try and scare the life out of me. Unfortunately, he didn't realise we had a sunroof and had to do a quick jump, with the resulting landing bending the roof. Even after much blood and sweat, we have been unable to remove it. Let's hope is doesn't rain as there is now a gap between the roof and the sunroof. Again, no one was very concerned. Enough of all that however; what happened today?

The challenge was a rather easy one today, in that we had to photograph a landscape and an amusing photograph on the way. The landscape photos would be loaded up and voted on by the other teams. We got some fantastic shots en route, stopping at the motorway service stations through Austria and looking down over the valleys. We had gone back out of Slovenia the way we came in and took the motorway through Austria to Bratislava . We decided that we would stop at Graz , a major town about half way through Austria , as we would be able to get some nice shots in a picturesque Austrian town and have lunch. How wrong we were! Graz is a completely industrial town and to put it mildly we drove in and straight out. However, we did see some nice women whilst in the traffic jams! We therefore headed onwards and had a debate as to whether we should go to Vienna or not. The trouble was, we had been warned that it may take some time to get into Slovakia and the car was playing up considerably. I was driving by this point and the car decided to function on only three cylinders. Thinking that there may be a distributor cap or rotor arm problem, we pulled into the services for a look under the bonnet. The car does not run on this system as the leads come straight form the coil. Therefore, I thought the best fix would be either spark plugs or HT leads. So, straight to Bratislava was the plan as we wanted time to look into the problem at the hotel and hopefully get replacement parts. Twice we caught fire today! However both times were our fault! Whilst doing a steady 50MPH through the roadworks, Graeme decided it was time for a cigarette. Now to put you in the picture, Austrian roadworks are interesting to say the least. Many of their motorways are only two lanes to start with and when they do work they put you all onto one carriageway, but still keep two lanes of traffic. So they are narrow; very narrow, especially when passing a lorry and obviously there is no hard shoulder. Suddenly I see Graeme flapping about (whilst driving), he's dropped the cigarette down the side of the seat! I leap into the back as this is where our ever growing pile of rubbish is accumulating, but I can't find it, as the smoke increases! Suddenly Graeme sees a fifty metre SOS stop and dives in, all four wheels locked. He leaps out of the car and locates the cigarette caught down by the seat track.

He prises out the main part but can't get the embers, so now I am pouring water onto it. How we laughed! All of this took place in about three minutes. Now, with our ever growing oil problem, every time we stop the car fills up with smoke as it's landing on the exhaust, but whilst moving it blows clear. However, later that afternoon Graeme comments that the car is now filling with fumes whilst we are moving. Yes it was, but that was because the ash tray was on fire. So it just goes to show that smoking can be detrimental to your health! I think this should be a new government warning on the cigarette packets: “Smoking in a car can be dangerous, if you're a prat!” Whilst on the final minor roads to Bratislava we stopped to study the map in a car park and found a car that had been in a head on smash. Great! This was our amusing photo as I sprawled myself across the front of it. All ideas count at this stage as we started the day joint third and it is very tight. We were very worried about the border, as we had no log book and had been warned that they check all documents carefully. We knew we would have to blag it. We approached the border control carefully and slowly with passports at the ready, and…… He waved us straight through. That brought back the smiles. Bratislava is a dump! You really had crossed into the old Eastern bloc. Concrete buildings, graffiti everywhere and more box shaped Skoda Estelles than you can shake a stick at. We'd also hit it at rush hour. We had to get through and onto the other side of town, and had a fairly detailed map. The trouble is, they are not big on street names. We made a couple of guesses along the way and went straight to the hotel. I guess we're smarter than the average bear, getting there at about quarter to six. One team got lost and got there at nine thirty….shame! Another successful two hundred and ninety four miles. We really believe that not only can we do this, but the eight hundred miles in one day is also achievable at the end. We checked the spark plugs which seemed good and put the problem down to HT leads. Tomorrow we would go into the auto spares shop over the road and effect repairs. Everyone freshened up and had a mediocre meal at the hotel before heading into town, supposedly on the tram. The trams looked quite fun as they are about fifty years old. We had been told that you could get tickets at a petrol station over the road and so fifteen of us piled over there. No. You have to use coins at a machine, and he didn't have enough change for our notes. We only had notes as we changed money there and you get about four billion to ten pence. I exaggerate, but you get the gist. However one of the organisers started chatting to the station attendant who said he had a friend who had a taxi and would get a few more to take us in. So we all milled around outside, shivering in the cold night air, when a Skoda piled into the station at about 100MPH. Oh good! The taxis arrived! We all thought as we looked at each other panic stricken. We decided to wait for all of them to turn up so we could go in together. A while passes and one of the organisers is talking to the first driver, when he comes over with the chap's handgun!

“Look what he's got!” He said excitedly. “It works also!” Great, just what we need; someone getting shot. “Don't worry, he took the bullets out”, he said as he pulled the trigger. You've never seen me move so fast! I've seen enough films over the years, where there is still a bullet in the gun. Although there was laughing at my new found deftness of movement, everyone looked a bit pale and shocked. Luckily it was indeed empty. “Never mind” I said to the organiser, “It never hurts to have another set of prints on a gun!” Needless to say, his face drained. The taxis turned up and we all set off. We ended up in the one with the chap who had the gun! Oh joy. It doesn't stop there. He also had a base ball bat, a skull on the gear stick, rosary beads around the mirror and to cap it all…..beer! So four of us are squeezed into this Skoda, with a driver who obviously did not understand the concept of speed limits. You come to expect this in any city in the world where the driver knows the area, however there was a certain amount of leg squeezing all round when he was texting on the phone at 70MPH and didn't see the lights turn red. Smell it? I was sitting in it, as we passed the lights all four wheels locked, just as they turned green.Arriving in the centre, looking ten years older and paying an extra 25% on the original price-but hey he had a gun, we went into the town centre. The first thing that happened was that a beaten up looking seven year old boy tried to give us leaflets for the local knocking shop! Most didn't want a leaflet, but he wouldn't go until we all had one. Someone also enquired what happened to him to get the big scab on his forehead. He actually spoke a little English and told us someone stubbed out a cigar on him. A very nice town centre, but it is tiny and surrounded by an industrial estate and motorways. We ere not overjoyed with Bratislava . What was the first bar we went into? An Irish bar. Great, I've travelled 1600 miles across Europe to have a pint with Paddy McGinty! We were chatting away, when a suspiciously tall (6'3”), slim girl walked by with long dark hair. She took a shine to one of our organisers and started rubbing herself against him. Then again, how many women are 6'3”, have an Adam's apple and a five o'clock shadow. Maybe it was a fella … We had the one and set off to find a traditional bar and the local brew. We walked…and walked….and walked and ended up in the same place. However we did go along a bit and into a Mexican bar…It may not be Slovakian, but Mexico is a lot further than Ireland . The rest of the evening passed by and we all rolled into bed at about two in the morning.

Obviously we couldn't judge our own. We went over to the car spares store and indeed they were able to get hold of the HT leads we needed. Unfortunately we couldn't get them until Monday! We asked at reception if they knew of any other places and where the nearest Ford dealer was. As luck would have it, it was about two miles down the road in the direction we needed to be going. The receptionist very kindly phoned them and confirmed that they had the leads in stock. Whilst all this had been going on, people had decided that as the only challenge was to get to Krakow today, that four of the teams would do this in convoy! It was therefore decided that we would meet at the service station beyond the Ford garage as some wanted to go into a huge shopping complex on the way. We found the garage, changed the leads and set off for the parking area to meet everyone else, where we finally got on our way. It was now half past eleven! We weren't too concerned as it seemed a straight forward route to Krakow and having decided that it would be of huge regret not to go to Austwitz on the route, we knew which way we were going and felt we would be in Krakow for seven o-clock. The first half of the trip was fairly uneventful, as it was on motorway, however we did have to do one emergency pit stop, when one of the cars wing mirrors fell off and was dangling. Effecting a few repairs with trusty old gaffer tape, we were soon on our way again. A couple of hours later the road became a single carriageway …..and then the fun started. At first we thought we were stuck behind a tractor, but it actually turned out that the roads are so small and the traffic so heavy that we would be travelling at 25MPH for the next three hours, except for the few times when we reached a small section of dual carriageway. This was actually at the border as we went into the Czech Republic.

Now, the Czech Republic let itself down badly here. Slovakia , we felt on the whole was a horrible country. Bratislava was a dump and we were glad to see the back of it and quite frankly until we came off the end of the motorway, there was not a great deal of scenery to look at. At this point though we were almost out of the country and the scenery was really starting to improve with tree lined valleys and pleasant meandering roads. However, it still couldn't hide the fact that every built up area we went through, still looked like it was under communist control. As I say though, it was all improving by the time we got into the Czech Republic and joy of joys they had dual carriageways, so we were able to get past the lorries that had held us at 25MPH for what seemed like an age. The road opened up and we were able to pick up some speed, and then we came to signs that were to bring us down to 20MPH. On a motorway? No reason was given and you could see for miles. The lorries in front weren't slowing down either, but you do ease off, but not to the extent were you are going to end up with a Scania in your boot! Suddenly we see the lorry swerve and quickly we see why. Potholes. But not just any pot hole. Oh no, pot holes big enough to lose the lorry wheel down. And there were a few as the motorway suddenly became the slalom challenge at Brands Hatch and all you could see were cars flying around in all sorts of directions. Why oh why they go to the trouble of putting up signs and not just slap some tarmac in the hole is a mystery, but it was like this all the way through the republic. They obviously have no policy of filling in holes. We took a wrong turn at one point and everyone got out studying the map. Having worked out where to go we set off only for ten minutes later someone said they had dropped something by the side of the road and we would have to go back and find it. Nightmare? Well not really. We were loosing loads of oil and another team was losing litres of hydraulic fluid, so we headed back to where we roughly had been and just looked for the puddles. Quickly found them and the missing item and off we set again. Along the single carriageways in Slovakia we were next to a new motorway system being built. It was all being paid for by the European Union development funds. This is exactly, in my opinion what the money should be used for. We also have capital development money in the UK , but we also have a lot of revenue money and this keeps hundreds of people employed at Regional Development Agencies such as Yorkshire Forward. In my view, all money should be used to develop transport, communication and business parks that will then allow economic growth to take place, rather than woolly projects with questionable deliverables. If the new European States have cottoned onto this, why haven't we?

Eating was not a problem as we found several supermarkets along the way…TESCO. My goodness they have hit the market in Eastern Europe! We eventually arrived at the Polish border and again this was with some trepidation as we had been warned that they may want to look at all the paperwork again. However we sailed straight through and continued on our jolly way, much relieved that we were now in the last country and on the last leg. However it was still very slow going and two of the teams decided that they now didn't want to visit Auschwitz and would go straight to Krakow as time was really knocking on, due to how slow the journey had been. Therefore they went one way, taking the main motorway in and we continued on minor roads to Auschwitz . There was no way that we were going to get within a few miles and not visit, and although we knew we would not have much time there, we persevered. The journey at this point was down to an average speed of 5MPh and if we thought the roads in Slovakia and the Czech Republic were bad, they were so bad in Poland that on the journey to Krakow from Auschwitz , the rear view mirror became loose through the vibrations, and we weren't exactly in a hard suspensioned vehicle. I have seen a concentration camp once before, in Holland . There was not a great deal there, the most marked feature being a single railway line in the middle of nowhere that comes to an end. As we got closer I started to feel a little apprehensive. After all we are going to the site of the murdering of over two million people. Some people had never been before and were indifferent to the visit. All that changed when we got there. The sheer scale of the camp is the first thing that strikes you. You can just about see the end of the fences, having parked up at the famous gate where the trains came in. Again that eery feeling of a single railway line stopping in the camp. Inside a lot of huts still remain and we looked inside. I have seen better garden sheds and the fact that hundreds of people were crammed into these huts having been worked to the bone, with little or no food each day brings you to the point where conversation stops. Everyone went very quiet and toured the area on their own. There is a haunting view of several brick chimneys being all that remains of the sheds that were burnt as the Nazis tried to cover their tracks.

You couldn't see the boundary of this area, and this was just one site out of three of equal size. Auschwitz was a death camp. Compared to other camps where prisoners were used to work, the main task at Auschwitz was to kill people. Hundreds of people arrived in cattle trucks, passing under the sign, “Work Will Make You Free”. False hope was instilled at all times. The Nazis wanted this to be an orderly process and would not have been able to herd people in if they knew they were about to be exterminated. The people on each train were separated into those who could work and taken to the huts. The others had their luggage properly checked in and then asked to strip off and shower. Once in the showers they were gassed. This happened to seventy five percent of the people on each train load, within immediate arrival at the camp. You have a very cold feeling on this site. You can almost hear the screams in your head. It is silent except for the footsteps and low voices of people walking around and yet all you can picture is terror and evil. What makes it even worse is that the Nazis tried to cover their tracks when they were retreating from the Russians; they knew exactly what they were doing and how evil their deeds were. They were not brain washed and just doing a job for the state. They set up mass murder on an industrial scale and tried to cover their tracks on retreat. We stayed for about half an hour as time was short and vowed that we would stay an extra day next year and do the proper three hour tour of the site and the museum. We were all glad that we had taken the time to visit the site, even though it was now seven o-clock, the time we should have arrived in Krakow , which was still sixty miles away. At the same time we were glad to leave this site behind us. The next half an hour of conversation was purely about the holocaust. Anyone who gets close to this site must visit it. It is a stark reminder of what man will do to his fellow man if there is no international brake to stop him, and for those who don't believe that it could happen again, it did; fifteen years ago in the former Yugoslavia.

Now we were off and running towards Krakow along a main A-road. I have been on better made up roads with quarries. However, we eventually arrived in the city centre. Where now? Once again Graeme and I took a few educated guesses along the route and for the sixth night in succession arrived exactly where we needed to be, without having gone wrong once! We found the restaurant and was greeted with a large round of applause from those who had already arrived and successfully completed the rally. What was really interesting was that the teams who had gone straight there, had only just arrived as the motorway in and the city centre had been grid-locked. After the meal the presentations were made, and we came third! Hooray!! Our plan was to get some of the driving out of the way in the first part of the evening and break the back of the journey back to Rotterdam , for our ferry at seven thirty Saturday night. So having said our good byes we set off from Krakow at eleven thirty, saying that we would spend another day there next year to visit the town properly as the main square was one of the most beautiful we had seen on the entire trip. We wondered what it must have been like under communist control as it was very vibrant, with lots of open cafes and bright buildings. The only good thing that could be said about the communists, is that they didn't touch anything, so once the regimes had collapsed, they all had ready made tourist industries to exploit, and believe me they have done it very well. We set off the way we had come with our plan of trying to reach Dresden and book into an international hotel for about six hours sleep, but our final journey and adventure had only just begun.

The car would heat up in traffic, but never over heated, however on motorways it cooled right down to the minimum. The obvious guess you can make here is that the thermostat was stuck open, but during the day, this was not too much of a problem. We checked the oil, which for some strange reason was no longer leaking after the two hundred and seventy eight miles to Krakow . I still have no idea where this leak came from, but we had used ten litres of oil on this trip. My best guess is that it is a crankshaft seal that runs the pulleys, but why suddenly fix itself? Anyway, I digress. We set off at eleven thirty pm with one team following us and we planned to try and get to Dresden , where there's an international airport and we could book in for the night. As soon as we set off, we had problems. The car did not want to know and we struggled to get to two thousand revs with the accelerator floored. However, being aware that it did not like to run cold and being on small roads until we reached the motorway, we assumed it would warm up and we would be away. No.Indeed we got on to the motorway, but then it really started to play up, almost completely cutting out. We stopped at some services having kangarooed out of the motorway toll, which had cost us a whole pound to go through! We took time to use the facilities and left the engine running, during which time it heated up and we set off again, now getting to seventy miles an hour, But no more than a mile down the road, the temperature dropped right off and we started to kangaroo again. We persevered on, when having now lost all of our fillings and in grave danger of suffering a permanent whip lash, we pulled off to affect some sort of solution. It was now one in the morning, and it was cold! So there we were, four of us at the side of a Polish road, Gaffer taping up all air inlets at the front of the car. Oddly enough this made it look better! This actually did it the world of good and we travelled though to two in the morning when Graeme and I swapped driving as did the other team. We had now been going 18 hours and were starting to get tried. Graeme was asleep in one minute flat. I drove for an hour and we decided we would stop every hour to sharpen up. Fuel was becoming an issue. We filled up each morning and today had been no different, but now having completed close to four hundred miles we needed fuel. No problem, we were on the motorway, they are full of service stations……no! Finally with the situation starting to cause the odd bead of sweat to form on the forehead, we saw a sign; fuel, next stop one hundred kilometres. We had driven about ninety miles by this point and had not seen one petrol station since leaving Krakow. At three in the morning we duly stopped and realised that we had only gone about one hundred miles in over three hours. Mental maths clicked in and we quickly decided Dresden was off the agenda and that our best bet would be to keep the straight line to Berlin . Could we make it and get some sleep?

We set off again and drove for another hour and stopped again. At this point we decided that the chances of making it to Berlin were small and that also, we couldn't stop for any great period of time as we would never make the ferry. They say that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we were all wondering now whether or not we had been slightly over optimistic with this aim. To put you in the picture, this journey was not the mad thinking of Mr Engineer here saying, “Ah it'll be alright”, we had accessed RAC route planner before we left that said even a bad journey would take only 15 hours. Three hours in and we had only done just over a hundred miles. We were determined to get out of Poland before we stopped, so that we would then be on the well developed German motorways, but before we could think any further it started to rain. This was the last straw. We had now finished being on the motorway and were on a dual carriageway. Well, I say dual carriageway, it was tarmac slapped on the floor, not levelled and certainly no cats eyes, road markings or street lamps. Even doing the driving in shifts we were tired and simply didn't have the concentration we needed to drive in the wet on these sort of roads, so we gave in and pulled into a services. At four thirty in the morning, still in Poland . The decision to sleep for a while was taken in a nano second and within three minutes all cars had sleeping people in them. We all woke at the same time, six thirty in the morning. Despite only having two hours sleep we all felt much better, except for me who was now starting to regret the dodgy sandwich I had in the Czech Republic as I had pain! What I did notice that despite being in a silent car sleeping, nether of us were woken by, what must have been a thump, when the rear view mirror fell off during the night. Message to Ford, with a new Europe opening up, you need to increase engineering standards to cope with their roads! We stuck the mirror back on and set off, I slept off the stomach pains and an hour later we stopped for breakfast and swapped the driving, now in Germany-Hooray!! At nine o-clock we reached the outskirts of Berlin . Big deal I hear you say, but for us this was a huge psychological step as this road was now a straight line across Europe to Rotterdam . It also marked about half way. It was a few miles down the road, with everything going well and relaxation starting to creep in that……the rear view mirror dropped off. Do you need it? Yes you do! Driving on the opposite side of the road requires good mirror use and now we had lost a major one. So I tried to stick it back. It kept dropping off. So I fixed it under the sun shades. This seemed to work, until the car misfired and it fell off again. Now this may appear amusing and indeed was worthy of video footage. The team behind us were in hysterics as I struggled to handle this latest ‘challenge‘. It is amazing what you try though when in a rush. One must always concentrate on the road, especially if the passenger is concentrating on filming. I am trying to adjust the mirror to see, when suddenly I become aware that we are now pointing at the crash barrier at forty five degrees. How we laughed…not! A text message from the car behind came in: “Watching you is hilarious but now fearing for your life so do you want to stop at the next services to sort”.

Indeed we did just that, but this turned out to be fortuitous as we stopped right on the old East/West German border and took the opportunity to photograph the watch towers. We siliconed on the mirror and used insulation tape to hold it on, the gaffer tape still keeping the engine warm at the front! We had travelled across Europe thorough several countries, thousands of miles and now on the last leg if it could go wrong it did. It should also be noted we never got above seventy miles an hour again, and this car was a two litre sixteen valve. Despite being motorway all the way the scenery was excellent and the drive fairly pleasant. The day went by and we entered Holland at around four in the afternoon. Thankfully there were no more dramas and we got to the port at six o-clock. Yes hindsight is a wonderful thing, but thank goodness that fourteen hours earlier we took the decision to drive though, as with only an hour half to spare, you would not need to be a genius to calculate that six hours sleep at a hotel would have caused a slight problem. The ferry was much more akin to a cruise ship and was excellent. We got to our cabins and all showered and cleaned up for the first time in two days. Our cabin was of ‘Premier' standard. All I can say is that the others must have been sleeping in hammocks! We had an excellent meal in the restaurant and the sea was like a mill pond for the entire journey. Cabins booked to get well deserved sleep we went to bed…. At three in the morning! Here are four highly educated, professional people, and yet some of the decisions we took were verging on the ridiculous. At seven o-clock we got up and went to the cars. It took over an hour to get out of the port. It wasn't this hard to get into Slovakia or Poland . We stopped for breakfast at a coffee shop in Hull , but it was shut so trusty McDonalds did the job. We had all become good friends and living so close to each other intend to meet up regularly. As Graeme and I neared Leeds once more we both agreed that this had been a fantastic holiday. Yes we were shattered, yes we had had our worries and yes the car had been an utter pain. The thing is though that after two thousand eight hundred miles in seven days, you start to love it and get use to its several problems. It will be a shame if we can not sell it and send it to the great car park in the sky, but it did us proud and we finished on the podium. However, the test is would you do it again? You bet we will!