Choosing a Banger Rally, Things to Consider!

You’ve all heard of “Holiday Horror Stories”, well the Motoscape team have heard their fair share of some real “Banger Rally, Horror Stories”! Be it from people who have taken part in rallies that have been poorly organised, had very few teams participating, or even rallies that have not even then taken place but organisers have happily took peoples registration money!

With this in mind, we have been asked by various people for advice on how to choose a legitimate banger rally. Here are a few pointers before handing over your hard earned cash to any banger rally organisers:

Continue reading

Why are we doing this? – Team M & M’s

Following on from our previous blog posts from Team Grayson & Team ASDA, here’s an introduction blog from another team on this years banger rally, M & M’s.

Here’s why Michael & Michelle are taking part in the Motoscape Rally, have a read below and check out their car below:

Towards the end of last year we decided that we wanted to do something different in 2012 and raise money for a charity in the process.  We are now in the process of getting the Alfa ready for the Motoscape rally in September which involves travelling through 10 countries across Europe in 7 days.

https://www.motoscape-rally.co.uk/

We will be selling advertising on the car with all proceeds going to http://www.naomihouse.org.uk/

Naomi House and jacksplace are hospices for children and young adults that provide support to children and young people with conditions that mean they are unlikely to live to become adults.

The charity provides care to families and young adults living in communities across the seven counties of Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Surrey, West Sussex and Wiltshire.

Alf…The Alfa

We have owned the car for about 10 years, but due to the Skyline taking preference in the day to day drive to work the Alfa has been parked up for the last 4 years, under a car cover very neglected.

This rally was the perfect time to bring him back to life. So last month March 2012 we uncovered him (Just to set the record straight, Michael would like to think that Alf should be a she, but as he has had a lady owner all these years he is obviously a he!). Anyway, in March we took off the very old faded cover and hooked up a battery.  Would you believe it, he fired up straight away.  This answered our question as to should we take Alf across Europe or by an old banger!

We are now in April, Alf has been washed all moss and mold removed and, taken up the yard to have some much needed maintenance!

You can follow M & M’s rally process at their blog page and donate at the links below:

http://mandmmotoscape.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.justgiving.com/mandmmotoscape

If any teams would like their story featuring on our blog, please email us at [email protected] and we can discuss.

Good luck with the fundraising, and stay tuned for our blog coming soon on fund raising ideas.

The Motoscape Team

First Blog! – Team ASDA

Following on from our blog last week from Team Grayson, here’s an introduction blog from another team on this years banger rally, Team ASDA.

Here’s why Scott, Darren and Lewis are taking part in the Motoscape Rally, have a read below:

OK, so here it is! The first Blog of many (Hopefully)! This is the start of my 2012 Adventure! At the end of last year I came up with this wacky idea of doing a banger rally, cos y’know, it sounded like a good idea at the time. So here we are, 3 months down the line actually properly starting it! We are registered on www.motoscape-rally.co.uk under ASDA. (yea, I know, I’m sad, I had to put something though!) Hopefully will get that changed soon enough. Anyway, as I was saying, we are 3 months down the line, registered and now looking at raising £10000 for charity. Tickled Pink, Everyman, Cash for Kids and The Jasmine Foundation.

The Banger rally we have chosen is covering 10 countries in 7 days, although we are covering 12 countries in 10 days as we are starting form ASDA Bridge of Dee on the 1st September and are planning on stopping at a few stores on the way down to raise some more cash.

At the start I said I would like to start a blog to let everyone know how things are going and also to inform anyone else who is thinking on doing something like this so they can learn from our mistakes!

So at the moment we are just raising some PR about the whole event but that’s not to say we haven’t raised some money. We raised a whopping £21 so far! Granted its not a massive start but we raise that every day we will have over £3000!

Thankfully we are hopefully going to be raising more than that. We have a number of bag packing days that are going to be happening throughout the year with the first one being on Friday the 10th Feb. Anyone willing to help out at any of these please see myself, Lewis Millar or Darren Reid or drop us an email. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

We don’t have a car at present but the hunt is certainly on! Once we have it I will update you on the specifics. It will be placed outside the Bridge of Dee most of the time but keep an eye out as it may make an appearance at a fun day near you!

We are looking for sponsors for this fantastic opportunity, if your a business and you want some cheap advertising please feel free to get in touch as any sponsor will get their name on the car!

Will keep you posted on developments as they happen.

Wish us luck!

Scott, Darren and Lewis

You can follow ASDA’s rally process at their blog page at the link below:

http://scottbangerrally2012.blogspot.com/

If any teams would like their story featuring on our blog, please email us at [email protected] and we can discuss.

Good luck with the fundraising, and stay tuned for our blog coming soon on fund raising ideas.

The Motoscape Team

A Little Background – Team Grayson

In the months leading up to the Motoscape Banger Rally, many teams start their fundraising for charity. This week the team at Motoscape HQ came across Team Grayson’s Facebook Page and an article written by Nigel.

We urge everyone to read this below, if you are not planning on doing the rally for charity, maybe you will consider it for this year or even in the future.

The Motoscape Team are more than happy for teams to take part in the rally just for a laugh and a good time, but it’s stories like this that give us the real motivation to run the rally, so people can take a positive look on things and raise money for charity by doing something completely different.

In January my girlfriend and I had our first beautiful baby girl, Myla, weighing 4lb 4.5ozs.  She was premature at just 36 weeks due to some complications in the pregnancy.  We were incredibly lucky as she was able to take care of herself, didn’t require any special medical treatment and came home after 4 days.  Shortly after we found out we were pregnant my friend Jerome found out that he and his wife were expecting as well.  We were really excited, often sharing our experiences and any tips that we had learnt along the way.  They gave birth to their gorgeous little baby boy in February, Grayson.  He was also premature due to complications, 34 weeks, weighing just 3lbs.

Unfortunately that is where the similarities end.  He was doing very well but a few days later they discovered that he had necrotising enterocolitis, a devastating bowel disorder that mainly strikes in premature babies.  By the time he was diagnosed it was too mate.  He passed away shortly after, just 7 days old.

It’s effected me in a big way.  Partly because I’ve been devastated for the loss of my friends baby, a poor innocent little thing that was never given a chance.  But over time I’ve realised that our babies were only 2 weeks apart.  There was a 3% chance our angel could have developed the disorder, and that scared me.  To be honest I’ve struggled to think about much else in the past week or so.

However, I’ve decided that instead of looking back on everything I want to take this experience and move forward in a positive way.  I don’t want to just sit around when I know I could do something to help others in the future when this disorder occurs.

So…..

A good friend of mine Greg Bolshaw and myself, have just registered to take part in the Motoscape Rally 2012.  It’s a 7 day rally starting just south of Calais on 1st September 2012 and finishing 7 days later in Prague, Czech Republic.

We’re doing this to try to raise money for Action Medical Research.  The reason for this is they’re currently researching necrotising enterocolitis.  Their aim is to develop techniques/apparatus that will allow the disorder to be detected much earlier.  That way babies can be treated before it is too late. They also research a range of other conditions, it’s a very worth while cause.

It’s a banger rally so we need to get hold of a car with a value up to £333, then drive it 1,600 miles to Prague!

I’m going to try to keep this blog up to date with everything that goes on leading up to the Rally, as well as the goings on during the rally itself!

Thanks for reading :)

Nigel

You can follow Team Grayson’s rally process at their facebook page (click like) and donate at the links below:

http://www.facebook.com/teamgraysonrally
http://www.action.org.uk/sponsor/teamgraysonrally

If any teams would like their story featuring on our blog, please email us at [email protected] and we can discuss.

Good luck with the fundraising, and stay tuned for our blog coming soon on fund raising ideas.

The Motoscape Team

Do Something Different

One of our previous Motoscape entrants has been kind enough to write a quick blog for us on their take on the rally and doing something different, have a read below…

Bored, fed up and wanting to do something different? This was me in 2010!

I did the usual, surfing the net looking for ideas, but all I could find was the usual fun runs, coast to coast bike ride, hiking the Pen-y-ghent 3 peaks etc. or to the extreme of raising £5000 plus to go on a trip rafting the Zambezi (I know from previous fundraisers this takes an enormous amount of time)!

However, after a chance conversation with a work colleague I discovered the Motoscape Banger Rally. My colleague had already signed up for the 2010 rally to Prague and listening to his enthusiasm about the event, I did a bit more research, saw how amazing it looked, and decided this could be just the thing for me.

I managed to get a good mate to join me and 3 days later we had signed up for the Prague rally. Four weeks later we persuaded a local car dealer to donate a free car! He is a regular in our local pub, and it took a few pints to get him to agree to it, but it saved us buying a car!!

The car was, in our eyes anyway, a machine of beauty… L reg Vauxhall Cavalier 2.00 GL, petrol with a respectable 122,000 miles on the clock and in all round good condition, but with no MOT. Because we obtained the car for free, having no MOT wasn’t a big issue. So, we had the car checked and then MOT’d for a total cost of £216 and it was ready to roll.

We decided to raise money for our local cancer charity, so we did a ring round local businesses and pestered work colleagues and managed to get sponsorship of £1826.28 – a good effort I thought!!

That was it, car ready, sponsorship received and a few quid for petrol and beer money in our pockets and we ready for the rally!! Here’s hoping we will make it to the end…

The Result
The old cavalier became our best friend and (apart from a puncture) behaved impeccably, we even took in on the Nurburgring and it was AWESOME!!! Best experience ever!

We met some amazing people on the rally (and some even more amazing bangers!), and all in all I can say we had the best time ever, 7 countries in 7 days, highly recommended. I think I have now officially caught the banger rally bug, and next year I am thinking of doing it in an old Jag, can’t wait to see that perform on the Autobahn and the Nurburgring.

In my opinion, if you are looking for a real adventure at a reasonable cost, where you can have loads of fun while at the same time raising money for a great charity, then this is definitely the event for you. I will never do a fun run again!!

I also just want to say thanks to the organisers, Paul, Pete and Mark, we had a fantastic time, hope you can top this next year and I will be signing up for the improved route and might even bring the misses this time as she’s always wanted to visit Venice!

Cheers
David

Father and Son teams of 2010

The 2010 banger rally was definitely the year for ‘Father and Son’ teams. There were 5 such teams including Yabba Dabba Doo with Tony and Michael from Cambridge in their Vauxhall Omega, Wundering Wurzels with Steven and Christopher from Sidmouth in their Peugeot 306, Super Charged Mario Brothers with Steve and Peter from Worcester in their Ford Escort estate. There was also CSK Motorsport with Chris and Shane from Castleford in their Citroen Saxo and Monza or Bust with Gerard (Snr) and Gerard (Jnr) from Falkirk in their Mazda MX3.

The prize for the best photo probably has to go to Steve and Peter for their pic of the two of them in their fancy dress sat on the roof of the car overlooking the Rhein river.

It’s almost as good as the Dick Datardlies pic from last year at the Nurburgring.

As for the Wundering Wurzels, we are not sure who was the biggest party animal. We think dad stayed out just as late as son. Good on you!

Chris was a many times winner of the UK carting championship in his younger days and this has rubbed off on young Shane, ‘King of the Saxo’s’ who won an important race just days before coming on the trip. We guess Shane was itching to get behind the wheel on the rally but he’ll have to wait another 3 years until he’s 18 to show everyone how it’s done.

Last but not least’ Monza or Bust, they won the 1st prize in the ‘Roll on Rimini’ rally and instantly donated some of the prize money to charity.

Perhaps next year will be the year of the mother and daughter. We will see!!!