Day one; Calais to Basel

The day started with our van blowing the fuse for the wipers/indicators and charging circuit. A bad omen perhaps? No chance! If you remember from earlier posts, I rewired the van and used a slightly unsuitable switch for the wipers meaning that if you turn it one way the wipers operate, if you turn it the other way, it blows the fuse. Whoops, learnt that lesson quickly!
When we arrived at Cite Europe, the carpark was already full of other Scally cars- what a fantastic sight to behold. Everything from our van, Fiestas, numerous Audis, Golfs a Metro and Volvos right through to a Mercedes 308 van (moreabout that later)and the Batmobile. Yes, almost certainly the real thing with Batphone and evrything. Once again, more about that later.
At 9 o'clock, the legends (last years entrants) set off on their way trying to avoid being spotted by the "Newbies" as the days challenge was Legends and Newbies "Cat and Mouse". The idea being that each Newbie team were given 6 Legends team numbers tht had to "catch" and photograph to get points for, the legends losing 20 points each time they were caught and the Newbies gaining 20 points. We faired quite well in this chalenge. Was it because everybody felt sorry for us or because our car was so fast, we could outrun them. I'll let you decide!
After a long days drive (in convoy with Paul and Kim of team 6 "Harrison Ford"), we finally reached Basel and the Hotel Mercure, very nice.
After a quik shower, we all waled up intothe twn to meet with everybody and have a pint (or two) of Guinness and a bite to eat.
On joining everybody in the Irish pub, people kept asking how the van was, we didn't know why people were so concerned until we heard the rumour that we had broken down! It transpired that obviously loads of teams had seen our van in a layby by the side of the road with a bright yellow Escort van (Team 6) and had thought it was the AA!
It couldn't have been further from he truth, after our fuse problem-the van performed faultlessly only using a drop of oil in the first 400 or so miles.