The journey to Calais.

There's not a lot we can really say about the journey to Calais as that's exactly what it was, no dramas, no passports forgotten or owt like that. Two stops for fuel and that was about it.

Made the ferry in good time although we were searched before getting on the ferry. They confiscated my old 5 litre petrol can as you're not allowed to take filled fuel cans onto the boat.
It was full of petrol that'd come out of my Dyane when I rebuilt her so the petrol was probably about 8 years old. I hope someone nicked it and put it in their Eurobox-8 year old petrol and modern engine management.................

Met a few other teams on the boat (Smashy and Nicey, Andy and Paul, Mark and Richard and Daz and Co to name but a few) had a beer and, before we knew it, we were in France and the adventure was really starting to unfold!

The Thursday evening saw us meeting at the Cite Europe in Calais for registration and beers and catch-up with teams old and new-it was fantastic to meet the "Newbies" who were already getting well into the swing of things.

Beers were drunk, stories exchanged, more beers (Paul and Kim!)before heading of for some shuteye bofore the off in the morning.

Overtaking fun.........

12 days to lift off............................

Where has all the time gone? I guess a fair amount of time has been swallowed up by us changing our minds right, left and center about what car we were taking. And then a bit more time was taken up by me having to build our car.
Anyway, I can confirm that it was time well spent. Mrs Spanners and I took Claude to the 2CVGB National meeting last weekend at Storrington in West Sussex, it was about 350 miles round trip, covered at an average of 60 mph with fuel economy of about 44 mpg. This bodes well for the trip.

Driving me round the bend............

..and then along the road, up the hill and on for another 20 or so trouble free miles! That would be a successful test drive then.
This was a momentous time for the Hillbillies as "Claude" was towed to the MOT station and today was the first time he had been driven on the road for some 10 years or so.
Driving him did show a few niggles that'll need sorting before the off (four weeks today!) but nothing major.

In the papers

Long awaited drive!

Six weeks to go.................

What have I been up to for the last fortnight? Oh yes, that's right, I've been working on a van. But, it's starting to pay off now.
So, what have I done to it? I've fitted a handbrake, gear lever, allsorts of interior trim, number plates and most of the exterior panels.
I've also fitted the fuel tank and had the engine running.
Today saw us travelling up to Halifax to fetch four new tyres for him, at 60 quid for 4 Michelins (off Ebay) it was hard to resist.
Not much lef to do now, see what you think.