Because we had decided to stay in Bristol the night before, Saturday needed to be a very early start – 6am, actually! The early hour was made much better by the very swift production of some bacon sandwiches by Harvey – the breakfast of champions, and the last British breakfast we’d be having for seven weeks! We rushed around like headless chickens trying to get our stuff together, and managed to get the stuff in the roof rack with a little bit of repacking. Soon enough, it was 8am (we wanted to leave at 7!) and we were ready to go. Bye bye, Bristol, hello…Tesco’s car park. Not one mile from our start point, we had to stop and fix the tarpauline on the roof rack! It wasn’t as tight as it should have been so with all the flapping about, it had already acquired a nice hole – but at least none of our stuff had fallen out of it!

Getting back on the road, the drive to Goodwood was pretty and uneventful, with the British countryside coming out in its finery to remind us what we were leaving behind. Clear skies and rolling green hills quickly turned into motorways and rain. Endless, unforgiving rain. On the minus side, our stuff was getting a bit wet up top, but on the plus side, it gave Ben a real chance to test out the car, fully laden, in difficult conditions.

10 miles out of Goodwood, we overtook the Sambi family on the motorway (how random!) and this led to the first of many spontaneous convoys we’re going to have on this trip, as we headed together to the most bonkers event we’ve ever seen. Arriving at Goodwood, we were greeted by a ‘Russian border guard’ who made sure we had bribing materials and then forced us to dance before letting us enter the car bays! We were one of the last groups in, so we rolled past the full set of cars before parking up, seeing things like the Polo Bear (a Polo that had been kitted out top to bottom in white fur) and an amazing team who had a team member in a wheelchair – this thing is going to be hard enough to two working legs, so we’re just in awe of the courage of that team!

Grabbing the registration materials, we walked past Mongolian wrestlers, musicians, more ‘border guards’ and a man in (just) a thong – this was obviously going to be a mad morning! The Dubocks and Gognas arrived soon enough and brought with them the rains. We all ducked for cover under the garages and then broke into the biggest picnic ever – sandwiches, samosas, home made pie and champagne…it was brilliant!

Harvey taking Over – It was a mad mad morning! We were given stickers and Ben and I fiddles, fondled and caressed the stickers neatly (with some air bubbles) onto the car. The car was looking epic now – plastered in a garb that screamed that we were about to do something Amazing. Obviously, when you’re about the head out to the great unknown with just a few tents, some cash and some basic tools things can get quite emotional and there were a lot of tearful goodbyes.

Eventually, it was time to go. We got in our car, the parents rushed around throwing last minute garb into the car. We were excited! We lined up the car to get on to the track for our celebratory ‘slow’ lap around the epic Goodwood circuit – but then disaster! In our excitement we were flicking our ginourmous Air Horn on and off and it stopped working! We were in a Queue of cars now and minutes from hitting the track – so we popped the hood and had a really quick look under the bonnet! There are 3 fuses which run off our 12V battery, one for the rally lights, one for the in car cig lighter and another for the air horn. I checked the fuse for the horn – and yup – completely gone. So I swapped the fuses over and hey presto  – the air horn was alive again. Just in case you’re wondering why it’s so important – it’s a bloody loud horn and you’re about to leave on a 10,000 mile journey, Yes – we needed it.

We all got back in the car – and within a few minutes we were on track. Luckily we were one of the first to set off. To our right were hundreds of parents and well-wishers  waving at us, cheering and generally being very excited! It was basically like the first scene from Titanic (but hopefully with a happy ending!). The man on the tannoy was shouting out things, car horns were going off all over the place. It was pandemonium – and suddenly we were released to do our lap around the circuit!

Ben here now- we cruised serenely around the course, horn blaring, weaving gently around the grand old racetrack. Within a couple of minutes we saw the first casualty of the rally – a car had pulled over with its hazard lights on to reclaim some lost luggage! Relieved that this wasn’t us – we powered on and all to soon were leaving the track, back onto the local A road. This presented our first navigational issue – in the excitement to start we had not sorted out our route to Folksone. We had no idea where to go! A quick and cunning solution printed itself- we should follow the cars in front that were turning right. After a mile or so, it seemed that no one else knew where they were going either! The entire convoy doubled back on itself to go back passed the  bemused marshals at Goodwood!

As its a long way to Mongolia, we decided that it was important to have frequent breaks – so stopped in at Ravi’s friend Georgie’s for a cup on tea in Brighton (10 miles from Goodwood). Extrapolating this tea/mile stat we will drink 800 cups of tea, or about 10 bath tubs before we get to Ulan Baatar. As we all like it – this bodes well!

After Brighton- we pushed for Folkstone . On a very delayed channel tunnel, we bumped into two more rally teams. We felt smug that we had booked a Hostel in Amsterdam and they were winging it. When we hit the road on the other side it we realised that there was no way we could make it to Amsterdam before 2am. This rubbed the smug look off our faces- we were now in the same position as the other teams – but 90EUR down. With some googling by Harvey, we found a guesthouse set outside Bruge (and deep in the 80’s), we had a bed, were more than knackered and hit the sack.