The last post

It has been a long time since I posted an update and to be honest I have been a bit tardy in bringing everything to a close- however with tomorrow being Remembrance Sunday I thought it was right and fitting to write my last post.

All the money has been collected and sent to Help for Heroes and through the donations of all my friends, sponsors and the many anonymous people who put money in our tin or texted the short code we have raised over £3600!!

This is well above my wildest expectations and I want to thank everyone for their generosity, I know that Help for Heroes will put the money to good use.

The only unfinished piece of business is the car. We have been unable to fix the fuel starvation and it still runs like an absolute dog emitting backfires and stopping after a few miles.

The most sensible thing to do with it is send it to the scrap yard.

Sadly I have never been particularly sensible so I have found someone to do a full renovation of the old girl- I want to get her back to the condition she would have been in just a few years after rolling of the production line.

I fear this will cost me far too much money but she deserves it and having left her on the drive rusting for several months it feels appropriate to get her sorted over the winter before the weather does more damage and more importantly before the Vodafone share price drops again.

So thank you all- this is the end of this blog but who knows next year I might come up with another crazy idea and start another.

Until then thank you all and I hope you have enjoyed my writing.

Where did it all go wrong?

The short answer is on the A34 through Stafford!
We left Carlisle quite early and were making good time trundling along in glorious sunshine. We were so confident that we would be home in time for tea that we rang home and told our dog sitter that she could go home!

Then we hit pretty nasty traffic in the centre of Stafford and things started to go wrong. At a particularly busy round about the car started to cough and splutter and died a couple of times. I got it onto the verge as best I could and got the bonnet up.

I was pretty confident that all I needed to do was change the battery over to the one I had been charging all night so 5 minutes later we were back underway.

Unfortunately 500 yards down the road in an equally inconvenient place it died again.

Fortunately a very kind man was on hand to help us push it down to a small service road where we were out of the way of the traffic.

It seemed that the spare battery was not properly charged so we had now officially broken down- it was time to call in the RAC.

The RAC were fantastic and got Andy the patrolman to us within 30 minutes- he had a quick look and agreed that it was probably lack of power in the battery that was stopping the fuel pump, spark etc. The route cause of this was that we had been running our luck since John O Groats by driving without a dynamo.

Amazingly just 6 miles down the road was "Mr B's" a classic car and Morris minor specialist so with a bit of charge back in the battery we limped to the 6 miles to Mr B's workshop.

Mr B very kindly checked the dynamo and pronounced it dead- unfortunately he didn't have a replacement but referred us to some one who did. Our super helpful RAC man jumped in his van and went to buy it- hindered only slightly by the fact that the shop would not take a credit card.

Once we had the part it took only 20 minutes or so to fix and the car fired up with no red dynamo warning light. We jumped in and zoomed off.

Unfortunately about 200 m down the road we had to call Andy again as the car had lost power and died. Over the next few miles we would change a part or adjust something, drive a mile or so and then pull over again as it became apparent that our problems were very much still present.

After about 5 hours we were stumped, the dynamo, points and condenser had all been changed and the car was still running as rough as a badgers ass so we decided that it was all over.

1752 miles after we left Thatcham the car was loaded onto a recovery truck and had a piggy back home. Both Lynn and I were gutted. In fact Lynn admitted that she was close to tears when our brave little car was being loaded onto the lorry.

After an enlightening drive home with our Kamikaze recovery driver- who taught me a great deal about the communications industry ( who would have thought that 3 owned Orange!) we finally arrived home at 10.30pm - nine and a half hours after we broke down. There was just enough go in the car to trundle it down the close before it coughed and died.

The following morning it wouldn't start at all and we had to push it around the close to get our modern cars off the drive to go and collect the kids.

Having now had 24 hours to reflect (sulk) about everything I have decided that I will not be beaten. Over the next couple of weeks I( with the help of some professionals) will try and get the car running again and then I will do those final 130 miles. However as technically we failed to complete the trip I will fully understand if anyone wants to withdraw their sponsorship.

Hopefully I can get the old thing running again by the bank holiday weekend as I am meant to be showing it ( and the Ferrari) at a local car show. However I think that all depends on the mystery fault.

Looking on the positive side I am prepared to bet that less than 2 hours at the Thatcham Mini centre will have her purring like a kitten again!

Disapointing end

After several new parts and 5 hrs of spannering by Andy the RAC man we were forced to admit defeat 130 miles away from home.

Swap??

If we can't find the parts we might consider a swap....?!

Oh poo!

We have a small technical problem....

Catch Up from Yesterday

The coverage has been dipping in and out whilst we were in Scotland so thought it was worth doing a full catch up.

We left Carlisle at around 9.30 and had a quick breakfast of Almond Croissants, apples and Capri Sun as we drove towards the borders.

Despite the little issues getting started the car continued to run really well and on the faster roads we were on we averaged around 50 miles an hour.

I have to hand it to the Scottish they know how to make a good road- all the roads were excellent fast A roads with non of this namby pamby English 40 mph speed limits och noo we could barrel along at close to 60 with nae bother.

The journey was pretty much uneventful, the car ran nicely and we only stopped for natural breaks or to fill up with fuel.

Things started to get exciting when we saw our first sign with John O Groats listed on it and as the miles clicked by I started to feel a sense of achievement.

The weather was beautiful, the other drivers friendly and supportive and we were only a short distance from our second objective. The scenery along the A99 was amazing, we took lots of photos whilst zooming along which we will publish in a gallery once we get home.

We decided to stop at Wick and check in to our hotel before doing the final 16 miles to John O Groats.

Unfortunately when we got back into the car the ignition warning light was on- it had been fluttering at low revs for a while but I was confident it was just a loose fan belt so we sped off to John O Groats and to hell with the consequences.

We got there and I have to say it is a massive anti climax. The place is an utter $%&** hole- even the sign showing how far it is to Lands End has been taken down because it keeps getting vandalised!



We got a few pictures taken, got the hotel to stamp our end to end form to prove we had been there and zoomed back to the hotel for some food.

Whilst at the hotel we decided that my original plan of trying to get home in one day from Wick to Thatcham ( well over 600 miles) was a bit ambitious. Instead we decided to stop over in Carlisle again.

So this morning we were up early (having charged the car battery overnight at the hotel) and I got the spanners out to tighten the fan belt and hopefully cure the red warning light.

Unfortunately with the belt tightened it still refused to go out which I diagnosed as a kaputt dynamo- however the weather was good and I surmised that with a charged battery we should be able to get to Halfords in Inverness to get a second charged spare to get us home (no chance of getting a dynamo!).

So that's exactly what we did. The car kept on trucking and the bonnet up photo below is simply me swapping between one old battery and a freshly charged new one.

Also bought the kids some small souvenirs at the gift shop and had a coffee to keep me awake.

The final highlight for me before we left Scotland was to see 2 Morris Minors chugging towards us- that's the first sightings since Cornwall

We arrived at our hotel in Carlisle around 7pm, immediately put the spare battery on charge and I am now off for a well deserved plate of tuck and a beverage.

Not broken down...just resting!

Just pulled into Stirling services for a quick coffee and some air.