Up to Milton Keynes for the roadbook
Drivers' briefing, a roadbook in hand, and six days that suddenly have towns attached to them. We took the modern.
Up to Milton Keynes for the drivers’ briefing and to collect the roadbook.
We took the modern. I am aware of the irony of driving to a classic car briefing in something with air conditioning and a working heater, but there is a limit to how much of a point one needs to prove, and a there-and-back day up the M1 is squarely past it. TS2 came home to Dorset only two days ago and has 2,000 European miles in front of her. She does not need to spend a Tuesday commuting to Bedfordshire.
The briefing
The genuinely useful part of any briefing is not the route. It is the accumulated experience of the people running it, and the small things that only come out when someone asks a question in a room.
The important framing, restated for anyone thinking of entering: the route and timings in the roadbook are optional and advisory. They exist so that crews and cars can be refreshed and refuelled at sensible hours. It is not a competition. There are no penalties for late arrival, no awards beyond finishers’ awards, and entry numbers are purely administrative — they are not to be carried or displayed on the cars, and any rally numbers or additional stickers will be asked to come off.
Controls at the start and the finish, and nothing in between. Sign-on at Sedan from 08:00, and the control shuts at 08:30, because the organisers have to get on the road too.
The roadbook
It is a solid thing to hold. Thirty-odd pages, six days, and a great deal of detail I am not going to reproduce here — the route is the organisers’ work and is not mine to publish.
What I can say is that the six days now have names attached, and the abstract idea of “ten countries” has resolved into an actual itinerary with places we will sleep. You can find the day-by-day shape of it on the route page.
The road-legal admin has also gone from vague to specific. Reflective jackets — at least two, in the passenger compartment rather than the boot. Warning triangle. First aid kit. Headlamp beam converters. The V5C original, not a copy. Insurance certificate, MOT, GHIC. A UK sticker, not a GB one. And a letter from the Register confirming that we are allowed to be in this car at all, which is not a document most entrants have to think about.
The Swiss vignette question we can dodge: the suggested route deliberately avoids Swiss and Austrian motorways.
The bit that made it real
Somewhere between the briefing finishing and the car park, it stopped being a proposal.
For eleven months this was an application, then a permission, then a plan. Now it is a book of directions with our departure time printed in it.
Twenty days.