Imagine the scene.My wife and I have just completed 24 hours of driving, ending up in maidstone,Kent.We are sat at the dinner table at a friends house eating an excellent fried brekky when the conversation turns to "any more plans for the future ?"....what a silly question !:-).Suffice to say, the conversation outlined a plan to drive to Europe...somewhere !, first Rome...then Prague,then Portugal.It was a matter of elimination of suggestions and a need to have a snappy title that eventually led us to our final descision ....."Scirocco 2 Morocco" !.

Scarlet had been looking a little sad for some months having rapidly become a sort of mobile junk store on the front garden after the Roc Around the Clock adventure.Summer had come...been and gone and we were deep into November before thoughts of getting her lapsed MOT sorted came to mind.So, after a brief talk with Paul (our friendly VAG manager at Heron,Newark) we had her booked in and ready to take the test....then my fridge sprang a leak and we had to cancel whilst i sorted that out instead .... grief !
A week later we arranged for another test, and this time she ....almost passed !...just a loose front wheel bearing letting her down :-(...well she is 21 next year, so it probably only to be expected.
A trip to Pitstop garage in Sleaford (another generous sponsor) soon had the problem sorted, and on her return back to Heron she left a half hour later with a spanky new MOT cert....result !


I wrote this little ditty whilst sitting in the customer waiting area like some expectant father !

Monday 3^rd December 2007

So, here I am again at Heron Volkswagen in Newark. Scarlet failed her MOT on a nearside front wheel bearing being loose, so after taking her back to Pitstop in Sleaford and letting them carry out the necessary repair (for free!) over the weekend today is the day when (hopefully!) we get the treasured pass form and a green light to get the rest of the show “on the road”!.

To be quite honest I am starting to get a much better idea of what we are taking on after watching a documentary on TV called “Long way down”. It is a video diary covering the 15’000 mile journey of Ewan McGregor (Star wars actor) and a friend…and a cameraman….and 2 support vehicles with translator, medic and manager+ several helping hands !.Any there is the major difference between what we are attempting…well several differences actually!.

A) We have virtually NO budget!

B) We are it! No support cars, no additional helpers…just the three of us.

C) We are doing a 3000 mile round trip in 10 days…they did a 15’000 mile one way (with return flights back !) in 82 days.

D) We are not famous (yet?), so will find getting support a LOT harder!

E) Having a TV crew along will (in some instances) allow you more clout when difficult situations arise…breaking down for instance…..people seem to always be more generous when the camera is rolling!

F) We are using a car with a “half Roc” trailer…they used bikes and had a shed load of spares for use along the way. We will be taking some spares, but to be honest it will always be the bit you didn’t bring that lets you down…Murphy’s Law!

Glen sent me a draught version of our logo, and it is truly excellent!He has used paintshop (or similar) to “create” a half roc trailer from a photograph of Scarlet…I guess you could say that he has “virtually” cut her in half.

Once the logo is finalised we can start to use it in our publicity seeking and sponsorship efforts, which I know from previous experience is (as they say) 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration….how true, you can spend hours typing out emails, speaking on phones and writing letters and ultimately the result can be very disappointing and all you end up with is a sore throat and fingers!.

(This Blog entry was written first, so some information is obviously now not relevant but left intact for reasons of continuity !)

On Tuesday during my teabreak I was in the vacinity of the Mansfield 103.2 radio studio, so took the oppertunity to pop in and introduce myself.After a brief chat i was wisked upstairs (oh err !) and ten minutes later i emerged from the recording booth having "laid down" a short resume of our little expedition onto the studio's interview suite.Hopefully in the next few days our message will start to hit the airwaves and the guys at Mansfield 103.2 have promised to keep the folk of Mansfield,Ashfield and Bolsover up to date with our fun and games by producing/broadcasting updates on a regular basis...nice :-).
Also today I emailed Sean Dunderdale of Lincs FM 102.2 to ask if he will support our event via their radio satation, he has agreed to do so and also, as the station is the official radio of the Waddington Airshow, he has promised to keep mentioning us to the airshow crowds when we attend Waddington in July.

I am still considering how to best utilise the several fantastic prizes that we have been given to raise funds (F1,Flight Sim,Karting etc) and have had an idea about hosting some sort of Quiz on this Blog page.The basic idea is that over a few weeks we will ask questions,perhaps give some clues to the answers, then all the people that email me with the correct answers will go into a prize draw for the goodies.Also an idea has been put forward to use the Scirocco trailer as a huge collection tin whilst we are at Waddington/VW meetings, and we shall encourage (Force !) innocent bystanders to throw any loose change into it ....like some kind of strange "wishing trailer" type device (well we don't have an ...erm......."well" do we !)as they say "Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" !

As we are talking about media involvement with our event it is worth going back a few months and an appointment which saw us yet again at the BBC Radio Nottingham studio talking to John Holmes.Glen travelled up from Kent with his wife Rachel and we had a good 25-30 mins on the show discussing the fine points of our challenge...John still couldn't get his head around why we would want to travel 4000 miles in a 21 year old VW Scirocco when there are much more comfortable cars available.....come to think of it he has a point, but then again as they said when they decided to go to the moon in 1969, "We go to the moon not beacause it is easy, but because it is hard".If we went in a modern supercar like the soft lads from Top Gear would, then it wouldn't be a challenge...just a weeks holiday !

We have managed to get a mention in both of the local newspapers for Sleaford, the Standard and the Target, plus myself and Teresa have had an article written about our last Outing in the car (Roc Around the Clock) which will appear in the April 24th edition of Pick me Up magazine.As part of the agreement for the article being published we have asked them to mention the Scirocco 2 Morocco event and put in a link to our webpages so hopefully we will pick up additional sponsorship via this link....hopefully :-)

Ok,so the cars back on the road and being used as a daily driver due to the fact that i firmly beleive that a use car will fair better than one thats laid up for months on end and is then expected to perform 100%...the reality is that a car that is laid up has a better chance of suffering a failure of some sort as soon as you ask it to perform.....so I decided to keep her rollin' and if anything does need to be sorted then at least it will give us time to complete any nescessary work before we set off on our "little trip" !.

I've started to gather together a few items that i think would come in useful on the run like a fire extingusher,300W inverter (to power and charge all the "gadgets" that we are going to have on board),oh, and a mini fridge ! with just enough room for 4 large cans of beer....luvvly !

The tem have been invited to the BBC Radio Nottingham studio's next Thursday to appear (is that correct in radio terms ?)on the John Holmes show.I have met John once before when i did a short stint on his show to talk about my last Scirocco themed charity drive "Roc Around the Clock", and i found the experience an excellent one as John is the sort of fella that you feel you have known for years and who has that ability to make you feel completely at ease almost as though you are chatting to him down at the local pub....but obviously the BBC don't serve you best mild whilst your on air ! 

If anyone gets the chance to tune in via terrestrial radio or via a web feed then the deatils are: The John holmes show,BBC Radio Nottingham,23rd January 2008,2.15PM (GMT).

Roc Around the Clock 4 Leukaemia.24^th August 2007

"It's going to be like the LeMans 24 hour race...but with a few more pitsips and a lot less glamour!”This was the description of my harebrained idea that I offered to Teresa my wife in late June 2007 and the rest as they say is history!

Roc Around the Clock was a slightly off beat fundraising event that really came about quite by accident, and I believe perhaps a little bit of fate thrown in for good measure.

Our journey into raising money for Leukaemia Research began about 10 months after I had been myself diagnosed with CLL, a chronic form of the disease after I had visited my GP (on Teresa's insistence !) due to feeling a little "off colour" for a few weeks. After several weeks of blood tests I was finally told that I had Leukaemia on 15th August 2006, a day that will always be significant in the history of me! I remember the consultant sitting me down and after a brief "beat about the bush" he announced the results of the protracted tests...and my world suddenly became a whole lot more complicated in the blink of an eye.

I remember thinking to myself "hang on, this isn't in the script!”I asked many questions, received many answers, but to be honest the pure shock and surprise of the diagnosis caused most of them to sail over my head without me having a chance to really registering them.

More blood tests, chest X-Rays and weight checks came along at regular intervals for the next few months, and around about the end of January 2007 I decided to try to recapture some of my lost youth...well my late twenties anyway! by purchasing a VW Scirocco. I bought myself a 1992 model from a guy on the Scirocco Register website (via EBay !), and after a little TLC was carried out I used it as my daily driver too and from Kings Mill Hospital were I work as a medical engineer.

Fast forward now to May the same year and I decided to try and help raise money for LR and as such I had thought of a few interesting ways of going about it, some completely mad, some expensive and impractical (the standard car to electric car conversion!), and it was during a browse on the owners club website that I spotted another Scirocco for sale in Leicester.

"1987 Paprika Red VW Scirocco for sale, needs to go ASAP, short tax, test until September”. I phoned Steve (the owner) and asked if he would take £100 for the car, he agreed and so that weekend I trogged off with entire family in tow to fetch the car.

When I first saw "Scarlet" as she became fondly named, she was looking very sorry for herself. Faded paintwork, filthy wheels, dead battery, and no water in the radiator and (after eventually getting her started!) a major fuel leak was identified...well you couldn't really miss a gallon of unleaded pouring onto the pavement!

We got her back to Sleaford later that day, with the unexpected bonus of having been given the car for free by Steve after he had asked our intended use of her, and then telling us that his daughter had been diagnosed with childhood leukaemia 20 years previously at the age of three. She was now fine and aged 23 which meant that her diagnosis had been made the same year as Scarlet was built! Fate? perhaps !.

The next few months leading up to our challenge consisted of visiting companies and individuals to seek the much needed sponsorship that the event would require. During one such visit I had been asked the name of the event, and had answered with the first title that came to me..."Roc Around the Clock", a 20 year old VW Scirocco travelling to as many hospitals as possible within 24 hours !....well I thought it was catchy anyway, so the title stuck !.

A local fella called Lee did a fantastic job of applying a quite excellent logo to the car (free of charge!) that was designed by Glenn, a friend of mine from the Scirocco Register. Another enthusiast Peter gave myself and Teresa a T-Shirt each that was printed with the same logo and by now we were starting to look very slick !.A local garage helped with a couple of mechanical issues on the car, another paid to have it's name on the bonnet and rear bumper, and a third, a VW dealership paid for our fuel in return for it's name being applied to the doors and boot...result !.

Another issue was to get publicity for the event, so it was with that in mind that I spent many eye straining hours peering at my laptop writing blogs, setting up a webpage, emailing possible sponsors and posting video logs of our progress on sites such as Youtube.Having emailed several radio stations I also managed to get mentions on several local stations around our area including interviews with BBC Radio Lincolnshire,BBC Radio Nottingham, Mansfield 103.2 and Real Radio FM.Our story was covered by 4 local newspapers and the RAF news, and we attracted support from both Holland and Belgium via the Scirocco owners clubs in those countries (£150 was donated by the Dutch to our event when we met them at Beaulieu in September !).

The event itself seemed to be upon us in no time, and so after saying our goodbyes and kisses to our 3 children, Teresa and I set off to travel to the start point of the adventure, the Kings Mill Hospital in Nottinghamshire. We were met by about two dozen people, mostly workmates, but some members of the local press and radio who wanted to speak to us before we set off, which was at exactly 09.30 on Friday 24th August. To name all the 35 hospitals would take some time to do, so lets just say that we managed to get to about 28 in the Midlands before we pointed Scarlet’s nose down the M40 and set off for a pre arranged rendezvous with some friends down in Kent who had offered to guide us around more hospitals when we hit their "patch". I would like to reflect on all the heart stopping moments that we had whilst undertaking the drive, but to be honest it was pretty much an uneventful 24 hours !.Although that is not in this case a bad thing. Scarlet performed faultlessly throughout, never missed a beat, never overheated (not even on the M25 at 4 Mph!), returned approx 40 Mpg fuel economy and carried us safely and soundly through the day, into the night and together we welcomed the sunrise of the brand new day on Saturday morning.....not bad for a car that at 20 years old and sitting at the side of the road only a few months earlier had faced the real possibility of ending up in a breakers yard!.

So to sum up, we drove 672 miles in 24 hours, visited 35 hospitals ending up in Kent and thanks to the generosity of workmates, friends, family and local businesses we managed to raise £1350 for a very worthy charity...not bad for a first attempt :-)

Scarlet is now off of the road, her MOT expired in September, and so she is having a well earned rest from her fundraising efforts !, and me ?...well I am planning my "next big thing" for 2008, possibly a trip to Europe, maybe a flight over to Canada to drive the Trans Canada Highway which, at 4860 miles is the longest in the world !, or perhaps I may get to do my electric car conversion after all, someone told me the hospital is scrapping a couple of milk floats soon, so perhaps I should change my name to Ernie and see just how fast a milk cart can go...when it's shaped like a Scirocco !