June 2002 and it's the Wednesday before the LeMans 24 hour race and England are playing Nigeria in an important World Cup match after having famously beaten the Argies 1-0. The weather is miserable so the roof is up and I'm heading to the meeting point in a hotel car park just over the QE2 bridge in Kent. I'm due to meet up with a few other Quantum owners some of who I haven't met before, including the guy who did the hard work of organising the entire trip (thanks and well done to Simon!).
I'm first to arrive so I sit in the car trying to listen the 5 Live who are commentating on the football. My car is only just ready for the trip in time. Having replace the head and then destroyed the gearbox I've had to put a lot of work into getting this far. While the car was off the road with the broken gearbox my MoT expired and my new suspension and tyres were finally ready to be fitted. I managed to get everything completed with about a week to spare.
Next to arrive is Robert in his 2+2 and I go over to say 'Hi' and jump in his car to listen to the football. Then James and Becky arrive in a Clio - he didn't complete his Xtreme in time and still hasn't completed it -come on James you're missing out on driving time! - along with Clem and Michelle in Clem's just completed Cosworth Turbo powered Xtreme, and I mean just completed too as it had only been fully road legal for under a week!
Eventually we all gather and head off down the A2 to meet some more of the gang at a service station on the A2, before heading off to Dover to catch the ferry. Now looking through the pictures you will see a lot of Fred making a starring role - he's the aardvark - so I thought I'd better explain. Fred normally sits on a monitor of a guy at work but myself and a few collegues at work decided that 2002 would be the year of the Fred World Tour. Dureing the year he went to Thailand, skiing in the US, had a ride on a police car in Miami andSouth Africa.
Once in France we stopped off to fill up with petrol just outside of Calais and had a quick photo shoot of some of the cars in our convoy.
The drive down through France was quite fun. We stuck to the autoroutes down to Rouen