Rallye Med 2010

Rallye Med in 2010 was almost 12,000 mile trip around the Mediterrean.   We took in Spain, Morocco, Italy, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Greece and France to name but a few.

David B who took part in the rally wrote this wonderful round up at the end of the event that gives you a flavour of just how amazing the support team are, and how the rallies really are about friendship:

Dear Readers

So the great adventure has ended with all cars and crew members making it to the Reims finish safely. And what an adventure it was. So many events, sights and personal highs (and lows) as the weeks went by.  So much so that I think we will have to wait for the full
photograph and video records to be completed in order to remind ourselves just how much ground we covered in the widest sense of that phrase.

Thank you for taking an interest in our trip, be you someone who read every day‟s notes in detail or simply dipped in and out occasionally to get a rough idea of what we were up to from time to time.

An event of this magnitude takes a huge amount of organisation and patience so all our thanks go to Rick whose idea it was and who worked relentlessly for two years to put it together and to “Di”, his long suffering wife who has lived through the detail of this rally on many occasions long before the event itself. Stuart Onyett‟s road book (and Rosie‟s assistance – particularly in territory like Greece where she has quite some knowledge) was superb. Not just giving the route, which had been researched many times with cross references to Google earth and various atlases and other sources, but for all the extraneous information it contained regarding sights to be seen and a great variety of
broader information, tips and suggestions to consider along the way.

To get 19 cars from start to finish on a 20,000 kilometre route over many rough or sometimes non-existent roads is difficult enough, but when that number includes 15 cars with an average age of 50 years then it really is quite an achievement. The consistently calm yet effective approach by our rally mechanic Paul to a myriad of problems played a vital role in ensuring this continuity. You will have read of so many mechanical problems – inevitable on an event such as this – all of which, in the end, were resolved.

And especial thanks to his wife Nikki who did a similar repair job to the human beings involved in this whole adventure. Apart from obvious health issues such as stomachaches, sun stroke, dehydration, food poisoning, burns, scalds and cuts etc, each of us has also gone through 65 consecutive days of some pressure; be it worrying about problems with our cars, lack of sleep or simply the very limited amount of time available to relax and recharge our „personal‟ batteries. Nikki has been a modern day Florence Nightingale keeping us all both physically healthy and in the best possible spirits.

Whilst on the “thank-you” section, I would personally like to extend a huge thank-you to our regular bloggers: Robin & Charlotte, Angie, Rosie, Nikki, Roger Carey, Glynis and Gerry, who, despite their own priority of repairing their cars nevertheless always produced their completed blogs on time with only an occasional amount of bullying by me and then handed them to me for formatting, slight amendment on occasion and transmission to the UK for web publication. Thank you bloggers very much indeed for your efficiencies and particularly for the quality of the content!

And then there were others like Tessa who came up with a number of great ideas for the blog such as the Arab headdress quiz, and Sheila who wrote a “one-off” blog as a rally newcomer and Julian Carey, Paul, Nikki and Andy who supplied some excellent photos. If I finally add all the 4×4 drivers for carrying spares boxes for others then I guess I will have thanked directly or indirectly just about everyone in the rally! But that‟s as it should be because the one outstanding feature in this rally, despite the “domestics” between some (all?) husbands and wives at wrong turns during the navigation, was that everyone seemed to blend together so well as a group. It was reassuring to know that if we suffered a problem during the day, within a short space of time there would be others

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David refers to the bloggers on the trip who supplied him with content to update the daily blog.   They are so indepth, with superb photos, that we can’t reproduce it here but if you want to sit down with a cuppa and have a read, do:  Rallye Med 2010