The First Meeting

Three hundred and twenty sevens days to go.

Yucel drove up from Bournemouth to talk about the venture. No sign of Jason but it's early days.

In Jason's absence we've agreed the quickest and safest route is to drive pretty much in a straight line. Initially from Calais to Praha (Prague) for the Rally Party and then East and keep going East. It seems much easier than the Northern Route which would take us through mountainous regions that our small car would struggle with, and the Southern Route which would appear to take us perilously close to war-torn regions. Yes, the middle route seems the best plan of action.

Having agreed that this is best and with my newly purchased map of Europe to hand I started to plot would should be the easiest part of the journey. From Calais, where the ferry lands, to Praha - where the party will be taking place (though it must be said that the exact location hasn't been agreed).

I have the European Maps for my Tom Tom GPS and it happily plotted out the route for me and said the fastest route should be 677 miles (through tolls) and would talk about ten and a half hours, which presumably excluded the time taken to cross borders. Well that all seems fine.

Having roughly allocated jobs to everyone I have been designated the Navigator. I can only presume this was done with tongue firmly in cheek as I am notoriously bad at getting from A to B. This of course is why I have my GPS. For the rally however GPS systems are rightly frowned upon as they go against the spirit of adventure.

So there I sat with my printout from the GPS as a starter. I looked at the route. R0 > E40 > 86 > B14 > 89 > E49 > D5/50/23 < E48 etc.

With UK roads, as bad as I am I understand that there are A roads, B road, M for motorways, etc.

I've never driven abroad and though I have been driven through France I didn't really pay a great deal of attention - what with my being ten years old and on holiday with my parents. The one thing I belive I know is that A stands for Autoroute. As for B, E, etc. It's a mystery. I shall have to go and look it up.

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We've decided to go camping next weekend to try our tents (no this is not something we normally do - I like the sofa).