The third day started off with a nice bit of crossdressing in downtown menton, as a few hundred brits dressed up as schoolgirls pranced around. After the obligatory photos (sadly I left my camera in the car & just took video) we were given the days challenge "take your spare wheel into central venice and take a photo of your team with your wheel, still dressed as schoolgirls". We set off for Italy...
I forgot my blouse :-( Tim was being homophobic and wouldnt dress up, despite lots of abuse.
The coastline from Menton heading towards Italy, with the pullchain for the Dixie horn in foreground.
North italy was amazing, little towns that have evolved their way around the tops of hills, with lots of tunnels and really bendy motorways. Once you realised that the locals ignored the lanes and tried to take the fastest line around the corners the motorway got quite fun.
Sharkey, after we blew the welds on the manifold. The floor didn't fall out thou. We changed back into trousers at this point, as neither dean nor I felt it was fair to expose ourselves to the petrol station while grubbing around under the 6!
The view when you get off the train in Venice. We decided that as we hadnt really got involved with the challenges so far, we couldnt be bothered to carry the enormous bmw spare to the center of Venice and just went sight seeing. Venice is a really impressive city, not dirty or smell like a lot of people have said, and is really worth a visit.
We shared a water taxi with one of the other teams, surprisingly the taxidriver didnt comment on the crazy brits carrying a car tyre in a town with no cars.
After we legged it across venice to see the sights and save the money on the taxis, we were treated to a spectacular sunset on the train to the car.
Another night, another campsite, another time we put the tents up in the dark. After chilling for a bit we popped into Sottomarina (crappy Italian seaside resort, well worth a visit) for grub and bumped into the team who had killed their 3series on the first day, they had caught the train home then picked up a different car to chase the rally in, so we had a few beers together before crashing out..early starts, late nights and putting up tents in the dark seems to be a theme of shoe-string banger rallys!
Sharkey broken down at the side of Via Regina Margherita, luckily it was a fairly subtle car so no-one noticed we were parked in a 20min tow-away zone.
Pete doing battle to keep his megaphone
"Spunk up, mofo" - Helmet