At the time, France was in the grip of a killer heatwave which claimed 15,000 people, mostly old or ill, but including a friend of mine who had organised the race series I ran in then.
The report was actually an email I sent my brother after the event. I've edited for '4 letter words....'
"The Tunis trip was pretty funny; we made Limoges to Toulon (700km) stopping only for fuel.
The final part of this trip was grim, as the car's front wheels were absurdly out of balance, though I had just had them done; my buddies machine was obviously decalibrated.....with minutes to spare on the last day there, we found someone with a properly set up machine, and after that the front mudguards stopped trying to part company with the car, in the fashion of young Dumbo the elephant’s ears....truly spectacular flapping, and bad vibrations through the steering wheel.
We did in fact get to the Sahara in the Scorpion; en route we thought about going to see Ghaddafi, took a photo of Françoise in the car grinning in front of a sign 'xx miles to Tripoli,' where I had jumped out in heavy traffic on a major city intersection and started snapping away like a maniac with the Grinnall blocking traffic and everyone honking in frenzy.....normal for Tunisia.
But we decided on reflection that the charms of the Colonel were frankly insufficient to lure us over the border.
The Grinnall turned out to be the same yellow as the local taxis, which was a source of much amusement for the locals.
We had to keep cool by soaking our T shirts in water...I rigged a system so by pressing a button on the dash, water was pumped from a 5 litre tank up rubber tubes fixed to the outer rollover bars, and thus onto the grateful pilot & navigatrix.....
Speaking of extreme feats of navigation, we arrived at our port of departure, Spezia, in Italy, which is about 120km south of Genoa, with about an hour to wait before the boarding deadline....time to find a nice Italian resto, I thought, so I could sample the local cuisine.
I had never been in Italy before, and had been really looking forward to sitting down and absorbing some ambiance, and some Italian food.
All I had seen of the country was a sort of blur, mostly of the inside of a tunnel, as the road from Nice to Spezia is either bridge or tunnel, and we had been maintaining 115mph due to having lost time and starting ridiculously late.
It was great to have finally stopped in Spezia, and found a shade tree under which to shelter from the 40°C blaze, so imagine my joy when Françoise took out the tickets and, face a real picture of horror and embarrassment, exclaimed in trembling voice, "Oh my, we should be in......Genoa!!!!!!"
???**ù^$$$$ç!!!!!!!
Imagine the pleasure with which we got back into that sweaty little three wheeler, and warped back up to Genoa, 120km in just under one hour...... sounds slow, but that is the average speed, remember, and there are city traffic jams en route.
We were hustling Porsche Boxters, inches from the Armco, flat out.....Françoise had her eyes shut most of the way, but didn't dare say anything, especially not "slow down, you mad man" because she KNEW we would miss the boat if we did.
She was most subdued. Said she was glad I had taken up racing!
I kept thinking about Lady Di, and the fabulously good taste computer game which was launched just following her demise, 'Lady Di, Tunnel Racer'.
This gave me a rather puckery feeling.....dicing with Italians in tunnels at nearly 200kph isn't really very relaxing. Specially with the Italians in big cars or bigger lorries, and us in a little plastic bathtub.........
I kept thinking....."Dogmeat....NO!!!!, STOP thinking that....." I also kept getting the hideous sensation that we were not actually in a tunnel on the horizontal, but were somehow plummeting down a vertical hole into the centre of the planet, and somehow the Grinner was sticking rather effectively to the side of the hole.....quite nasty, vertiginous stuff, and hard to shake off.
We had left the full face helmets and the spoiler in Toulon, where due to the heat we had had very little sleep during a 4 day stopover, and this may go some way toward explaining the curious tunnel vertigo.....lack of sleep, no helmet, so max wind rush, and 500 mile non-stop (except for fuel) sprints in the worlds most rational transport system do have a combined effect on the brain which is less than entirely soothing.
It was 'with some relief' that my star navigatrix and my shattered and starving self staggered into the cabin we had had the sense to book for the 20 hour crossing to Tunis......I turned the blessed aircon up to max, and we went and sampled the not too bad italian menu in the Grimaldi line restaurant, before tuning out in airconditioned bliss till hitting Tunis."
The trip did become slightly more relaxed in North Africa.....mostly.
My favourite picture of the Sahara leg....
. Love the photos!
