The Wolves of Sesame Streeet - Bitly

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namely the orange Toyota Avensis from. Valkyrie Pursuits, the Where's Wally. Ford Escort and Team Stag's Golf... We were
// THE TEAM It all began down at the Man in Space, my local drinking establishment... I had met up with Tom and Dave for a long overdue catchup rather than waiting for our annual college Christmas meal get together. We had a few beverages and discussed the idea of entering a banger rally for a laugh and after a quick google found that the Boom Banger rally seemed like a good bet.

The rally began in Reims, France and ended up in Marrakech, Africa. Seemed like a decent excursion to us and so we entered online there and then.

our team as ‘The Wolves of Sesame Street’ by merging the iconic children’s television programe with the film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’.

The next few weeks were spent trawling through the internet to try and find a possible theme for our rally car and for fancy dress. We went through lots of possible ideas but didn’t want to copy any previous entries.

We got started on creating our oversized heads and chose Elmo, Oscar (the Grouch) and Cookie Monster as our Sesame Street characters of choice.

We then decided on Sesame Street, but with a twist. We were going to enter

The build process was long but rewarding and used paper mache, expanding foam, a hard hat and some coloured fur as the raw materials.

// THE BANGER Now that we had our theme sorted we set about purchasing our banger. The maximum we were allowed to spend was £250 which I’m sure you’re aware makes things tricky! We searched Autotrader, eBay and found nothing remotely interesting or under budget so we expanded our searches to Gumtree. This is where we found Monty, a Ford

Mondeo that had led a hard life and whose MOT only had a few days left on it. Perfect we thought.

We then added wide arches and aero ducts made from plywood, screws, duct tape and expanding foam.

We went to have a look at Monty and after a quick meeting we took him home to begin the transformation into the Lamborgini Countach seen in the film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’.

The vents on the side were made from square PVC guttering and the spoiler from PVC window sill.

We took him to my uncles garage for his MOT but found that he needed some new bits to pass, which the garage kindly paid for towards our charity.

The whole car was wrapped in matt white vinyl and the steel wheels sprayed white to complete the look. Oh yeah, we also made a Grover character to hang off the roof rails too!

// DAY ONE Saturday 28th March 2015 was the first day of the Boom Banger rally for us. We needed to get to the start line in Reims for Sunday. We left Stoke at 06:00 and started our journey down to Dover, getting plenty of attention and we even recieved some donations from kind hearted drivers whilst stuck in traffic on the M25!

We got to the channel crossing with half an hour to spare and as we boarded we noticed some of the other ralliers, namely the orange Toyota Avensis from Valkyrie Pursuits, the Where’s Wally Ford Escort and Team Stag’s Golf...

As we got closer to our destination the weather decided to go all British on us and we had torrential rain for most of the day.

We were on a different level on the ferry to the other teams so we left for Calais first. This is where we first met team Jungle Nuns as they flew past us on the motorway...4 times! (They had time to stop for breaks due to their speed)

We introduced ourselves to all of the teams and talked about the big challenge we all had ahead of us...

We arrived in Reims late that evening and went to our meeting point (an Irish bar) to register ourselves onto the rally.

// DAY TWO The startline for the rally was the pit lane from the French Grand Prix which we thought was a nice touch. Today was the first time we’d seen the other bangers on the rally and there was some interesting ones! We had a walk around the other cars whilst we waited for everyone to arrive, we also programmed the satnav to the nearest fuel stop as we needed some.

Everyone eventually turned up and we got our challenge for the day which involved visiting local vineyards and wineries in the local champagne region and off we went... The fuel needle was on the stop so we followed the satnav to the nearest station, which turned out to be shut as did the second and third station! We thought it was game over as Monty coughed and spluttered to the fourth station which thankfully was open!

The weather was still very British and the plywood on our car was starting to absorb water which was causing the adhesive on the vinyl to fail so we were shedding vinyl as we drove to different vineyards and later on to the next hotel. We had noticed our car was starting to get significantly slower as the rally progressed and when we finally arrived in Millau it had become apparent that there was an issue with something under the bonnet...

// OTHER TEAMS

// DAY THREE We got up early in Millau to go down to the car in the covered carpark to investigate the issues we’d had in the previous days driving. Google had suggested a couple of things, a boost leak or a failed turbo actuator. We had as good a look as we could at the intercooler hoses but they all seemed intact so we had a look to see if the actuator was moving or not.

Turns out it wasn’t moving at all, a simple fix we thought so we drove down to the meeting point - a car park down the road to see if any of the other ralliers could help free it off. Unfortunately it wasn’t the actuator it was the turbo itself and we had to settle for no boost for the rest of the rally. For those of you who don’t understand what this means - imagine running a marathon in the desert, breathing through a capri sun straw.

The route today was to Barcelona via Andorra over the Pyrenees - perfect for a heavy car with very little power. We decided to take the more direct route along the coast to save time but it still had to go over the Pyrenees so progress was slow. How slow? Well we were down to second gear on the motorway uphill! Thankfully we weren’t too late to Barcelona with the shortcut but it was a long day... time for a drink!

// DAY FOUR Today was the first day we didn’t have to be up especially early and that was in the back of everybody’s minds the previous night... some of the teams may well have had a few too many shandies! We woke up and got the subway into Barcelona late morning to check out some of the sights but we didn’t have too much free time with Monty not being at full health.

Onwards to Alicante, the weather was now beautiful and what we’d hoped for the entire trip, it made Monty’s tardiness seem not as big an issue as before.

We dropped our bags off in the hotel and walked down to the meeting bar, had a drink, some food and retired back to the hotel for an early(ish) night...

We were thankful that although we were slow, the air conditioning still worked well and kept the car temperature down to a manageable level.

Or so we’d hoped.

That said, the weather didn’t get us there any quicker than the previous days and once again we arrived in the early evening to today’s destination: Alicante.

When we got back to the hotel, outside there was a street drumming and chanting from hooded priests and their crowd for Semana Santa - its Holy Week. This only kept us up for a few hours and they soon moved on - otherwise we’d have a very grumpy Sesame Street!

// DAY FIVE Today was the last day for some of the teams who had decided to scrap their cars in Gibraltar and get a minibus into Marrakech as you can’t scrap your car in Africa due to import laws. We left Alicante fairly early and went down the coast to Gibraltar with strict instructions not to cross the border as it would add 4 hours to our journey in and out. (Our hotel was in La Linea just outside the Gibraltar border)

We got the meeting point nearly on time (we didn’t do any challanges again!) which was just next to the Rock of Gibraltar on some sandy wasteland.

We had a quick drink in the hotel and met with the other ralliers by walking over the border into Gibraltar to have some food in the harbour.

The teams who were scrapping their cars were giving them some stick whilst we watched from Monty’s roof.

Tomorrow was going to be an early start so we got back to the hotel at a reasonable hour in order to make sure we left enough time to drive to the ferry port to start the final leg of our journey.

There was a (one sided) tug of war with a Ford Escort & a BMW 3 Series which ended with a tow rope shearing off and impaling the boot of the Escort!

Alarms set for 05:00, roll on tomorrow!

// DAY SIX 05:00 came around very quickly, we got up, loaded the car and left for Algeciras. We arrived early and waited in line with the other teams for our gate to open, then boarded the ferry. Everybody on the ferry had to have their passports stamped for Africa but there was only one man and his moustache to do so. We queued for the entire journey in order to get this done!

When we departed the ferry we had to go through customs and they had a field day with Monty! Sniffer dogs, screwdriver prodding and a language barrier made this a 2 hour ordeal. We met with the other teams (some who had got through quickly but then waited the 2 hours for us!) outside the customs and we then all convoyed down the coast towards Marrakech. There was one speeding fine, ironcially from one of the slower cars!

As we neared Marrakech, the roads turned into a free-for-all and we had to use our cars size as a ‘bartering tool’. We were sharing the road with other cars, bikes, mopeds, buses, wheelbarrows, horses and donkeys and lanes, although marked, didn’t really exist! We found our hotel by complete fluke as we had no satnav and just saw it in the distance...we parked up and walked down to the final Boom Banger awards party! We won best banger!

// DAY SEVEN After finishing the official rally we decided to stop another night or two in Marrakech before making the journey back. We wanted to visit the Souks which are the old markets in Marrakech so we booked a taxi from the hotel who turned into a tour guide of the markets! We saw all of the Artisan area where craftsmen and women created hand made items from leather and metal.

We also saw a hilarious local moped wobble and fall at 2mph - think Jay in the Inbetweeners but 40 years older with a larger lady on the back. The hotel was nice and we had time to relax after the challenges we’d faced with the car the previous days. Before we started the rally we had decided that we would drive back to England in one big stint but Monty’s health dictated otherwise.

We had to make the decision to scrap Monty back in Gibraltar and fly home as we didn’t have breakdown cover and with the distance home combined with the state he was in meant it was a no go. We booked flights home and another night back in the hotel we’d been in 2 nights ago. Tom rang Fernando (who was the Gibraltar scrap contact) and arranged to meet on Monday.

// GOING HOME We drove back to Gibraltar, thankfully without any major issues from Monty (other than being slow).

We met with Fernando the following morning and handed over Monty then packed our bags and walked down to the airport to check in for our midday flight back to Manchester.

Customs were quicker this time but we still had to have the entire car scanned with a HGV mounted X-Ray machine!

All in all a great rally and journey and something which we plan on doing again at somepoint in the near future.

We got back into Gibraltar mid evening, checked into the hotel and grabbed some food before getting some shut eye.

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as we’ve enjoyed taking part.