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04th Aug 2016

The Rally Diaries 2: From Dublin to the naked parks of Bavaria in a ’96 Fiesta

Rosanna Cooney

Here we go again…

This is lock, stock and two smokin’ gaskets full of continental craic. They’ve left our island and are one week into their flightless journey to Mongolia.

There’s no explanation of where they got that baby head, or why they feel the need to bathe in their tuxedos and admittedly we’re terrified of this game of motorway tetris they’re raving about, but it’s all for a great cause. The Aristokahns are raising cash for Movember and their fundraising page is right here.

Diary number two

‘Keen to make an early start for Wales, we left Dublin city with sleep still in our eyes. We were officially en route to the rally’s starting point in the south of England.

‘We’d heard rumours of the madness but there was no way we could ever know the mania we were driving into and the chaos that would very soon unfold.

‘Unfortunately our lack of navigation skills quickly became apparent. A two-hour journey morphed into a five-hour ordeal and we hadn’t even left the UK. Chief navigator Steven had much to learn.

‘This is a rally for adventure, not velocity and so we happily sauntered through the rolling hills of Snowdonia, sang songs along windy country roads and clocked up some tuxedo time in Stonehenge.

‘Kieran, our brawny rally driver, succumbed early on to a case of food poisoning, inconclusively linked to a warm cheese sandwich consumed in Northern England.

‘Ours was not the worst case though as we heard tell of sun roofs flying free on motorways and smoking breakdowns en route to the rally. Bangers, we have since learnt, earn their name for a highly audible reason.

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‘By high water we made it to Greenwood, England, where the starting line for the rally was mental. Windscreens were cracked (not ours) and roofs were irreversibly dented (not ours) by dancing feet (possibly ours) as we partied till sunrise in our first car park rave.

‘After our first night of camping with sore heads and no sleep, all 315 teams headed for the Greenwood racing track for a single lap of chaos before departing en masse to our first official destination – the ferry from Dover to Calais.

‘Straight away we knew this was going to be an epic adventure, a band of brothers destined to ignominiously struggle drive bravely across the globe.

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‘Needless to say we never made that first ferry. Having pity on us, the ferry folk sorted us out with a later boat and within no time we were on the continent driving on the wrong side of the road and circling roundabouts repeatedly. 

‘Our European antics have, so far, included; camping in a nature reserve outside Brussels, where we were kindly asked to leave, being overtaken by nearly every car as we maxed out our fiesta on the Nurburgring, tackling the hairpin bends of the Black Forest and convoying with other teams along motorways in what can only be described as an outrageously high stakes game of Tetris.

‘Never once failing in our duty to terrify entertain the surrounding cars with our jovial stupidity.

‘The games continued with teams constantly vandalising each other’s cars; taking the grill off a Ford and taping it to a Yaris to create Yarison Ford and turning a jeep into a uniCARn by attaching a traffic cone to it.

‘As much fun as it is rallying around in a convoy and being idiots, we also wanted to get the most out of the trip, so we headed to Munich to bathe in the rapid rivers of their city’s public park.

‘It might have been the Herbal Essences, it might have been the tuxedos but the simple act of; lather, rinse, repeat brought hundreds of people out to watch two guys get clean and minty fresh.

‘Continuing to commit fully to the German experience we hit up the nudist section of the park to set our base tans before hitting the really hot countries.

‘That night we headed to the Eagles Nest taking the scenic route (meaning get ridiculously lost in the Alps) to spend our first night without a tent, sleeping on the car bonnet and the roof rack. The next morning we were gloriously rewarded by a stunning sunrise over the Alps, amazing.

‘The rally continues as we drive through Europe to a beach party in Romania, crossing the border into Turkey where we plan to sleep in caves and finally onto Iran where we have no idea what’s going to happen.

Mongolia get ready because the Aristokhans are very very slowly on their way.

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Topics:

Adventure,Rally