Race2Paris

Gordon with Eggbert

8:30 – Potterrow, Edinburgh

All 17 teams gathered to be reminded of the rules, receive our goody bags, and discuss strategies; East coast or West seemed to be the question everybody was asking…! We were also presented with an egg, (we called ours Eggbert) which we had to get all the way to Paris, unbroken!

All the teams ready to go

9:15 – Bristo Square, Edinburgh

Everybody lined up, counted down and we were off – some teams ran very purposefully in various directions, others wandered off casually and a couple just didn’t seem that bothered. Gordon and I had decided to try our luck at Waverley station first so we headed in that direction, unfortunately, a couple of other teams had the same idea and the zebras beat us to it – but, it didn’t seem like they had any joy at the ticket office so we decided to cut our losses and head out towards the bypass to try and hitch our first lift. We tried to hitch from Cameron Toll but were asked to move on by the guys in the Sainsbury’s garage so carried on walking in the direction of the bypass….

11:15 – Edinburgh, 1st Hitch

…Until we got to the next garage which was on a much better stretch of road and seemed to be a fairly sensible place to hitch. On our five mile route march from Waverley to our first hitch we discovered just how warm the penguin onesies were and both slightly regretted the number of layers we’d put on underneath. Standing on the side of a road, dressed as a penguin, holding a banner which says Paris at 11:00am on a Friday morning was definitely one of the strangest things I’ve ever done, we got a lot of funny looks from people driving past (and I can’t say I blame them), but after 15 minutes a guy in a van pulled over and said he could give us a lift to Glasgow. So, West coast it was.

Gordon was fairly shocked we managed to get
our first lift!

12:30 – Central Glasgow 

We arrived in Glasgow, bid farewell to our first lift and started to work out our plan of action. Gordon, being a local, had a few ideas, but thought we’d try our luck at the train station first – the main ticket office & the Virgin ticket office both said no but said we could try speaking to the train conductors on the platforms. 
We spoke to a guy on the platform who worked for Virgin (not the train conductor), he was lovely and very determined to get us on a train – the first and second conductors both said absolutely no way. Our assistant, & his friend who’d joined in as well, were getting quite annoyed, they didn’t understand why no one would let us on. There was a Transpennine Express train at the platform heading to Manchester so we said we’d try one more time and if we didn’t have any luck we’d think of another plan. To cut a long story short, the conductor, after hiding us round the corner from his boss let us onto the train and said we could stay on as long as we wanted!

On the train!

13:09 – On a train to Manchester

We were pretty pleased with ourselves at this point, we knew we had guaranteed progress and a comfy seat for the next few hours! We spent a while deliberating where to get off the train, Manchester Piccadilly at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon didn’t seem like the best idea. We eventually decided to jump off at Chorley, just north of Manchester since it was pretty close to the M6 and getting off a bit earlier gave us a decent amount of daylight to hitch our next lift.

15:56 – Chorley

Getting off the train at Chorley we weren’t entirely sure where we were heading, but wandered off in what we hoped was the right direction. Stopped for a bit of food and to work out where we wanted to get to. Carried on along the road which we thought would take us to near the M6, it turned out we had taken a slight detour, but eventually got ourselves back to roughly where we wanted to be….

17:00 – Chorley, 2nd Hitch

We got to our second hitch spot, which was slightly less ideal than our first, but decided since it was starting to get dark we really just needed to get someone to take us out to near the motorway. It was much more difficult to hitch once the light was going, and the traffic was going quite a lot faster than on the road in Edinburgh, but again, after 15 minutes, a guy in a white van pulled over and said he was going home but had driven past us once already and would take us out to the garage by the M6. 

17:45 – Garage, 3rd Hitch

Hitching at the garage

We were very grateful to be somewhere which was properly lit & had food.  Lots of cars came in & out but none seemed to be going South. We collected a decent amount in donations from people who couldn’t give us a lift so that was awesome. We were still in really good spirits, very excited by the fact we’d made it as far as we had! The garage gave us a chance to speak to people properly, & everyone seemed convinced we wouldn’t be waiting long for a lift. 

In the end, about two hours after we arrived, a lovely woman who had walked past us twice already came back round the corner (at least 45 minutes after the first time) & said that herself & her husband could give us a lift to Ashford, in Kent! It was a massive relief to have secured progress for such a long distance – a huge thank you here to Jed and Judith, who provided us with a warm car, sherbet lemons, midget gems and lots of amusing stories! We said goodbye to them at Maidstone Services at about quarter to one in the morning.

00:45 - Maidstone Services, 4th Hitch

A little unimpressed at
Maidstone Services

...and said hello to two other teams, one of which had been there three hours already! After a couple of hours swapping between the services and the garage, having spoken to a lot of people & been rejected by a Russian coach driver we were starting to feel just a little bit cold and tired...when the guy who worked in McDonald's came outside and asked me if I'd just been speaking to a fireman - no one had told me he was a fireman but I was pretty sure I knew which guy he was talking about, a lovely man in a blue jacket who I'd been chatting to for a while but who was heading back to London, and I was right, anyway, the McDonald's guy said "He's on the phone, he said he can get you to Paris"...! So we were taken through the McDonald's kitchen into their office (unfortunately we were a bit too excited to get photographic evidence, but I promise it did happen!), the guy on the phone just gave me his number so I could ring him back, which I did, straight away - he then said "I've just spoken to my sister, she works in the reservations office for the Eurostar in Paris and she says if you can get to Ashford, which is 20 minutes down the road, by 5:00am then she can get you on a train to Paris" - it was only 3:00am at this point so we were very confident we could make it. We were talking to a lovely couple outside who had just come from Ashford and were going back to London but they said they would give us a lift back to Ashford - they took us all the way to the Eurostar passenger terminal! 

Nap time outside the Eurostar Terminal

04:00 - Ashford - 5th Hitch
So we got there at about 4:00am and it was all shut, to cut a VERY long story short...from this point on the dream of getting on the Eurostar just seemed to be getting less and less likely. At about 6:00am we decided to give up and try to hitch a lift back to Maidstone. This was probably the worst point of the journey, wandering round a random town at 6:00am, freezing cold, having not slept for 24hours and fairly unsure about which direction we needed to be going - there was hardly any traffic but eventually we got a builder to give us a lift back to Maidstone.

06:50 - Maidstone Services, 6th Hitch

Wandering round Ashford - definitely didn't feel like Gordon
or Cordelia was close to anything at this point!

We got to Maidstone and realised that both other teams had gone, and we think another had been through as well. We tried the garage for a while but with no luck so went back to the services, and, after driving round the car park a couple of times a car pulled over, at about 7:40 and said they could give us a lift to Dover. We hesitated slightly because of the horror stories we had heard about getting stuck at Dover but decided that any progress had to be a good thing and so jumped in. At which point we found out they were actually going onto the ferry and so asked if they would give us a lift, and luckily they said yes. They then said that if we didn't find a lift off the ferry then to come back to the car and they would take us to a garage on the road out of Calais towards Paris.
After freshening up a little on the ferry and making ourselves feel slightly more human, we set out on a mission to find a lift. It was getting much harder at this point because a lot of people weren't English or simply didn't understand why two people were walking round the ferry dressed as penguins with a sign which said Paris (we didn't have the whole banner out so there was no explanation)! Anyway, we didn't have any luck so went back to the car and set out on the Paris road to find a garage.
We thought there would be on within 5-10 minutes, we were very wrong - it took about an hour before we got to a garage and said goodbye to the absolute heros who got us there - such a great lift and they went so far out of their way to help us - they were meant to be going to Belgium...for the day!

10:30 - French Services, 7th Hitch

Gordon & Maria!

We're in Paris!

So the last push started, we still hadn't slept, but were very excited to be in France, Paris was very much within our reach. We realised that this next, and hopefully last hitch could be very difficult since neither of us speak great French and trying to explain what we were doing in a different language was going to be almost impossible. But luckily, not long after we arrived, a couple of guys from Portugal, but who lived in London said they could give us a lift to Paris. So we jumped in their lovely Jeep with leather seats and their gorgeous dog Maria at 11:00am. We finally arrived at Orly Airport in Paris at about 13:20, jumped on the metro and got to the hostel second to last at 14:45. We were very happy to have made it, to have a proper shower and change out of our beloved penguin suits! Thank you so much to everybody who sponsored us - we raised a total of £1563.75 which will make an incredible difference to our projects, watch this space for updates about how the money is being used! 

At the hostel with Eggbert still intact!