Constantinople to Cumbria - by coach

The Inside Line's latest recruit travelled to Turkey for round four of the FIA World Rally Championship to work with our client M-Sport - but the eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano and the disruption from the subsequent ash cloud meant it was far from plain sailing...

Blog post - by Rachel Cavers, Press Officer, The Inside Line.

I am writing this from the comfort of my own home in Carlisle. A few days ago, however, was a very different story!

We’d just been told that our flight from Istanbul had been cancelled and that we had to look at other options to make the 2012km back home from the fourth round of the FIA World Rally Championship in Turkey. The first plan was to get a plane to Madrid and take a bus through France, but the following day this was no longer feasible - the volcanic ash had moved south and all Spanish airports had closed.

This news didn’t exactly fill me with joy - I had just started as the Press Officer with The Inside Line looking after M-Sport and Turkey had been my first rally. It’d been a fantastic week where everything was so new and exciting for me – I’d got to travel on the Bosphorus Strait through Asia and into Europe on a ferry, visit the famous Blue Mosque during the ceremonial start where several important Turkish ministers were sitting right beside me. I’d sampled local Turkish cuisine, seen belly dancers, eaten a traditional Turkish kebab, rubbed shoulders with the world’s best rally drivers and even managed to catch some sun! It had been a great week but I was exhausted and dreading the ever more likely prospect of a three-day jaunt through Europe on a bus.

There was also added pressure for the mechanics to get back to base at M-Sport to ensure the team's cars would be ready for Rally New Zealand in two weeks time. So it was decided that the only way to ensure everyone got back in time was to drive overland and two coaches were organised to take us from Istanbul back to the UK. This wasn’t exactly ideal but there was no option - we didn’t know how long airports would be closed and how long the backlog of cancelled flights would take to clear.

We were due to leave on the Monday and during the day everyone stocked up on crisps, water and sweets for the journey so that we didn’t need to stop off for food along the way and add extra time onto our trip home. There wasn’t any toilets on the buses though so we planned to stop every 3-4 hours at service stations. We set off from Turkey at 4pm (2pm UK time) but as I stepped onto the bus my heart sank as I saw a piece of paper with the word ‘Calais’ scribbled on it by the Turkish driver – it hadn’t crossed my mind that our drivers didn’t actually have a clue where we were going...

It took us about five hours to reach the Bulgarian border. As the airports were closed, the roads were a lot busier than we had envisaged and there was a huge queue at the border which delayed us by four hours. This set us back valuable time on the first day and meant we had a very disrupted first night’s sleep on the bus. Everyone tried to make the most of the limited sleeping positions available to us - some slept on the aisle, others sprawled out on the seats but I opted for curling on the floor underneath my seat using a scarf as a cushion against the hard flooring, not ideal but the best I could manage! At least I could stretch out and finally close my eyes, but then the snoring started...

It would have been quickest to drive directly through Serbia but we couldn’t get a visa so our drivers were forced to take a longer route through Romania and Hungary. After finally making it through the Bulgarian border, we spent most of Tuesday driving through a rather gloomy Romania where we passed lots of poor villages and dilapidated houses. Everyone tried to remain in a good mood and we spent most of the morning watching a film and catching up from the lack of sleep from the previous night. We stopped at a service station early afternoon where one of our drivers decided to run away! This meant we only had one driver left to drive the remaining 1500 kilometres so a quick decision was made to alter our route in order to pick up another driver to share the mammoth drive to Calais.

The new route took us through more remote villages in Romania and into Transylvania in the north-west where the scenery was prettier and everything looked less poverty stricken. We did a quiz during the afternoon to keep us entertained and watched another film. We even made our first stop for food as we made our way through the home of Count Dracula, stopping for a McDonalds at about 5pm. After driving through deepest darkest Romania, we finally made it to the Hungarian border at about 7pm on the Tuesday evening. Everyone was really relieved to get to Hungary as it felt we had made little progress throughout the day after having to make our detour to pick up the extra driver. It was raining and fairly miserable but we managed to make it through the border without any problems this time. We made a couple of stops overnight and everyone made the best of the floor and seats to try and get some sleep, before crossing into the Austrian border at about 9am on Wednesday morning.

The weather was really nice in Austria and everyone was in much better spirits as it finally felt like we were making steady progress. This didn’t last long! We made it to the German border in the afternoon, but got stopped by the police because apparently we didn’t have the necessary paperwork. A small fine and an hour later we were on our way again. We made our second consecutive stop at McDonalds in Germany too, this raised everyone’s morale as it no longer meant we had to survive on cans of Coke, Wagon Wheels and tubs of Pringles!

On Wednesday afternoon we celebrated our 50th hour on the bus with Flumps and Haribo! We passed through Belgium and Holland without any problems before finally making it to the French border at about 9pm. We arrived at Calais at about 3am on Thursday morning where two Stobart buses were waiting for us to replace the now quite tired Turkish buses which had driven us from Istanbul.  We just missed the 325am Eurotunnel to Dover and had to wait until 530am for the next one, but there was a huge sigh of relief that the end was finally in sight.

There were no problems crossing the English Channel and we finally arrived back on British soil at 6am on Thursday morning. We had one final stop on the way back to M-Sport before arriving at Dovenby Hall at 1pm on Thursday afternoon. The rest of the team were all there to welcome us back with banners, along with some local media who were keen to hear our story, before we all parted ways to get some well-earned rest.

So, my return from my first ever rally saw me spend 62 (very uncomfortable) hours on a bus passing through ten countries where I ate umpteen tubs of Pringles, cans of Diet Coke, Flumps, watched eight films and discover a whole new meaning to the word boredom! It was a strange feeling to wake up in my bed this morning alone and without the company of my 35 M-Sport colleagues. My only wish now is that we don’t have to do the same sort of trip when returning from Rally New Zealand next month!