"Lads I've got a great idea" #376

Otherwise known as the beer-fuelled moment when Charlie decided it would be a great idea to fly to Latvia in mid-winter to rescue the Shaguar and drive it home. In another cider-fuelled moment I agreed to go with him. In a sober moment it dawned on us that the odds of success were not good but by then our one-way RyanAir flights to Riga were booked. We convinced ourselves that it would be good "hostile environment training", in preparation for the "Wrong Way Round".

It's like this dear readers, the Shaguar was last used in anger in February 2008 during the "Piste & Broke Rally". During this time it demonstrated its reliability by conking out everytime we encountered a puddle, proving the theory that big cats don't like water. It was officially the most towed vehicle on the rally (apart from the complete joke that was Nick's car - avid readers may notice a theme developing here).

On arriving in Riga the reality of the situation hit home. It was snowing hard and minus 12 degrees. We dealt with the situation by getting rinsed on Kaspar's stock of black balsam (which for those of you who haven't tried it is like drinking Benilyn cough mixture with a hint of farmer's welly).

But in the end we could put it off no more. So armed with hats, gloves and a can of Easy Start me, Charlie and Kaspars headed for the compound where the Shaguar had been laid up for almost a year. The good news was that it only had about 4 inches of snow of it, the bad news was that the bottom 2 inches was solid perma-frost and our Halfords-spec ice scraper was ill-equipped for the job. Alas we had no access to an industrial jack hammer so we set up a shift system where one of us chipped away and the other two sat in the warm van and listened to Latvian Rock. Obviously we all wanted to do the chipping.

About an hour later we managed to get the bonnet up. The engine was still there so this was good. Charlie got in the driver's seat, Kaspars attached the battery leads and filled the airbox with Easy Start and I stood back with the camcorder and prepared to be overwhelmed by the sound of silence. What happened next was well, a miracle. I can only imagine Jesus had stopped in Cesis as part of his comeback tour. It started first time.

The lights worked, the stereo worked, the windscreen wiper didn't work. On the first wipe the rubber (still frozen) parted company with the bendy metal bit which resulted in us having to fork out £4 at the local garage. It wasn't even money well spent as will become clearer later especially when you consider that in Latvia £4 buys you 8 beers and a complimentary supermodel.

Anyway with the maintenance complete all we had to do now was drive 4,000kms home via Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, Holland, Belgium and France. Shame it took us until Poland to realise the strange smell in the car was coming from a year-old half eaten Burger King in the glove box...

Anyway, suffice to say the Shaguar is safely back in the UK and now Charlie and me can sit back and regale in those cherished memories such as the anticipation of a Friday night out in Lithuania, only to find it was shut. Though we made up for this in Prague - we know it was good cos we can't remember anything about it.

Then there was the feeling of "we're really gonna make it home" once we escaped the blizzard that followed us all the way from Latvia to the Czech Republic and we finally hit the German autobahns. The feeling of relief sent me in to a deep sleep which lasted for over two hours. You can imagine my surprise on waking to find we were in a sleepy village, in the Czech Republic, after Charlie Wonder decided to overule the Sat-Nav and rely on tracking skills he learned on his one and only week in the Scouts.

The balance was redressed though when I spectacularly managed to navigate us on to a railway line in Holland though to be fair the tracks were hidden by snow. We then spent a full buttock clenching 10 minutes trying to get up enough speed in the deep snow to bounce the Shaguar back off the railway lines thereby averting the embarassing headline in the morning press "Two fuckwits die in train mishap".

The final hurdle was to get through UK Customs. Not as easy as it sounds bearing in mind Kaspars had lost all the paperwork for the car, it wasn't MOT'd and we couldn't open up the boot for inspection because Kaspars had also lost the door keys. Thankfully the border patrol settled for a photo of us and an Extreme Trifle beermat.

Now all we have to do is rescue the Rocket powered Peugeot from Budapest....

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