How Far road trip

On Saturday the 26 June, 12 How Far challengers plus a couple of the homebase team met at St Peter’s church at 5am.

After some discussion, prayer, and a couple of interviews, the horn went at 6am, and we were off! Split into teams of twos and threes, I was with Phil and Kizzy. Our original plan was to get to Gatwick and blag a free flight. We managed to get there in less than two hours, via Ray and his milk float, Ian and his taxi, and Pedro and his laundry delivery van. Unfortunately Pedro only had two spare seats up front, so while Kizzy and I chatted to him about Portugal and England, Phil lounged in the back in the pitch black among the (hopefully) clean towels.

After spending two hours at Gatwick, asking at every flight desk and getting the same response (“against policy”) at every one, we managed to hitch a ride from Dave to Hounslow, which we realised was not quite as central London as we thought, in our sleep-deprived state. We eventually got a lift to the next tube station after what seemed like thousands of cars had driven past us, and made our way into central London. Had a slightly awkward moment when chatting to a drunk guy on the tube: after explaining what we were doing he announced “that sounds like fun... maybe I’ll come with you!” but he forgot about it a few minute later. We managed to complete some challenges, including waiting for ages outside a (St Peter’s!) church to get a picture with the bride and groom, and Kizzy jumping on to a Routemaster bus going full pelt down Pall Mall with Phil and I sprinting after it to get the photographic proof.

At about 6pm, we had managed to secure some seats on a bus to Manchester, and once up North, could use Kizzy’s contacts (she’s from Chester) to get a lift to Holyhead. 2am arrived – we put our friendly faces on and managed to blag our way on to the ferry to Dublin. On arrival we got a bus half way in to town, but abandoned our quest for the airport when we realised there was an hour’s wait for the connecting bus. Sitting on the kerb at the bus stop, wondering what to do, we looked to our right and saw a police station. We had heard that other teams had had some luck with the police, so we asked, and we got! Alan took us back to the dock in a panda car, and we found out he had been a youth pastor at another HTB plant!

We made our way on to the ferry we had arrived on (with the same staff – slightly embarrassing), and arrived back at Holyhead a few hours later. Once there, our only obvious option was to get the train to London Euston. Didn’t go according to plan: the conductor refused us and we ended up scrawling a sign reading “Stranded... any big city PLEASE”. Many pitying looks later (from people going on to the ferry), a black cab pulled up and took us back to Chester. Kizzy had no luck with the RAF or getting through to the Duke of Westminster (Guard: “so what exactly do you want?” Kizzy: “a helicopter..?!” Guard: “oh, we don’t keep those here”), so instead we managed to hitch from just outside Chester to Warwick with the lovely Jason, and from there to Hampton Court with Simon and his son Jacob. My mum picked us up and brought us down to Brighton (she was going that way anyway!) where we were greeted by loud cheers from the other challengers at The Eagle.