ring leader wrote:Well what a weekend, 13 cars left the boat and headed for the Ring Sun was blazing, Group were great guys and all had put a lot of effort into their cars for their first trip :thumb: As we left Dunkirk and headed along the motorway to the Lille turn off , In my rear view mirror I could see a French ambulance approaching from behind at speed, I gave the convoy the signal to stay Hard right on what bit of hard shoulder there is there!and another post:
In the confusion one of our group was rear ended by a French Driver!
I took the rest of the cars to a safe place and returned to find most of the French police service there and at least 16 miles of the Motorway blocked off and all at a standstill ! :blink:
I quickly established that there was a major problem as My customers had been arrested and all cameras and video equipment confiscated
I approached the Officer in charge and tried to find out what the problem was and explained that I was the organiser and that I had the other 12 cars parked up at the local services! :argue:
I was told to follow and we collected all the other customers and headed for the Motorway police station.
After some very very akward language problembs I finally asked for an interpreter, and 2 hrs later one arrived
There were a lot of phones ringing and lots of police coming and going, I told the interpreter that I could not understand what all the fuss was as it was a straight forward case of a french driver not looking where they were going and crashed into the back of our car!
Wrong she replied, you see she said, you are all part of the Gumball/cannonball ilegal race that came through here on Friday,and that the French police had been tipped off that more were on their way on saturday :huh:
Well you guesed, it took 3 statments overseen by the "French" public prosecuter, one English/french speaking lady who had to read my website word by word to prove we were nothing to do with it !
Our lucky break came when the shift changed and one policeman reconised me and my passat has I had gave him some RING stickers one day at the services a mile down the road! :thumb:
We finally left for Germany at 7pm having been detained all furking day !
So I would just like to say a big thanks to the guys from the cannonball/gumball rally !
On sunday I had the last laugh when I read in a German news paper That all the ballers stoped in Germany were Fined a £1000 each ordered back to Germany to have points on their licence "ENDORSED" By the UK Police.....
A big Thanks to Dale who put a smile on a few of my customers faces with a lap or two in the Mazda (cheers Dale)
all In all We had a fantastic weekend, no Incidents on the Ring
See you all In two weeks time
regards
mav
dave can't drive wrote:Two friends who were part of a group of Elises blatting around the Alps for the past week were detained by the Swiss police for 6 hours. A grumpy member of the public complianed then the police tailed them down the motorway and pulled the instant they crossed from 120kph to 100 (@ 127kph)
They were accused of all sorts of things, next day the teletext news had a mixed up report of them being cannonballers with various incorrect details about the size and makeup of the group, destination etc. They were appealing for witnesses.
There was no accident.
The two were relieved of 2500 CHF each (1100 GBP) as a bond, which they may see some of again if the judge reviewing the statements etc decides the fines etc are less than this (seems unlikely).
One of the other guys dad was meeting up with them at the ring at the end of the trip. He was stopped for a few hours by German (?) police soon after entering the country. They had the ships manifest from the ferry he was on and were stopping anything remotely sporty as the ferry was known to have a bunch of wankballers onboard.
The ballers all had cars impounded for 24hrs and a 1000 EUR fine for participating in an illegal rally (despite no speeding or other offence).
Basically the days of well behaved organised runs are comming to an end. Nobbers driving with no consideration for other road users are quickly ruining things and as Dale said, the cops don't care who you are. Just driving a sporty car is enough now. God help you if you have the car stickered.