Iron Butts Pursuit – 15 March 2010, the circus comes to town
By Danny John-Jules
As Ice Cube said: “Today was a good day”. We blasted off from Nurnberg and headed towards Holland. It was still cold and we had to look out for the mini avalanches falling off lorries as we roared past them. I was a mite cautious as I had turned the TV on in the morning (like you do) and watched the news even though I couldn’t understand a word of German. But you didn’t have to be a Bio Chemist to work out that people had died in road accidents due to the harsh weather we had personally experienced the previous day. There was a possibility of a phone-in with Chris Moyles, so we had to stop at 8.30am in case the phone rang… it didn’t so we cracked on. We have been somewhat invisible to the media during our trip even though all the luvvies have finished their Sport Relief duties and await their publicity ‘love-in’ on the live TV show; we are still out there ‘keeping it real’ and don’t mind if we are ignored because we have had a magnificently tough humbling experience, with no frills and no personal assistants on call 24/7. What you see is what you get and we’ve seen the real world inhabited by real people who have welcomed us into their lives because they realised that we were simply performing an unselfish act that might just go towards helping someone have a better life, even if it’s only for one day.
Anyway! We got to Bavaria and as usual wherever there are mountains you will find snow, winds, ice, treacherous roads and a seriously irked black man! We then reached Holland which was, well, Holland and then on to Belgium, which seemed to be stuck in middle of being Dutch, German and French. Finally we were nearing our destination, Calais. The sun was shining brightly and we were hammering down the final stretch. We passed a convoy of military vehicles with blue lights flashing all over the place. They were surrounding a big lorry suspiciously placed in the middle. I like to think they were taking President Sarkozy and his Mrs away for a private weekend at a secret location…
Garmin is supporting Red Dwarf star Danny John-Jules and team mate Graham Hoskins in their quest to ride nearly 7000 miles by motorbike for Sport Relief. Their ‘Iron Butts’ Challenge will see them circumnavigate the Mediterranean Sea, covering three continents and 14 countries in 15 days guided by a Garmin zumo 660 sat nav.
