Homeward Bound

Time for your next instalment in Jokers Holiday

Stay tuned for more, same Joker time, same Joker channel.

The Flight

Well the Joker managed to get a flight, here's what he sent back.

Joker on Tour

Well I got Iron-man back & to be honest I'm a little disappointed. I thought that it would go on for at least a week.

Unfortunately our man-nappers didn't have the stomach for it & gave in at the first hurdle.

Now before all this happened I had my suspicions about who took him & was plotting what we could do to them. So in preparation (always be prepared) for the revenge attack I "borrowed" their Lego Joker :)

So far they haven't noticed that he has gone on vacation, but they soon will!

I've set up an e-mail account in his name, The Joker, and we're going to be sending him off on an adventure & he'll be sending them updates and photos when he can.

Here's a copy of his first message & the photos.

War!

Somebody has come into my office & taken Iron Man!

He was one of the Kinder egg set from a couple of years ago, I've got several that sit on my shelf / ledge above my computer.

Here's a copy of the note that was left for me.

So we can tell from this picture that it was taken in a flowerpot just outside my office. I checked & Iron man is no longer there.

I have my suspicions. Let the games begin!

Jail Break

Back in 2008 I did something that was, to me at least, pretty cool.
Along with my mate Navarone I signed up for an event Called JailBreak. Basically you had 36 hours to get as far away as possible from a particular locat, but you weren't allowed to spend any money on transport. You could beg, plead, bribe (but not with cash), work for your fare - just not pay for it.

Here's the log we kept, as well as a few photos from our journey.

19/02/2009

We signed up to this event about 8 months ago and now with just over two weeks to go (16 days) I thought that I should begin this… log (?) as a record of what we’ve done & what we’re planning to do. Mark & I agreed to make a record of our journey near the beginning of this, as something to show the ……kids/grandkids when we’re older. We chose the name Long Runners for two reasons; one, because we wanted to show we were committed & that we wanted to go all the way ;) - two, we’re both kinda geeky about Japanese culture & Dragons and the word Long is one of the translations from Japanese for the word Dragon, so you could say that we are the Dragon Runners too.

Ok, what have we done so far?  We’ve contacted numerous companies, such as Cadburys’, Sheffield United/Wednesday/Steelers/Eagles/Sharks, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Virgin Rail/Atlantic, BMI, British Airways, Nestle, KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Meadowhall, First Choice, HSBC Bank & Lloyds TSB Bank. Whilst most companies have replied with a “Sorry we cannot help you” we have had a bit of success; Sheffield United sent us a voucher for two tickets to a home game that we could raffle off, Caburys UK aloud us to visit their factory shop. It was about this time, whilst my Dad was selling raffle tickets that his boss got interested & asked if he could join our team. The best reply we’ve had so far is from Virgin Rail who have agreed to give us the freedom of their network for the 36 hours during the Jail Break! J

Now my dads boss has said that he might be able to get a limousine to take us from Avoncroft to where ever we need to be, also that he may be able to us over to Dinar (that’s in the South of France),  but so far nothing has been set in stone. I’m still harassing some of the larger Airlines, Ferry companies & Euro Star, so hopefully we could still get some better news.

Our total raised so far online is £323.87! £42 pound from raffling the Sheffield United tickets,  £68.87 from a coffee morning held by Craftastic,  £32 from the sale of a special Hardanger Chart my wife made made.

 The total in Gift Aid from our online sponsors is £76.68.

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot to say, as requested by Carys (she’s one of the ladies organising this wacky race) we’ve been in touch with our local media asking for a bit of publicity. I’ve emailed our stuff to Hallam FM, 

Look North, Calendar, BBC Radio Sheffield & The Sheffield Star. So far no replies.

03/03/2009

So my dads boss called me today at work. He’s not going to be able to take part in JB any more, work stuff unfortunately. What he did say was that as a way of an apology he would use £400 that he’d raised to buy us plane tickets somewhere. After checking with Carys & Cat (the ladies who are organising JB ’09) that this would be ok, Navarone & me started looking.

05/03/2009

Whoop Whoop! We’ve now got return tickets booked to Rome flying out Sat 7^th March at 16:40 from Birmingham & landing back in Brum on Monday 9^th March at 17:55. My uncle is going to takes us down to the museum on Saturday morning, so all that’s left is for us to work out how we’re getting to the airport (I’ve got a couple of places to try tomorrow) and the how we’re getting home on Monday! Cat & Carys have asked for a letter from the company to confirm that he’s raised the money to buy us plane tickets, so I’ve asked Dad to sort that one out. I don’t know about Navaraone, but my nerves are starting to kick in now.

06/03/2009

Ok, I tried what I thought was a bus station, but it turned out to just a depot type place. The guy I spoke to said I’d need to get into Bromsgrove proper to get a bus and that wouldn’t be easy from Avoncroft. Bugger.

I googled train stations near by & have got the number for Bromsgrove Train Station (which is about a twenty minute walk from the museum) so I gave them a call. It was a company called London Midlands that operates from this station, so in my best, nicest, phone voice I pushed my luck once more. Unfortunately the chap on the other end of the line said that because I’d given them such short notice there was nothing that they could do to help, but then he added that they have waived the penalty fares from Bromsgrove as it is an un-manned station. Top bloke J

Just had a call from my Dad, he’s got the letter done, but my Uncle has called to say that he’s got work on Saturday L but if we are alright to set off at 6am he will still be ok to take us. I had a quick word with Mark & we’re back on track. It seems like just a one problem is solved another pops its bleedin’ head up. We’ve decided to go straight up to the conductor on the train from Bromsgrove to Birmingham & be up front with them and offer them a bribe ;)

07/03/2009

Well this was the big day. I got up at 5:30, my wife sprayed my beard blue & then we waited for Uncle Paul to arrive. The boys came down about 10 minutes before I left to say good-bye & that they’d see me at the museum. When my Uncle arrived I found that my cousin had decided to tag along down to Bromsgrove. We then went to pick Mark up from his house & set off.

It was about 8:20 when we got to Avoncroft museum, Paul & Helen couldn’t stop so they set straight back off. No one else had arrived and after about ten minutes we began to wonder if we’d got the right place, but then Carys & Cat and few of the other organisers turned up. Mark and I then helped to set up the tables & get a few things ready. Once a few more teams had registered they start to give out the swag bags. Each bag contained a Jailbreak 2009; T-shirt, pen, letter & travel form, some sweets, a carton of juice, Irn-Bru; data stick, pen, note pad & mobile phone sock, incense sticks and some toys (in our cases we got a squeaky rubber duck, glow sticks, big playing cards & a toy spider). We also got Andys bag as he’d paid for it even though he wasn’t able to take part any more. So we got a spare shirt, a rubber duck J and some more sweets.

My family turned up about 9:30ish and we sprayed a blue smiley into the back of Navarones hair.

At about 11:15 we were taken to the Jail where we had a bit of brief about what was going to happen, a reminder of the rules, a check that everyone had what they needed & then it was back to the main hall for the speeches. Cat & Carys were both slightly emotional and thanked each other and every one else quite a lot, then it was a women from the Endometriosis UK charity, who again thanked every one involved. After all that we were given a cup of tomato soup & locked up with the five other teams; Not Checked Out, The Strangers, Brampton Borrowers, Team Shepherd and Carry On Jailbreak.

Then came the release, the doors were flung open & every one ran out, we grabbed our bags from round the side of the jail & then the race was on.

I don’t know if any one else had a definite plan or not, but Navarone & me new where we needed to go. We followed our map, stopping to check we were on the right path a couple of times, and got to Bromsgrove train station at 12:20ish. Mark checked the board to make sure that the train wasn’t delayed and we sat down to wait. About 5 minutes later Not Checked Out (Wit, Liv & Matt) turned up at the station followed about another 5 minutes after that by Carry On Jailbreakers, but they managed to get a Taxi to take them whereever.

We shared our train plan with NCO and they agreed that it sounded like a good idea. Once we were all on the train we started from the back and worked our way forward looking for the conductors. As it was there were two of them and they were both ok with us all travelling to Birmingham New Street in exchange for our bag of peanut M&M’s.

At New Street station NCO went to try and beg a ride North, they’d said that they were trying to get to somewhere near Blackpool. Since Navarone and I already had our transport sorted (our letter from Virgin Rail) we decided to give NCO a bottle of gin that we’d brought from home to use as a potential bribe and with that we went our separate ways. Luckily there was a Virgin train waiting to depart that was stopping at Birmingham International, so we hopped on. The ride down took about 10 minutes, on the train we got talking to a man & his two sons about what we were doing and why. At the station we jumped onto a free shuttle that connects the train station to the airport, we got of the shuttle at Terminal 1 and walked over to Terminal 2 were we booked in, after that we went to the departure lounge played cards & took some pictures while we waited for our first flight.

We took of at 16:40 and arrived at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam at 18:40ish local time (17:40 our time), took a few photos , checked in with family & the JB team, but since we only had 1 hour 40mins till our next flight we pretty much went straight through to the next departure lounge and played a bit more cards.

 

Our flight to Rome boarded at 20:20 and we settled down to another few hands of cards before landing in Rome at the Leonardo Da Vinci Airport about 22:10 local time. After passing through customs we again checked in with Family & JB team, we then realised that we’d not got anywhere to sleep, so we sought out the nearest tourist information centre and hoped it was still open. Luckily for us it was and we asked the lady behind the desk where the cheapest hotel / B&B was, her reply wasn’t that great. The only hotel nearby was the Hilton at the airport (and that certainly wasn’t cheap), but if we wanted to we could sleep in Terminal C on some of the benches. After thanking her we set of to try and find Terminal C and some comfortable benches.

08/03/2009

Sleep was patchy that night to say the least. I kept waking up about every hour or two, if it wasn’t the uncomfortable benches it was people and staff coming in & going around the airport. We finally decided to get up, as any chance sleep seemed to have flown with the last load of passengers, about 05:45 and go to see what was on offer for breakfast.

After we’d had a salami sandwich (it was a bit dry, no butter or sauce) we went to hang out by the main exit & see if we could beg / bribe a ride with one of the mini buses taking parties to their hotels. We lucked out & got a lift with a load of Chinese tourist going to St. Peters Square, so what would’ve been a 6 hour walk turned into a 40 minutes bus ride.

The bus dropped us off on this street and the driver pointed down a street saying that St. Peters Square was that way. As we were walking down the street we checked in again with Cat, then with our families and then we walked out into St. Peters Square. WOW! It is absolutely breathtaking, I can’t think of much more to say so we’ll just show you the photos’ we took.

The fountain in these pictures we mistakenly believed to be the Trevi fountain, but we’ll tell more about that in a bit. Anyway of to our right we saw queues of people going through metal detectors and heading towards the Vatican, so we thought lets go and went to join the queues. Once through the checkpoint we made our way along a path, we saw a couple of the Swiss Guards and took a photo from the top of the steps looking back down onto St. Peters Square.

Again once we got inside the Vatican itself there are very few words to describe how beautiful it is. Even for non-religious people such as Navarone & me it is absolutely awesome, at the time of our visit there was a service going on (what else would you expect with it being a Sunday) which made it even more …breathtaking is the only word I can think of. The art and the chanting just made it all the more incredible, again I’ll just let our photos speak for them selves.

Now back to that fountain we thought was the Trevi fountain. As we exited from the Vatican and were walking back down into the main square we saw another fountain the same as the first, but on the other side of the column. So after about twenty minutes of wandering around we bought a photo-map, but still couldn’t find the Trevi fountain. Eventually we decided to bite the bullet as it were and went to ask directions from two priests and a nun, luckily they were Irish. They told us that the Trevi fountain was on the other side of the city & pointed it out on our map for us. Since it was early and we didn’t have an awful lot else to do we decided to take a walk. We started walking down the Via della Conciliazione towards the Castel Sant Angelo, then across the river Tiber.

Once over the river we followed the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II down to the Pza Venzia, then up the Via del Corso and then down a couple of side streets to the Fontana Di Trevi.

After we’d seen the Trevi fountain and made our way back to the Via del Corso and as we were feeling a bit peckish we went into a little restaurant and had some real Italian pizza. We then carried on down the road back to the Pza Venezia & the Vittoriano, where we got conned by two centurions.

So here’s how then con went down, we were taking pictures of the Vittoriano when the first centurion came over gave me his sword, put his helmet on me & Navarone took the photo. Next the second centurion came over and they were both in the photo with Navarone, then the first centurion took the camera & took a photo of both of us. Afterwards he pointed at me and said 10, pointed at Navarone said 10 then put his hand out and said “Twenty Euros!” We were both flummoxed, we thought they were just part of the tourist attractions employed by the local council or whatever, but we had to pay as there were two policemen just behind us.

After that incident we carried on walking down the Via dei Fori Imperiali (a little disheartened), we saw some more ruins and then at the end was the Colosseum.

 

We decided to call this our final destination and phoned it in. As it was only just gone 11am we decided to have a wonder round looking at some more of the ruins.

Once we’d wandered around for a while we decided to head back to the airport to see if we could wangle our way onto an earlier flight home. So then we had another dilemma. How do we get back to the airport? We eventually chose to try to travel back by train, as we’d found a train terminal at the airport last night. Out came our trusty map and off we went once more walking along the streets of Rome. It wasn’t a particularly hot day, but what with all of the walking and our bags we ended up needing to drink quite a bit.

Arriving at the train station brought a whole other set of problems, mainly trying to find out where to get the train tickets from and where & when the train was departing from. Eventually it got sorted and after a quick dash we made it onto a train back to the airport at about 13:30, getting back to the station 15 minutes or so later. At the airport we went straight to the KLM / Air France desk to see if we could be swapped onto an earlier flight. The only flight available to us left at 06:00 on Monday 09/03/09 (only about 4 hours earlier), but it got us to Birmingham by 13:00, so we said ok. The lady behind the desk did some calculations & then said that it would cost sixty Euros each. At this we looked at each other then turned back to the lady and said, “No thanks, we’ll stay as we are.” So then we went to get washed, changed and to find a set of comfy benches for the rest of the day. Feeling a little refreshed we settled down into a game of cards and chatted about the day & how we were going to get home tomorrow.

We stopped playing cards at about 23:00 that night (believe it or not, but the time really flew by) and tried to get some sleep. I got up about 06:30 on Monday, went to get washed and stretch my legs, it hadn’t been too bad a night for me. I only woke up a couple of times; once when a coach load of people came for a flight & a second time when some else waiting for a flight started to have a bit of a mad rant. Navarone woke up not long after I got back from my wash; apparently he’d slept all the way through. After Navarone had been and freshened up we played a bit more cards until it was time for us to check in.

had a look around all of the shops & had our gate changed about 3 times, but eventually we were ready to board our plane to Amsterdam. We had a nice snack served on this flight; one egg & one salami sandwich, Mark didn’t like the egg so we swapped. We had a four hour-ish wait once we landed at Schipphol, most of which was taken up by once again playing cards, we did get a few souvenirs from the duty free shops as well.

 At last we boarded our flight to Birmingham, we’d spoken to our families earlier and had a good idea of the train times from Birmingham to Sheffield – we just hoped that we made the connections on time. We landed at 17:45, give or take, and once we were through passport control we ran to the shuttle to take us back to Birmingham International train station, bought our tickets & just made it onto the train to Birmingham New Street. At New Street we found our connecting train in plenty of time and settled down to our penultimate leg of the journey that had started 60 hours ago.

The train pulled into Sheffield station just after 20:00 and it whilst waiting for Navarones mum to pick us up that we heard the results from Carys:

Team	Destination	Distance
The Long Runners	Colosseum in Rome	1,278 miles
The Strangers	Stromness in Orkney isles	596 miles
Brampton Borrowers	Belfast City Centre	368 miles
Carry on JailBreakers	Penzance	254 miles
Team Shepherd	Calais Town Centre	237 miles
The Not Checked Outs	Blackpool	137 miles

We were sorry to hear that Wit, Matt & Liv hadn’t got that far, but they’d had to pull out because some one wasn’t well. The fun day raised £350, and they’d added up the money the teams had raised which came to £2,300. The raffle raised £500 so far. All in all it wasn’t too bad an amount and we both felt pretty pleased that we’d played a part in it. I got home about 21:00 (Navarone probably about 10-15 minutes after that) and after a shower I sat down to something to eat and told my wife all about what we’d done & showed her our pictures.

And that is the end of the Journey of the Long Runners!