The middle of the convoy of Bubblegum Bangers reaching the peak of the San Bernardino Pass.

Day 4, 30 September, 11.55pm, Novotel Hotel Lausanne, Switzerland.

WHAT a long day.

We were in the car for more than 13 hours, drove around 600 miles through four different countries, got lost at least twice and went through two and a half tanks of petrol and half a packet of cigarettes (sorry I couldn’t resist the Blues Brothers reference).

After setting out from our hotel in Klobenz, Germany, just after 9am this morning, we finally arrived in Lausanne at 10.45pm.

It’s been a long slog and there were a lot of glazed eyes and tired looks in the bar tonight.

Nick and my day did not get off to the best of starts as it took us about half an hour to negotiate our way out of Klobenz.

But once on the autobahn, we were on a mission to get to our day’s task – to drive in convoy along the world famous San Bernardino Pass on the Swiss and Italian border.

We had to meet at 3pm and we were fighting time.

It was an epic drive down from the Rhineland which saw us pass Stuttgart and Ulm before taking in Austria and Lichtenstein and into the southern Swiss Alps with it’s snow topped mountains.

But these two additional countries gave me a problem on the music front.

You see, I had prepared music on my iPod from each of the countries we were going to visit and those songs got played as soon as we entered them.

For France I had Edith Piaf, some MC Solaar and Johnny Hallyday singing Hey Joe in French.

For Belgium I had the excellent ’2 Many DJs’ compilation album to hand and Golden Earring’s Radar Love for Holland.

Germany witnessed Wagner’s The Ride of The Valkyries and Nena’ 99 Luftballons (the German version) and the William Tell Overture welcomed us into Switzerland.

But with these unscheduled appearances in Austria and Lichenstein (we didn’t know we were going there until we were given the task late the night before), I had to think on the move.

So trawling through my iPod, we had Men at Work with Down Under blaring out when we came across the Austrian border (Australia/Austria – same difference) and Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

But frankly I was stuck when it came to Lichenstein.

Lichenstein rock anyone?

Anyway, we finally made it to the Pass an hour late at 4pm.

The group was abuzz with stories of rally bangers being stopped by over-zealous Swiss police for not having a vignette in their windscreens which you can buy in the country’s service stations for CHF40.

However, if you got pulled over by the police and you didn’t have one, it’s a CHF100 fine, no questions asked.

It seemed like half of the group had been caught out.

Finally when a few of the last stragglers turned up, 40 cars with Guernsey plates went over the Pass which has been described as one of most beautiful drives in the world.

As we went up the steep first side, we were blessed by blue skies.

But when we got to the top and proceeded to go down the other side which has been featured on numerous car adverts and Top Gear test drives, we weren’t wowed by the breathtaking views looking over snow topped mountains.

We were greeted by thick fog.

Nevertheless it was still a worthwhile experience and something to brag to the boys about later.

From here in the south east corner of Switzerland we then had to make our way across Switzerland to Lausanne in the west.

This took another four hours in the dark plus 45 minutes trying to find our hotel once in Lausanne.

The less said about that the better.

It’s been a long day, but it’s been a good day.

And that first beer tasted good tonight as well.