The Great Escape – Paris for the Night…

This weekend I participated in The Great Escape with my two friends, Meg and Dom. The aim was to get as far away from Nottingham as possible in 36 hours without spending any of our own money. Despite a slight apprehension caused by horror stories of previous Jailbreakers having to sleep in tunnels, we were excited at the prospect of going on a journey and not knowing where we would end up.

 

Dressed as a small tribe of Red Indians, our journey started at 7am where we met an extremely random assortment of people (cowboys, Mexicans, ghostbusters and giant bunnies to name a few) at Lenton Recreational Ground. The atmosphere was electric. With an amp blasting upbeat tunes, everyone was buzzing for the adventure, despite the cold. After the countdown, we all flocked out of the park and began to disperse around Lenton.

 

Meg’s house mate had kindly offered us our first lift from Lenton to the M1 (thanks Jo!). So whilst most of our fellow adventurers tried to thumb lifts from people on Derby Road or started the cold, miserable, walk into town, we just leisurely headed back to Bute Avenue for a guaranteed lift. By 8.30am we were at a service station on the M1, feeling smug with ourselves as we were sure we were in the lead. After no more than 2 minutes, a couple of Robin Hoods turned up having blagged a lift and not long after, another team arrived too. Things then began to hot up and the competition to get a lift was on. After pleading with many an innocent passer-by planning to have a quiet loo stop or a cheeky McDonald’s breakfast, we managed to persuade a man to drive us South. Much to our surprise, not only was he heading to Twickenham (our aim location) but he also zapped his keys at the best BMW in the car park. By 9.30am we were cruising down the M1 making awkward small talk, safe in the knowledge that if he did turn out to be a serial killer, we would die in style on cream leather seats.

 

Luckily for us, he wasn’t a serial killer, and was in fact a very generous man who fondly remembered his hitchhiking days as a student. At 11.30am he dropped us in Twickenham, just around the corner from Dom’s house. We stopped by Dom’s for half an hour to be plied with hot drinks, warm toast and freshly cut strawberries from his Mum. After half an hour of luxury, we were back outside in the cold rattling our buckets amongst the rugby supporters to try to get donations for further travel. We met opposition in the form of other charity fundraisers who scolded us for not having a license to fundraise, but we didn’t let this stop us as we continued to roam the streets of Twickenham, to harass drunken rugby fans.

 

By 4pm we were very cold and slightly miserable, but were rescued by Meg’s housemate’s uncle who happened to be watching the rugby. We were invited into a very civilised car park where spectators were picnicking from the boots of their cars. Here we were further spoilt, being given beer, egg mayonnaise sandwiches, pork pies and access to a cheese board that Wallace and Gromit would have been impressed with. After regaining some energy, we left the car park with full tummies and generous donations in our buckets. We were then ready to go out again and raise more money from the stragglers who were still making their way into the stadium.

 

During the match, we went back to Dom’s to count up the money we had raised. It came to £90 which was enough to book a coach to Paris for the three of us for the next day. So it was decided, we would be making the 8 and a half hour coach journey to Paris! We were all very excited. After warming ourselves up, we headed back out after the rugby in the hope of raising more money due to the high spirits of the fans after England’s victory over France. Despite being chased around yet again by the same disapproving fundraisers, we managed to raise a further £25 to go towards the charity, not our travel.

 

After a long day, we got an early night and got up early to catch our 8am coach from Victoria to Paris. We managed to get top deck front row seats of the coach and after exhausting ‘would you rather’ we finally arrived at Gallieni (a Parisian suburb) at 4.30pm. Completely lost and having no idea how to get to central Paris, the pressure fell on my A level French to get us there. I did the classic ‘Parlez-vous Anglais?’ and after establishing that the man at the metro station did speak English (thank God!) I asked him the embarrassingly clichéd question of the quickest way to get to the Eiffel Tower. Following his directions, we shortly emerged from the tube stop just opposite the Eiffel Tower to be greeted by a picturesque snowy Paris.

The three of us were extremely excited to see the Eiffel Tower and despite being exhausted, soggy and still dressed as native Americans, walked up as far as we could get to admire the beautiful views of Paris. We stayed with Dom’s friends in Paris (3rd years from Bristol on their year abroad) in their beautiful apartment right in the centre of Paris. They too were extremely kind and hospitable.

 

Unfortunately, due to the call of lectures and seminars our trip to Paris was very short and we left on Monday morning at 11am to get the bus back to London.

 

Our Jailbreak experience was amazing and surreal. We were extremely lucky and didn’t even remotely have to ‘rough’ it. Everyone we met along the way was so helpful and generous. I would like to thank everybody who helped us on our journey and also everybody who sponsored us. As a team we ended up raising just under £500 for Enactus Nottingham, which is fantastic. I would recommend everybody to take part in the Great Escape next year. It was so much fun, and you never know where you might end up.