The final days journey had taken us to the Water Park - Aquashow - where many of the teams enjoyed a few hours of fun on the flumes, slides and wacky rides presented to them. All to soon we were back on the road for our final leg to Lisbon.

Traveling in a group of some 12 cars we made good time on the 200km journey through some truly awful weather. (Who said Portugal was sunny?) The rain didn't vex some teams with the Nissan 300ZX boys leaving there targa roof open for the trip - the Welsh are clearly made of stronger stuff. Thankfully the rain didn't last long and the rally was welcomed to Lisbon with brilliant sunshine.

We were met in the hotel car park by ADL Chairman Chris Jeffries (shown above) who had started the rally seven days earlier in Marden. Also with him was Joaquim Candeias and Raquel Rodrigues from the Portuguese branch of ADL.

There was many handshakes and hugging going on between the teams, ("We've changed!" eh Ben?) This level of friendship and team work has been seen all through the Rally.

The teams had a brief photoshoot for AP Magazine before getting changed and being treated to a traditional Portuguese meal at a highly unusual underground restaurant not dissimilar to the space port bar at Moss Eisly in the Star Wars movies.

During the meal Chris Jeffries stated he had never seen so many different factions of the Aftermarket coming together and doing anything like this. He also revealed that collectively we have raised more than £10,000 for BEN.

Following the speech was an awards presentation with prizes being given in different categories:

Car of the Rally: 1st Place - The Beach Boys
Car of the Rally: 2nd Place - M.A.D. Colts
Car of the Rally: 3rd Place - No Idea Too

The grand prize was the for the Spirit Of The Rally. There could only be one winner for this prize and it went to Anthony Pease and Steve (Clinker) Birdwood of the A.W.O.L. Nissan 300ZX. The Welsh boys have been fantastic through the whole rally with bags of energy and tools for fixing things. Congratulations guys a well deserved win.

We also awarded a Wooden Car to the most unreliable car on the rally. This prize was strangely ironic with the most unreliable car also being the most indestructable! The prize went to Ben and Giles of the ALS Just Japanese Honda Prelude as the car needed to be bump started every single time we stopped. However the car deserves respect as Ben has driven the whole event on the rev-limiter (normally at 70mph on the motorway in 3rd gear) just so he can hear his massive exhaust burble away. I'm surprised they both are not deaf!

So that's it! The Blue Print Rally 2008 is over and I think all can agree it was a great success. As I write this now, back in the UK, I am still in shock and awe that we made it and made it in style. I must say a big thank you to all the teams for being such stars and for providing me with more video footage than I can ever use. To Will Jeffries and Simon Hutchinson at ADL for letting us do this! To Tim Zollman and Andrew McClusky for being our support team and making sure that everything was in order for us when we arrived.

Biggest thanks of all goes to Rob Head for organising such a fantastic event. I know what a year you have had trying to get this off the ground and myself and all the teams on the rally think you rock! Good work fella!

Fingers crossed we get to do this all again in 2010!

[24/05/2008]