Have you ever be on a routine journey somewhere and, as you've neared your destination, been seized by the sudden, devastating impulse to disown your life and just keep going? When Julie Holdcroft left her house two weeks ago, she had a definite purpose: to go to London Bridge and see-off friends participating in the Classic Rally Associations round the world rally. It was not an ambitious plan. She had a nine-year-old son, Tyler, at home in Bexhill, and a part time job as a hairdresser. She was not having a nervous breakdown. She was not wanted for murder. She was simply a woman enjoying a day out.
At 10am, she stood on the bridge with 5,000 other spectators, cheering on a fleet of old cars as they prepared to embark on their 80-day odyssey. At the head of the rally stood a seven-and-a-half litre Rolls-Royce, a 1913 Silver Ghost given pole position for being the oldest car in the race. As the crowd clapped and whistled and the engines roared, it became apparent that something was wrong. The Rolls wouldn't budge; the cars behind it couldn't pass. As the air cooked with petrol fumes, a feeling of panic entered the atmosphere. In agitation, the car's driver appealed to the crowd for help. He was a crew member down and couldn't set off unless he replaced him. Julie Holdcroft, 40 years old, felt the irresistible tug of destiny. "You have to do it, you have to grab it," she thought, and sailed out of the crowd towards the vehicle. Ten hours later, she was in France.
Since returning from her adventure, Holdcroft has been compared to Shirley Valentine, the middle aged heroine of Willy Russell's film about a woman who goes on holiday and never returns. Holdcroft rejects the image. "Somebody said, you're like Shirley Valentine and I thought, oh crumbs, I'm not trying to escape a boring life, I love my life!" Her flight was a realisation of a common fantasy of taking a break from ourselves by doing something weird and irrational. "I didn't surprise myself," says Holdcroft. "I thought, if you're not hurting anyone, why not?"
Besides, when she jumped into the driver's seat, she only intended to go as far as Dover. She had no passport, no jacket, no provisions. It was a Monday morning and she had a week of perms and tints in front of her. In three weeks she would sit her final exams in art and design at college in Hastings. This was no time for taking off round the world with a man she had never met before. But the momentum of the adventure got into her bloodstream and she couldn't let it go. When she and her driver Terry Maxon, an American in his 60s, reached Dover, they sailed through passport control without a worry and it seemed to Julie Holdcroft that the only proper thing was to go on.
Holdcroft is not by nature a cautious woman. She and her son live in a cottage two miles from the East Sussex coast. She has artistic flair, she says, and arty people are known for their impulsiveness. The day she left England, her son was staying with her ex-husband and one phone call ensured that he would be well looked after. She judged that the revision could wait, the dog could be fed by neighbours and all that stood in her way was the hairdressing. She was resolved not to sacrifice the dream for the sake of a few highlights.
It was dark when she and Maxon arrived in Calais. The car was so noisy they had to yell at one another, and by Dover she hadn't made out Maxon's character. To Holdcroft's relief, it emerged in the quiet of the ferry that Maxon was as laid back as she was. "I would have turned back if he'd been the sort of man to get uptight when we broke down," she says. "And we did break down an awful lot." By the time they reached France, word had also gone round that a woman had joined the rally on impulse and Holdcroft was flooded with offers of clean knickers and woolly jumpers. News had even reached California, where friends had rung up Maxon's wife and demanded to know if she was aware that her husband was cavorting around Europe with a mystery blonde. "She was amused rather than alarmed," says Holdcroft.
Early on Tuesday morning, the car set off in the direction of the Alps. Outside Dijon, it started to slip behind the rest of the rally. Maxon and Holdcroft, caught up in the excitement of their own story, determined to catch up. Freezing, they drove the open topped car through the night, but were halted near the Italian border when they crashed into a Fiat. Holdcroft's limited knowledge of motor vehicles began to show. "It took off the rear mud guard thing. It was the first accident Terry had had in his life, and he was very shaken. But when we'd got it sorted, he said, 'Hmm, we have a glamour wound now!' I thought that was a fantastic attitude."
That night they pulled up at a cafe in the Italian Alps, where Terry handed out expensive cigars in return for help pushing the car. Holdcroft, meanwhile, was learning some new negotiating skills. "I was trying to get hold of a flatbed truck to carry us to the next stage. There was a garage that couldn't give one out until eight in the morning, so I got hold of the rally office to ask what I should do. Terry was ready to get his whisky glasses out and camp down for the night, but we needed to catch up. The rally office suggested I offer them extra money. I had never tried to bribe anyone before, and when I did, they were deeply offended. It was a disaster. 'This is a very good man,' they kept saying, 'He cannot do it because he cannot do it. More money will not make it better.' "
On the third day, Maxon and Holdcroft faced a new danger: hairpin bends. The wheels on the Rolls Royce are made of wood, with narrow tyres. With the lights on, the car wouldn't run. They made a decision to divert from the official rally route over the mountains for a well-lit motorway, where something wonderful hap pened. As they struggled along, modern cars started escorting them, lights flashing, before and aft, waving and cheering them on from stage to stage. "People were so kind and lovely. That was the best thing about it."
They were heady with fatigue and excitement. At one stage, says Holdcroft, they drove past a gathering of "tiny, toothless Italian women" dressed in black at the roadside. "Do you know who this is?" Maxon yelled at them as they passed. "This is the inspiration to all womankind!"
Somewhere in the middle of Greece, her phone rang. "It was one of my customers, demanding to know why I wasn't at her house, doing her blow-dry."
By the time they reached Thessaloniki the car was on its last legs and Holdcroft was becoming concerned that her son would be exposed to too much media attention. On Saturday she decided to fly home. Maxon pulled out of the race shortly afterwards because of irreparable mechanical failure. "I never intended to go all the way round the world," she says. "But I'd have liked to go a bit further. Hairdressing seems -" she pauses, "oh, maybe I shouldn't say, but it seems somehow small by comparison."
Her reception in Bexhill has been loud and enthusiastic, except for a curt note from tutors reminding her that, when she has finished capering about the world, she has exams to concentrate on. Friends, meanwhile, have urged her to return to the rally if she wants to. But she doesn't. She has had her moment.
