We stole our mate’s car to drive to the most northerly point in the UK without him knowing

Fuel: More than we expected. Food: Cheap thanks to poor student diet. Look on mates face when he reads this : Priceless

Our housemate had left for a polo tournament for the weekend so we decided to kidnap his beloved little car and drive from Oxford to the end of Scotland and back without him even knowing it had left the drive.

It all started over a roast when we thought it’d be funny to take the car somewhere and make photographic clues as to its whereabouts. Which escalated quickly into considering the northernmost point of mainland U.K, Dunnet head. So by 5:30pm we’d decided.

So we went North.

While driving up, inspired by the 6 nations, we thought “why only go to one country when we can do all three?” An hour later we started heading the wrong way- towards the Welsh border instead of North to Dunnet.

Photo one achieved: The first sign was written in gobble-de-gook!

After leaving the land of questionable farm animal relations, we were back on the M6, making good progress. Until we decided we would get the car in as many iconic photos as possible along the way.

The next landmark en route  was the Liver building in Liverpool, so we detoured once again and headed into the heart of a city . Due to traffic constraints, the car couldn’t get that close and a photo somewhere in the Albert docks had to suffice.

Just after 11pm we’re leaving Liverpool and still had over 510 miles to go. The plan needed streamlining so the Angel of the North got the chop, as did Manchester airport and Gretna green (two straight guys going there on Valentine’s day seems bit questionable anyway).

To try and save our wallets we decided to get our fuel from supermarkets, thank God for supermarket wars. This presented its own problem: how to find an open supermarket petrol station early on a Sunday morning. Fortunately we know Glasgow like the back of our hands (thanks to Google), it didn’t take too long.

It was looking like our three hours planned sleep in John O’Groats was diminishing fast, then just south of Inverness in the Cairngorms national park, the snow started to fall.

Because the ground was already very icy, the snow didn’t take long to pile up and soon there were snow ploughs galore. There’s only so much they can do though and soon weather conditions deteriorated even further as the thick blanket fog descended.

Visibility was reduced to barely 5m with the snow flying into the headlights at lightspeed. After being on the go non-stop for nine hours, at 3am the fluid in the washer bottle ran out. This meant we could see fuck all with the salty smear on the screen.

All of a sudden there was a jolt as an explosion of snow covered the front of the car and the windscreen. I’m sure you can imagine the expletives at this point, though it turns out we hadn’t killed a deer or had a head-on with a tree, but just clipped a snow drift on the side of the road.

After the snow, we had a driver change again and as the sun began to rise we found an incredible coastal road making the next leg pass quickly.

Finally arrived

We were finally getting close, two hours later than planned!

At 8:30am, 14 hours after starting off we’d made it! Shockingly we weren’t the only people there. (And no, the lights weren’t flashing and the cars weren’t a rockin’)

So we had a hot Bovril and discussed our situation.

It’s 643 miles to Oxford, we got a full tank of diesel, 10 hours to do it, it’s snowing… and the heaters broken.

The unknowing car owner claimed he would be back at 7pm on Sunday so as we left Dunnet head at 9am we were in for a tight schedule, especially considering we wanted to capture the car by the Forth rail bridge, Edinburgh castle,and Gretna Green.

We’d never fit it all in so we decided on a straight drive back down. The trusted third companion on our expedition, Google, claimed it would take 11 ½ hours. Luckily, early on Valentine’s morning, in a deserted part of the world, there wasn’t much traffic and when there was any, it was easy enough to kick the mighty 1.4l Diesel into shape and pull off that crucial overtake.

After stopping for fuel, air and washer fluid we set off again. As we made our way back south, the snow hit us again. This time though there were other drivers on the road who were useless in the snow. This made our progress significantly slower.

After hours of following the world’s slowest drivers we finally left the snow and single carriage roads for the motorway, by this time we realised just how little time we had to get back before him. The rest of the journey was pretty eventless except for praying he would be late.

7pm passed and we were still an hour away, now frantically trying to think of a good alibi for why we weren’t there when he got back. We couldn’t come up with a convincing one though. Fortunately we had a message saying he was going to be back later than planned.

8:17 we made it back worried what would be awaiting us after we walked through the door, lucky it was just one of our flat mates smiling and saying well done we had beaten him.

Total mileage count

All worth it for this view!

Tommy has no idea that we did this and will be finding out the same way you did, by reading this article.

Keep an eye on this space and our Snapchat thetabbrookes for his reaction to the news.