the times | Thursday December 3 2020 2GM 7
News
Thomas Davies with his V8 Audi. It had an extra fuel tank in the boot, below left‘Fastest trans-Britain trip’
lands car driver in court
Will Humphries
Southwest Correspondent
cognition cameras in Cheshire, the
West Midlands and Devon and Corn-
wall.
His phone was also found to have
made the same journey.
The prosecution alleges that Mr
Davies was using fake registration
plates that he bought from an Irish
company a month before his journey.
Mr Davies denies the charges and the
trial continues.50 milesStart: John
o’ GroatsFinish:
Land’s EndAverage
speed89mph
miles841
BirBirminminghaghammmmMMAAGlasgowasaasgowaaasgosssgogogggowwBriBristostoll9 hours 36min (normally 15 hours)Cricket tea wins reprieve
after outcry from players
Elizabeth Ammon
After a row over sticky buns that left
cricketers on a sticky wicket, Britain’s
largest recreational cricket league has
decided to save the tradition of laying
on tea for visiting teams.
The Sussex Cricket League voted last
week to remove the obligation to offer
refreshments between innings. But
after a second vote days later the club
has backed keeping teas by 114 votes
to 82.
The initial vote was deemed to have
been unsafe because clubs who had not
voted were counted as supporting get-
ting rid of teas. It had been widely con-
demned. Michael Vaughan, the Ashes-
winning former England captain,
described it as a “disgraceful decision”.
Umpires and scorers also spoke out
against the move.
“Common sense prevails about crick-
et teas and preserves an important tra-
dition that underpins the social nature
of the sport,” said Peter Bradbury, a
councillor for Cuckfield and Lucastes
in West Sussex.
The move to scrap the obligation on
the home side to provide tea came after
a summer in which Covid-19 safety
requirements meant players were not
allowed to share food, so had to bring
their own packed tea or not eat at the
game at all.
While it is expected that cricket will
return to normal next year, many clubs
were keen to avoid returning to the
extra hassle of providing teas.
The original vote had prompted fears
that other leagues would follow suit.
Now the institution has been protected
in Sussex and last week the Worcester-
shire league also voted, by 50.9 per cent
to 49.1 per cent, in favour of requiring
clubs to keep providing teas.TRIANGLE NEWSA motorist who claimed to have broken
the record for the fastest car journey
between John o’ Groats and Land’s End
used speed-camera sensors and fake
number plates to avoid detection, a
court was told yesterday.
Thomas Davies, 29, is alleged to have
completed the 841-mile journey in Sep-
tember 2017 with an average speed of
89mph. He was stopped only once in his
specially adapted Audi S5. Police in
Scotland gave him a £100 penalty no-
tice, which he paid.
He publicised his speed record on
YouTube six months later and then ap-
peared in national newspapers and on
Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio 2.
Ryan Murray, for the prosecution
at Truro crown
court, said that Mr
Davies, of Corwen,
north Wales,
thought he could
avoid the courts
because speeding
was an offence that
had to be prosecut-
ed within six
months. However,
he is now on trial
facing two charges of perverting the
course of justice and three of dangerous
driving.
Mr Murray said: “This is a case about
two tips of the UK, John o’ Groats in the
north of Scotland and Land’s End here
in Cornwall, and the defendant’s ambi-
tion to travel from one of those points to
the other in a motor vehicle quicker
than anyone else had ever done before.
“It is also about, the prosecution say,
illegal methods that he used to achieve
his ambition.”
He said a tracker that Mr Davies
bought a month before the journey
shows that at 8pm on September 5,
2018, he was in John o’Groats but by
5.36am he was in Land’s End, a journey
time of 9 hours and 36 minutes.
Mr Murray said that on an average
day with average traffic the journey
should take 15 hours.
“How fast the vehicle travelled is a
matter of simple physics,” he said.
“Speed equals distance over time. You
take the distance travelled, you divide it
by the time taken, and you get the
speed. When you
do the maths in this
case, you arrive at
this: an average
speed of 87.6mph.
If you factor in a
stop to refuel, you
arrive at an aver-
age speed exceed-
ing 89mph.
“The prosecution say that is, on any
reasoning, an extremely dangerous
way to drive.”
Mr Davies allegedly went through 15
constabularies, past 50 speed cameras,
and saw seven police cars on the trip.
Mr Murray said that police raided his
home in August 2018 and found the sil-
ver Audi A5 S5, which has a 4.2 litre V
engine, that Mr Davies claimed he used
to break the record.
Officers also found an extra 80-litre
tank loose in the boot, which was used
to reduce the need to stop for fuel.
Also found were four transponders
known as jammers, which are used to
sense and delay a speed-camera laser.
The car itself also had a message
board on the rear shelf, emergency
lighting and a PA system.
Mr Murray said: “You will again hear
that these are items commonly used by
the emergency services to emit the
sirens or flashing lights we all know to
mean ‘Get out of the way’.”
On the night of the alleged offences a
car closely matching Mr Davies’s was
clocked by automatic number-plate re-fsp
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