Those of you with long-ish memories will recall my ultimately doomed attempt in February 2012 to travel 1000 miles in the UK on a single tank of diesel in a Seat Leon Ecomotive.

The final figure was 925 miles, mightily impressive but it still left me with unfinished business.

So today and tomorrow I'm attempting to finish that business in a new VW Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion, which with a combined economy figure of 88.3mpg, should be enough to beat the Leon and creep over the 1000-mile line.

But then, the Golf's fuel tank is five litres smaller than the 74.3mpg Leon's at 50 litres, effectively wiping out the the economy gain. But then it is lighter and has more power and torque, often benefits to achieving better real world economy.

Why the Golf? Well, it's the flagship for the super-eco side of the new MQB architecture and has the best economy figures next to its Skoda and Seat equivalents. And we want to do this this time, so the best it was to be.

At lunch on day one, we're 250 miles in. There's a smidge over 600 miles of range showing, and the economy is just below 85mpg having shown 85.6mpg at one point.

Will we do it? Hmm. I'm confident, but not as confident as I was at 8.30am this morning as it's been lashing it down since then. 

With clearer skies and some more lorries to tow into in the slipstream, we'll hopefully go well past the Leon's 925 miles and get close to and hopefully beat the magic 1000 miles.

Stay tuned...