Bush Hospital Foundation - Jersey to Monte Carlo - Day 3

Hello once again – this time from Arles, North West of Marseille.

We started the day in the best way possible...

Today’s trip has seen us leave Brive, stopping at Martel (isn’t it too early in the morning to drink this?), Marcillac Vallon (a man and a woman separated by a broken flower)...

...but how many tools are not being touched...?

 

.....Severac (cut off account), Florac (margarine ending in C), and La Grande Combe (you’ll need big hair in this town).

Some lovely views....

..which often led us to some lovely clue answers...

Biggest scare of the day was when the laptop got dropped first thing this morning (we’d have been scuppered if that hadn’t worked again!)- and another scare when the GPS refused to acquire satellites – we had to resort to that old paper map thing – it was a nightmare!! Panic not though, we coaxed it back into life and resumed our merry way on the green line.

Some fantastic twisty mountain roads today...

... plenty of juggernaughts to be overtaken on hairpins – and plenty to dodge when they come round corners on your side of the road. Scared? You could almost smell the fear! Very sobering thoughts however, when the only seemingly safe overtaking spots have black wooden cut-outs of people who were evidently less fortunate….

We managed ok today for caffeine breaks, however lunch was a different matter. How come the French restaurants close for lunch between 12-2, but after that they tell you they aren’t serving food anymore?????

It may not look like we are enjoying ourselves in this pic, but we are, honest!

Today has seen us equal the leader for points, however that still leaves us 45 points behind...

If only we knew we were stood on the answer to one of the clues in this picture...

  - but all is not lost, as tomorrow we are all doing a scavenger hunt, and there are 250 points up for grabs…. So wish us luck!

After a nightmare of trying to email you all yesterdays updates over the GSM (started trying at 10.30pm, finally managed to successfully send by 1.30am!), we are privileged to be in a hotel where there is a modem connection on the back of the telephone! So we’ve even seen ourselves on http://www.outinjersey.com – everyone should check it out, and our big thanks to them for covering our progress.

Enclosed are a few more photo’s of today’s travels -in this one, it looks like a plane might have landed on the boot!

We will send you an update of our final position tomorrow – check back to see if we’ve managed to redeem ourselves from our current equal 7th place!

Take care

Garry and Mike