DAY 1

Day 1.... and its hot hot hot out there - air conditioning working overtime and we're barely head South at present..... we saw 28 deg C as we passed a thermomter in one town, and that was at lunch time.

After a misty start to the morning in Jersey, we arrived at the Harbour, bright eyed and bushy tailed at 7.30am, looking forward to our 4 days of fund-raising brain-teasing fun.

This year there is a total of 9 teams competing, in a variety of cars, from an MG Midget to a Morgan +8 to a Ford Ranger.

The boat leg was as challenging as ever, with 250 points up for grabs and only the hour and 15 minute journey available to us to complete it..

We arrived in St Malo on Schedule at 11.30am French time, where we were handed our days clues by the Clue Master.

With warnings of French Speed checks a-plenty, we began our trek to the first town of Evron (where Eve meets Ronald), adhering to all speed limits (as would be expected of us!)

Day 1's Clues

By the time we arrived there, about half the other runners had already beaten us to it.. but we set about tackling the first clue, which we found with-in a few minutes of our arrival.. and then attempted to find some lunch - as it was now after 2pm, this wasn't such an easy task, but we managed to find a Bar selling Croque Monsiouer, so tucked in!

Our next port of call was Marolles-Les-Braults (Mother Rolls around at the start of this town) where we set about searching for Beatrice's holiday destination.

Having found what we thought was the correct answer, we set sail for Mondoubleau (My 00), where we were lucky to find the answer with in a few minutes of our arrival. At some point in the last few destinations, we managed to jump the queue of cars and were now apparently leading the pack..

The next clue was sneaky and as it, transpired we were one of the only, if not the only team to get the answer correct! The answer to the clue "How long is Blueberry Hill" was actually on a record sleeve in the window of one of the town centre's shops, with the song of the same name lasting 2 minutes and 38 seconds!

Onto the next location, and a rather interesting looking Grandfather clock with unusual numbering provided us with the answer to the clue.

Now all we had to do was find our way to our Novotel in Orleans, which with a small helping hand from Satellite Navigation and an even larger helping hand from Mike's expert map reading, we found without further ado. In the end, we managed to arrive at our final destination almost an hour ahead of rest of the gang, and in fact two of the team didn't arrive at all due to a mechanical problem with their car which left them waiting for the French equivalent of the AA in another town!

After consuming a small quantity of french "Pression" and eating our evening meal, the days standings were announced; Miracle of mircales, we managed to score full points in both the boat leg and the first days' clue, leaving us with a lead of 55 points over 2nd placed people Jenny and Peter - who unfortanately had the misfortune of breaking down else where in France!

5 years of previous experience has taught us that it is dangerous to peak too early, so we're going to have to work hard to maintain our lead and position tomorrow...

Positions
1st 380 points - Garry and Mike
2nd 325 points - Jenny Bridge and Peter de Bourcier
3rd 280 points - Mike and Hazel McLoughlin

Until tomorrow's update....

Garry & Mike