DAY 3

Day 3 of the Tour de la Liberation

Well here we are on Day 3..... after another late night, we managed to surface from our beds at
around 7am (well I did, although i can't say quite the same for Mike!)..

Last nights' room found us with a window overlooking where we had parked the car, so utilising our
now invaluable bucket involved far less embarassing looks of amazement and perhaps disapproval by the
hotel staff as we could now clamber out of the window un-noticed with a bucket of hot soapy water to
wash down the usual insect splatters from the front of the car and remove many euro's worth of brake
dust from the wheels (remember, a clean car is a happy car!)

Car cleaned, it was time to take the days clues from the Clue master and set about working out our
days location clues.

Clue 1 found us heading from last nights stop at Chalon, to Louhans, where the question was "Hit the
arcades behind the casino. At the Jersey connection, have your photograph taken with a dancing
rabbit"......  We eventually found the Jersey connection......

A coffee or 2 later, the answer was found to be a beer mat on the bar that contained a picture of a
dancing rabbit!

Onwards to the next location of Cirque de Baume, which was a spectacular gorge as pictured below..

The answer to the question "How many trees in Sermu" and as the picture shows, this was a nice simple
one, although rumour has it that two of our companions actually attempted to count all the real trees
you see in the above picture of the gorge, until someone pointed out the follie of their ways!!

Clue 3 had us on our merry way to Moirans-en-Montagne, where we had to visit a rather fascinating Toy
museum to answer the question "How many houses on Mozart Avenue"; after some searching, an old French
Monopoly board was discovered in a display case, containing the answer...

After a nice relaxing 3 course lunch, we headed to a pleasant town called Mijoux.

Ok, lets face it, it had to happen; 6 years of doing "The Tour", and we've never had a run in with
the Gendarmes. Alas, today our luck ran out, and after negotiating some rather fine and twisty
mountain roads...

... we were forced to a halt by some rather unimpressed men in uniform, who "claimed" we were doing
78kph whilst in a 50kph zone. Obviously our attempts at playing the dumb tourists fell on deaf ears
and we witnessed at first hand all the rumours of "on the spot fines" we've been told about by all
and sundry (yes Dad, you are in a very strong position to say "I told you so.....!")

Anyway, we left the location 90 euros lighter (my initial interpration of his broken English had led
me to believe that 9 Euros was incredible value for money, but his look of amazement at my production
of a 10 Euro note soon brought home the amount he was really trying to convey!).

We would love to show you pictures of the incident, however Mike, probably wisely, considered photography could
perhaps inflame the situation!

It may be worth pointing out for those who visit France regularly, that our trusty "loaned" Radar detector didn't make so much as a whimpering bleep, let alone going ballistic to warn us of our impending doom!! (thanks Daz, that was a waste of money wasn't it!!)

After a slightly slower drive into Mijoux, we set about looking for the answer to "Where was the
least cold in 1879?" - unfortunately for us, we parked just about as far away from the answer as we
could have, and 90 minutes later we eventually found the answer opposite where we had first entered
the town!

The drive to the final clue was full of spectacular views which we enjoyed immensly at our now
reduced pace, allowing us the oppurtunity to take pictures like this:

After a very long, hot and tiring day, we reached our evenings' destination of Aix-les-Bains to
discover that we weren't the only ones to have had a spot of grief en-route, as 9 year old Seth AKA
the Clue Master ably models below...

This is what happens when you brake sharply to avoid hitting a French Car with no brake lights, only
to be struck from behind by another French car with no brakes! Apparently the Citroen was written
off. All we can say to this is "Vorsprung durk technic"... no one has yet worked out what the owner
of the other car was saying! (fortunately, no animals or children were hurt in the making of this
little episode.)

Our 8pm arrival at the Hotel gave us almost no time to relax before dinner, so we had little choice
but to adjourn to the restuarant and begin the evenings entertainment AKA Beer and Food..... and
Beer... and Beer... (i think you get the picture, and perhaps therefore you'll excuse any spelling
mistakes you may come across.... my ability to focus is rapidly declining as the hour of 3am has now
passed!)

After what turned out to be an expensive but successful day, our 100 point lead was maintained over
2nd placed Jenny and Peter in the Caterham, who had an equally successful day. We would obviously
hate anything else to happen to their car that might jeapordise their chances of catching us up
tomorrow...

Current standings at the end of Day 3 are as follows:

1st Place - Garry and Mike in the Evo VII - 645 points
2nd Place - Jenny and Peter in the Caterham - 545 points
3rd Place - Charles and David in the Porsche - 465 points
4th Place - Henri and Tessa in the Mazda MX5 - 445 points

As a footnote, we spotted the latest "Citroen Llama" out on a secret test drive from the local
dealership... (look out for it in your showrooms soon!)

Thats all for tonight, stayed tuned for the final day of "The Tour" tomorrow. (assuming we're capable
of typing by the time we've got the final results...)

Garry and Mike