Day 03 – Bergerac to Carcassonne…

After being kept awake for much of last night with an amazingly loud Frog chorus coming from the lake at the hotel which Paul McCartney would have been proud of, we awoke full of life and energy (not!) and tucked into breakfast, then loaded up the car. Such was our lack of energy, we didn’t even clean it today! (shock horror!) Although being too clean has its downside; yesterday some poor youth nearly had a serious accident when he turned around to see what had just passed him, and nearly fell off his moped!)

Todays directions and clue sheet handed out, we then spent the next half an hour trying to work out where we were supposed to be going (not sure if this was as a result of our tiredness or because they were particularly difficult today!)..

The sun also struggled to show its face, and subsequently the temperature was much lower..

We soon got on the road however, and left Jim behind us to solve more local mysteries..

..and headed for our first stop of the day, which was Villereal. Here our clue was “If you went up Market, what would you listen too” – the answer was to be found at the top of a flight of stairs in a covered market area in a wonderful Medieval town, where there was a door to a studio for a local Radio station called Radio 4…

We headed next to Tournon-de-Agenais, which once again turned out to be a fabulous Medieval town perched on top of a hill, where we eventually found the answer to the question, despite a small navigational error..(Although Mike assures me the car does handle like its on rails, which fortunately came in handy later in the day. More of that later!)

Back onto tarmac, our next destination was Lauzerte, where, after a few laps of the Medieval city (I’m seeing a theme here…) we stumbled across the correct answer. Actually, we stumbled across a slightly warped pavement!!

Having picked ourselves up, we stopped down the bottom of the hill for a pleasant lunch, where we were very impressed by the waitress's English, until we discovered she was actually Scottish!!

After a 50 mile stretch, where we narrowly avoided being side swiped by a maniac Lorry driver coming round a bend, first with his front end sliding wide, followed by the back end sliding sideways towards us (fortunately, 4WD comes in useful, when driving off the side of the carriageway onto a soft verge!), we managed to control our heart rates and navigate successfully to our next stop of Castelnau-de-Montmiral, (surprisingly, a great Medieval town perched on top of a hill!), where we had a strong coffee to steady our nerves, before finding the answer to the clue.

We continued our journey, somewhat cautious of any heavy traffic this time, and found fellow competitors Mike and Hazel playing chicken on the wrong side of the road..!!

Our final clue destination today was a (Medieval!) town called Revel, where we spent over two hours looking for what was undoubtedly the trickiest clue of the trip so far. Everyone seemed to be stumped by this one, and we suspect the locals were slightly bemused by the number of English people wandering around seemingly aimlessly, staring  intently at inanimate objects (bins, drain covers, posters, door numbers – the usual things we tend to look at for the answers!)

Ironically, most people started off at the right place, but simply didn’t press the numbers on the Tourism office electronic guide kiosk in the right order!

With time fast running out (30 mins till dinner, and still 40 miles away from the hotel!), we had a brainwave (well, Mike had a brainwave, I wasn’t convinced!) and so we returned back to the original starting point (the electronic board) and came up with an answer which subsequently turned out to be the right one!

Relatively happy that we hadn’t been outwitted by Chip, we proceeded to the evenings hotel accommodation in Carcassonne in double quick time (without breaking the speed limit once… well, not more than once at any rate), and even managed to keep fellow competitors Henrietta and Ruth firmly in our rear view mirrors!

We were soon safely at the dinner table, albeit slightly late, and tucked into another lovely meal, and were delighted to find we had scored a maximum 150 points on today’s leg.

Results after Day 3.
1. Garry Taylor/Mike Nolan            455
2. Brian and Spencer Scholfield      423
3. Alex Ohlsson/Andrea Mursell      390
4. Peter Crespel/Chris Evans           390
5. Jenny Bridge/Peter de Bourcier  376

Well done to Brian and Spencer who have catapulted up the rankings. Bad luck to Jenny and Peter who had to take the Ferrari straight to Toulouse this morning to have a new clutch fitted, and as a result only received an average score for today’s leg.

Things are still pretty tight at the top – one question dropped on the final leg could make all the difference, and we’ve been told that the threatened tie-breaker is going to be dished out tomorrow morning. So we’re scared. Really scared. Really REALLY scared.

We’re off to bed (after we upload this over a super quick 9.6k GSM Modem!), so good bye until tomorrow!

Garry and Mike.