Day 01 – Jersey to Poitiers

Well here we are once again, the 10th year (our 9th) of the infamous Tour de La Liberation.

The destination this year – San Sebastian. That's Northern Spain, for those of you that haven't heard of it. Not that far away from the Basque region I understand, although Mike promises me they have called a ceasefire for the period of our trip. Nice of them I thought.

Today saw us down the harbour by 7.15am – usually the small print suggests that there are 10 bonus points for the first 10 teams at the harbour – and even though this year bonus points were awarded for any teams seen wearing pink flowers today, we didn't want to take the chance.

Note to Geoff – Mark kindly made the effort to see us off at the harbour at this unearthly hour – pay rise due I feel? Thanks also to my sis, who was on hand to supply us with something very important that we had forgotten… namely the smarties!

So onwards to the boat journey, and after being presented with our "boat leg" clue sheet, we spent the next hour or so fathoming out the answers – questions and answers below for those interested.. (look away now if you don't want to see the answers…)

(ok, you can look back again now….)

After congregating at the Port of St Malo – well, more taking over their check-in area to be honest.. (much to the disgust of the same red haired lady that wasn't impressed with us for doing the same thing last year… )

..we were read the riot act by Chip….

…. then after studying the map for the first location clue (Tarzan's mate has a little sleep inside – obviously Janze I hear you cry), we plotted our route on trusty old Autoroute 2006.. you gotta love it, it even talks to you now (Mike was feeling quite left out at one point, but actually they do work well together – argue a bit – but work well together), we hit the roads.. ohhh the lovely French roads – at one point I thought we'd stumbled onto one that no one else new about, there was so little traffic.. although that probably says more about us being the last to leave the harbour than anything else..

Arrival at the first location saw us headed straight to Church (Mum will be so proud of me!) – although the main reason for this was because the clue was "How many black disabled people are around the church" – ignoring all Political incorrectness of this particular question, the answer soon became obvious..

On the way to our next location, we passed through some beautiful towns. Mike got particularly excited as we went through Corpes Nuds… (no idea why, best not to ask..) although he didn't seem as upset as me when we exited the next town..

Clue number 2 saw us arrive in Le Lions D'Angers (The big cat gets cross) and we headed down to the river in search of anchors and taps! (If you anchored yourself down by the river how many taps could you see?)

After checking, double checking and discarding the inevitable tap in the toilet on the grounds that it couldn't be seen from the anchor..

…we had a pleasant lunch in a local pizzeria, and headed to location no.3 (at this point we weren't even at the back of the pack – some of that was from overtaking various people along the way, and some was because we ate lunch quicker than the rest..)

After passing what I'm sure will become Ben's next motorbike once he see's it..

..we stopped at a lovely little châteaux in a small town called Bougé… (Sounds like you got in a bag with some ecstasy) and soon found the answer to the question "At the big house how many people are buried in 2a?"..

Pleased not only with our answer but also because most people had either just got here or were stopping for coffee, we got back on the road and headed for the 4th and final clue site of the day, a busy town called Azay Le Rideau (A to Z and a question end in water) and found the location of the answer far quicker than we could find a parking space. "If you were in the "first" what would happen if you cut the red and blue wires?" led us to a Bar..

..and whilst I tried to park the car, Mike whiled away the time with a quick game of Pinball. Handy really…

We left just as the others were coming into town and did a 40mile dash down the A11 – although getting to the motorway we did take a slightly cross country route, courtesy of Autoroute's "quickest route" calculation..

..still, it got us to the Hotel – via a well earned fuel stop (it was a little scary filling up whilst a wild electrical storm was going on at very close quarters..) and we hit the most torrential rain on the motorway – we even had to slow down. I know… Tragic…

You can imagine our delight to be greeted by Chip at the hotel and informed that we were 2nd team back!

A brief interlude in the bar, followed by a lovely meal, and it was time for the scores on the doors… and here they are for all to see..

(you'd have thought that after 9 years of taking part, Chip would have noticed that I was the driver and Mike was the co-driver…!)

As luck would have it, there is Wifi access available back at the Bar area (pronounced wiff-eee in French!) so we will leave you with the Days full route and head reluctantly back to the bar! (it's only half midnight so we might be forced to purchase a small beverage)

Until tomorrow, Au revoir!

Garry and Mike