Day 04 – Pau to San Sebastian

Hello everybody and welcome to the last day of the first section of the Tour de la Liberation 2006.

The view out of the window when we pulled back the curtains this morning was simply stunning.. the best so far in fact…

After another late night of updating, not helped by some email issues which had to be resolved to avoid disappointing the masses (that's you by the way), we were a little weary this morning, but a long day awaited us, and if we were to stand any chance of maintaining our position, we had no choice but to pull ourselves together! So we quickly got ourselves through our daily ablutions and headed down to the breakfast area where the usual array of continental delights awaited us.

The car loaded and map folded on the right page, 9am came along and we were soon being given the days clues by the Chip-miester..

As can be seen by the pic below, some teams were taking whatever steps were necessary to ensure they had the advantage..

Clues and maps (and computers of course) at the ready, we left behind our lovely Hotel in Pau..

..and headed for Clue site number 1 – Oloron-Ste-Marie (No rolo goes back to start here) – and as the clue was "All aboard! If your pot was thirty square how much water would you need" we headed for the train station in search of our answer.

As has been the way so far this trip, another tricky first clue, and after much wondering around the train station, on the platform, checking the toilets etc, we thought it wise to check out the Garden Centre that was also in the grounds of the Station. Plenty of potential answers here we thought – pots of all shapes and sizes – even lawn fertilizer designed to cover 30m x 30m areas of grass, but nothing that really fitted comfortably.

A cup of coffee later - and now being able to fully concentrate on the clue having discovered that we hadn't left Mikes' video camera at the Hotel at all, but in fact it was just underneath his seat (yes ok, we should probably have checked that first before phoning the Hotel, panicking, trying to bribe the marshalls to go back and look etc, but I defy you to work logically when under this amount of pressure!!) - we returned to the main station ticket office and starting looking more thoroughly, certain the clue must be in here somewhere; as luck would have it, Mike pretty much walked into a Plant pot in the corner and whilst picking himself up, spotted exactly what was needed to allow us to leave this place..

We knew the answer was here somewhere, but in true Tour style, we didn't want to draw attention to ourselves, so we took a sneaky picture, returned to the car and drove off, smiling sweetly at everybody as they looked on wondering where we had just come from.

We confused them even more when we drove round the roundabout and came straight back in again, convinced that we'd left our all important directions folder behind.

It turned out it was on the back shelf all along, so we jumped straight back in the car and drove off again.

Unfortunately in the wrong direction, as the computer was being particularly uncooperative today and deciding that the GPS was in fact a Mouse, and you can imagine how difficult THAT makes trying to click things on a screen..

Still, Mike gave the computer a stern talking too, and it agreed to behave itself again, and we were soon back on track.

Before long we were taking in the stunning French scenery..

..although the view above soon turned back into a dirt track as per the first two days, as Autoroute once again decided for itself that farm tracks were of equal priority to main roads. This time we were having none of it; we had to be at Clue 4 no later than 3.30pm to collect a last legs' quiz sheet, and all answers had to be back in the hotel by 7pm.. That coupled with the fact that we were running low on the old go-go juice and we'd have been lucky to find a human being on these roads, let along a petrol pump, and that was it, Mike really gave the laptop what for. He went directly against everything it was telling us, and before long we were happily back on a main road, and filling up with petrol.

More beautiful scenery restored our faith in technology…

and Autoroute was given one last chance to show us that it has what it takes… unfortunately, Mikes harsh words had evidently offended it, and it decided that it no longer wanted to charge, and was happy to run off battery – not a good thing, as my battery has about a 20minute run time, IF you're lucky.

That was it, we were back on paper maps and shutdown the laptop in a bit to let it charge up slowly.

With all the delays caused above, despite leaving the last clue before anyone else, we somehow managed to arrive at the next one just as they were leaving it!

At least we got the location clue right and ended up in Tardets-sur-Holus ("Late start that ends with a sore bottom by the sound of things.") and as the clue itself was "Refreshingly in what year can you see that petrol was available in the square?" we headed for the bar and ordered a drink whilst looking for something that might be related. It was soon found in the form of one picture from the 1900's that showed horses and carts on it, which a new one of the same area from 1989 showing Cars and a petrol pump on it.

We downed our cokes and headed back for the car, deciding to give the "backup" laptop power supply a chance to redeem our faith in the technology. I'd been bringing it with me for 2 years but never yet used it.. time to put it to the test. This was a complete failure however, and was soon thrown back into the bag from whence it came, and the paper map was once again bought out.

We got underway, heading for St.Jean-Pied-de-Port (Holy man with his foot in the wine – obviously!) and after missing a couple of turn-offs (I'm not blaming Mike for this, but the poor chap was having a bad day all in all!) we decided to give the laptop another go now that it had charged, and fortunately it sprang back to life and was delighted to tell us we were "Off course"…

As is the beauty of Sat Nav, we were soon "Back on route" and arrival in St Jean found us heading for the Citadel in search of the answer to "At the citadel which of George's relatives came for the weekend?" - we were soon looking at graffiti in a structure just outside of the Citadel and were pleased when we saw this:

The next location clue was DCLXX11 – without our map, this wouldn't make much sense, but 672 was marked on the map as the height of a Col that we evidently had to pass through. Trust us, it made sense this morning when we looked.

Although the drive up the Col was somewhat boring (tight twisty roads, great visibility into the next corners, flat out 2nd and 3rd gear squirts etc) we did what had to be done and was more than rewarded at the top by what we saw…

Oh sorry, wrong pic.... try this one..

It was also refreshing to see other people from the Tour, having not seen anyone for miles..

The question "What kind of music do the Maugein Brothers make?" had us looking around the only shop for miles – which interestingly sat on the French / Spanish border – where we parked was France, but the shop was Spain. Most confusing when asking for a drink and a sandwich!

After looking around, the answer was found in the form of this poster on one of the walls..

After studying their menu and not understanding a huge amount on it, we decided the pictures probably explained what food they did better than the words, and decided against having the steak..

After settling for a cheese and ham sandwich (well it looked like ham) we headed back to the car, crossed the border into Spain (not that anyone was there – not even a Spanish sign), and in the final 100km dash to the hotel, we had the last days quiz to complete, which was to answer 20 cryptic clues that were to do with chocolate brand names.

In your spare time, you may wish to give it a go, so here it is;

1) A kind of Voo-doo
2) Time of Day
3) Subject of Conversation
4) Clever Clogs
5) Entirely Metallic
6) Neighbouring Planet
7) These may live on an island
8) North Country Terrier
9) A good address
10) A young pet
11) Parties
12) An old sailing Ship
13) In between
14) Flowers
15) A crisp apple is this
16) Xray bodi (anagram)
17) Glad tidings
18) Cinderella's butler
19) The centre of our galaxy
20) Pingu is one

We'll give you the answers in tomorrow's updates!!

Before long, we found ourselves worrying about the truth of rumours about a ceasefire..

..but we had little choice but to continue, so over took the enemy and continued to San Sebastian, which we arrived at soon after 4pm, magically, in front of some of the people who had left the Col well before we did.

After unpacking our bags, we drove the car into an underground garage, and left the keys with a complete stranger who we assume is something to do with the carpark. Memory's of Ferris Beullers Day Off sprang to mind, but he diverted our attention by asking if we wanted the car cleaned ready for the morning (which was kind of handy really, seeing as it had 4 days of foreign mud and insects caked on it.., not to mentioned about £250 worth of brake dust on the front wheels) - all for 15 Euros. Bargain!

Time for a beer on the terrace…

..and what stunning views we had to look at…

Not only that, we even had entertainment – despite giving them money, they just wouldn't go away. As you can see, some enjoyed it more than others..

After a shower and bit of relaxation up in our room – well, more of a suite really, it has a sitting room and three different balconys on two different sides of the building – we put on our smart(er) clothes and headed to the dining room for our delicious 5 course meal (including the nicest steak I've ever had, although it was a tad on the rare side; Mike swears his was still breathing, and to be fair, there was a few "Mooooooooos" coming from around the room. I'm sure I heard some naying at one point as well…)

And finally, whilst watching the sun set on another Tour…

..it was time for the results, which was quite exciting really, as there had been a rumour that a section of the field (who have affectionately become known as the "Rat Pack" over the last few years) had made a bit of a school boy error on the first Clue of today. If the rumour was true, it would mean that 4 teams' would have potentially dropped 30points… nail-biting stuff then!!

And so, in reverse order, here are the final standings;

12th place, Gervase Oakley and Chris Williams in the TVR…

11th place, Nigel and Lynne Jenner

10th place, Matt and Steve Barnes

9th place, Geoff and Jenny Cornwall,

8th place, Jennifer Bridge and Ann Forbes

7th place, Jock Taylor and Peter Byrne

6th place, Paul Fox and Gordon Bennie

5th place, David Jenkins and Matthew Jones

4th place, Peter and Rosie Atchinson

3rd place, Guy Le Sueur and Ed Bennett

2nd place, Mike and Maxine Dottore

and by a margin of just 5 points…

1st place, Garry Taylor and Mike Nolan

We're delighted to have regained our trophy and two new silver salver's..

So Jason, we'll be coming round to see you on our return for those giant Smartie tubes you kindly promised us!

The complete results are below which as you can see shows how tight this years tour has been…

As usual, a big thanks has to go to Chip and Heidi for organising another excellent Tour, organising great hotels, food, and setting such brilliant clues along such a beautiful route..

And thanks also to Sam and Arthur who helped marshall the event..

It's obviously important to remember that the Tour de la Liberation is all about raising money for the Bush Hospital Foundation, and we'd like to say a special thanks to CTS Computing, who have been our main sponsors now for 5 years, and also give us this webspace to bore you all to death with!

Thanks Geoff, Mark, Eddy and everyone else at CTS - we really appreciate all your help and support. Everyone reading this should click here http://www.ctscomputing.com/ and buy something NOW!!

So far, we have covered a total of 762 miles – tomorrow will see us having a leisurely start to the day (bearing in mind it is now 4am, we feel we deserve a lie-in..) and heading down South to the Circuit de Catalunya, near Barcelona, from where we will bring you the next update all things being equal.

Before I forget, Happy Birthday Mark Spence, where ever you are in the world right now!!

Finally, here is todays route..

By the time we've uploaded this little lot it will be about 5am – but thank goodness we have Wifi in the room tonight!!

Night all, speak to you from Barcelona!