Day 01 – Jersey to Poitiers
Wed, 27/05/2009 - 17:13 — Garry Taylor
Gallery Monaco Rally – Day 1
Welcome to Day 1 of the 2008 Tour!
Here we are again. We’ve all had a year off to regroup and reform, and following on from an extensive year of personal fitness improvement (yeah?) the trip is now in aid of Jersey Hospice Care.
We’d like to welcome on board additional sponsorship for 2008 from Computer Protec Systems, as well as welcoming back CTS Computing Ltd and once again thanking Motor Mall for their assistance, as well as all of you that have sponsored us so generously once again.
The format of the tour remains similar to previous years, with Chip as the Clue Master and his Clue Mistress (aka as his wife) Heidi.
Day 1 saw us congregating at the Raddison Hotel at 6.50am.
Why so early I hear you cry?
Because in true Chip fashion, the subtly disguised small font on a random page of the Tour instructions informed us that the first 10 teams to arrive wearing red hats would score an extra 20points each.
So red hats donned (thanks Eddy), we arrived! (Even at this unearthly hour, we were the 6th Car to arrive)
After Coffee and Croissants, we adjourned to the Condor check-in queue to wait for our slightly delayed and somewhat limping Condor 10’s arrival (yes, it’s not just HD Ferries that have engine issues it would seem).
The boat leg was slightly tortuous this year, with a list of two part anagrams, where the first word was an anagram of the second word. i.e. What is the Bordeaux Wine Monopoly? Answer; CLARET CARTEL.
It transpires that a lot of people had access to Google from their phones, so quite a few scored full marks here!
Once our somewhat delayed crossing arrived in St Malo at 12.30, we congregated, ready to be given our first mornings clue by Heir Chip Meister...
We started work on the first direction clue of the day; Take the Red and White to a British Bath.
We narrowed this down to Bain de Bretagne, entered it into Autoroute and started on our merry way. Cars were leaving in all directions...
.. but it was critical we headed off in the right direction...
We were soon underway to our first location, where the clue we were looking for was “Something looks fishy, but how many eyes are there?” We got there and immediately thought we had found the right place...
...and after counting all the eyes on the little fishies...
...and being relatively happy with our answer, as is often the case we then found something that we felt fitted better...
Having been told earlier that graffiti didn’t count on Clue 1, closer inspection revealed a number of these...
We left feeling somewhat satisfied and headed to our next destination of “Looks like a meaty place.“
Obviously this saw us arriving in Chateaubriant a little later, after passing what appeared to be a few of the
Doctors arch enemies, which having undergone a new paint job, appear to be taking over French roads...
Upon our arrival, the clue was “At the big house take two flights to see which insight confronts you.”
After walking up and down random flights of stairs at the Châteaux, we eventually discovered a door blocking our route...
..where we got an ‘insight’ to what the answer might be.
We returned to the car, where we took advice from fellow competitors Sam and Brian...
...and headed on a 60mile trek crossing the A11 and the A87 on the way to Vihiers (XA11XA87 to six Roman yesterdays) where the clue we were now searching for was “A woman has been screwed four times but what did she break?” (Chip, do you know the meaning of Political Correctness?!).
A wet stroll around the Centre Ville, and a Grande Creme later, and we stumbled across this little beauty....
(you might not be able to make it out from the picture, but her left wrist is snapped)
Happy with our find, we headed to “A place to make a Cockney hair jump” (which was Airvault obviously!), passing some of Frances beautiful architecture on the way...
...and were soon looking for our last clue of day.
On arrival, we left the car under the watchful eye of the Da Local Boyz from da Hood...(aka Les Chavs of da Airvault masseeeeve, innit lark ovo.)
Sweet.
We eventually found the answer to “If you came from Newcastle what would you be?” in the form of a 24hr Pizza vending machine, where there was a Pizza on the menu called New Castle. (For those interested, it was Tomato, Mozarella and Mushroom. But let’s be honest, is anyone really that interested?)
By now it was 8.10pm, and we were due at the Hotel for dinner 10minutes previously. As we still had 42km to cover, we left da crew and made hay whilst the sun had already set, with trusty Bluetooth GPS.. well... gps-ing..
..where Mike discovered that the downside of true wireless navigation was that with moderate (yeah right!) acceleration, the GPS receiver had this strange habit of flying off and hitting him on the knee. Ooops.
We arrived at the Poitier Novotel at 9pm, with two other teams in tow, delighted to know that even we weren’t the last, as another two teams were still M.I.A. (nobody panic, they eventually turned up 30mintues later)
After a dash to the rooms with the luggage (Camera, Video Camera, Laptop, chargers, phones, ipods, ipod speakers. Oh and some clothes) we rushed downstairs to have our meal, and await excitedly the results of Day 1.
After a couple of Beers (non alcoholic of course!) we were introduced to a new friend..(well, local Jersey Superstar to be more precise)
..and then retired to our room to begin work on the update.
As it is now 3am, we hope you will excuse us if we go to bed, and we’ll leave you with the Results sheet and today’s route.
That’s it until tomorrow, so it’s goodnight from me, and a goodnight from him. Innit. Lark.
Garry and Mike.
P.S Joke of the day; What’s Black and Brown and looks good on a Lawyer? Answer: A Doberman. (we overheard a lawyer tell this joke this morning so I guess its not offensive to lawyers! Lame i know, but we’re here to share.)