Day 05 - Monte Carlo to Carcassonne

Fri, 29/05/2009 - 16:28 — Garry Taylor

Beyond the Gallery Monaco Rally – Day 5

Welcome to Day 5.

The more astute amongst you will notice that technically the Gallery Monaco Rally 2008 is now over!

However, as per previous years, we will continue to bore you.. I mean 'keep you informed of our progress as we make our way back to St Malo over the next 3 days.'

We must warn you though, that once we are back to Jersey Thursday evening, the updates will cease, so please, those of you with dependancy issues, you really do need to be thinking of alternative solutions in the pretty near future!

So anyway, getting back to the story...

Having finally got to bed just before 6am this morning, when the alarm went off three and a half hours later, we were surprisingly still quite tired!

However, it was nice not to have to be up and assembled by 9am, so we enjoyed a leisurely 10am breakfast in our luxury Monaco accommodation, enjoying the bacon, eggs and high quality sauce that even Gordon Ramsay would be proud of...

We had to be out of the room by midday, so we packed up our belongings after breakfast and left them in the capable hands of the hotel staff whilst we went to see what was going on in Monaco.

We began the long walked up the drive from the hotel.

Apparently, there is some kind of race going on here in a couple of weeks...

... but it seems they had already had a crash...

We decided to seek advice from a shiny sphere...

...but not surprisingly perhaps, it revealed nothing to us but our reflection, so we left them to deal with it by themselves.

If they HAD wanted our advice, we’d only have suggested the turned it off and on anyway.

Around the corner, other preparations seemed to be going well...

...so we thought it was time for the obligatory Monaco Tunnel shot...

(How come I always look so short in these pictures??!!)

Here’s a better pic, with neither of us spoiling the view!!

We have decided to award not one but three prizes for best Guest Book entry this year, so credit cards at the ready, we selected the prizes and asked for them to be moored up until our final decision is made...

I’m sorry to say that we won’t be able to afford to pay for the insurance as well, but don’t worry, we have contacts...

We continued our brief tour of the circuit...

Checked out the local hot spots...

then went into a shopping centre buried deep beneath the Metropole Palace, and enjoyed a £2 can of diet coke and a sandwich, which despite its price wasn’t too bad.

We returned to the hotel, and said our goodbyes to our new found friend who was waiting for us at reception...

...then went outside and waited for the car to be delivered back to us...

All packed up and ready to go, Mike fired up the laptop and plotted us a nice route back to St Malo, and before long we were on the road, travelling away from Monaco at light speed...

...ducking and diving thru tunnels that Ridge Racer fans would be proud of...

But soon we ended up in traffic queue after traffic queue. Whilst trying to find a short cut, due to reasons known only to Mike, Bill and Gordon...

...we magically ended up back in Monaco an hour after we had left.

We decided it was time to retire Mr Gates, and put our faith back in the Garmin, so before long it was just Mike, Myself and Daniel 1.1.1 chatting away to ourselves, now at last managing to get some miles under our belts.

Just before joining the motorway, we said Hello to a classic...

That sign on the back is actually a For Sale sign – with the technology available to us, we can just about make out the number written on it, so if anyone would like to make an offer, please let us know. Ideal first car, VERY low on insurance, and by all accounts, nigh on impossible to overturn!

Soon Monaco was but a distant memory...

...and we were destined for pastures new...

We were just starting to enjoy the impressive if somewhat overcast views that the day had to offer...

...when we spotted someone waving at us...

To warn us of a Speed Camera up ahead...

Checking our speed, you won’t be surprised that it was bang on 130km/h so we had no need to be concerned, so we got back to our views...

As we were now about to fill up for the second time today, we decided to bring along a support unit for the rest of the trip...

Quite by chance, we happened upon Paul and Francoise...

We pressed on, dodging the traffic...

...and the logs...

...and before long there was nobody but us and our shadow in sight...

We were soon making our way off the motorway to take shelter for the night at a Hotel in Carcasonne that Mike had rung ahead from the car to book a couple of hours previous.

Some of you may be thinking that name sounds familiar. That’s because we’ve actually been here previously on one of the earlier Tours.

If you’re interested in finding out more about this place, here’s a link to the original update!
http://www.ctscomputing.com/fun/rally2004/page.asp?id=45

Today has seen us cover 326 miles in about 4 hours. We didn’t really start until 4pm due to the small miscommunication in our technology department, so we felt we’ve made fairly good progress.
Here is our day’s route!

We did promise you pictures of all the runners and riders, and we haven’t forgotten this promise. However, as we’d like to get at least a few hours sleep tonight, we will work on this over the next day or so and post a link on the site for you all to check out.

We will however leave you with one final picture of this years winners trophies, which we thought were very stylish, and will take pride of place of our mantle pieces! (Well, I don’t actually have one, so if any of you are carpenters or joiners and would like to make me one, please feel free to leave your contact details!)

All that remains is to start the upload, publish the page and send out your emails, and with a bit of luck and a following wind, we may even get to bed by half midnight tonight!

Good night until tomorrow!

Garry and Mike