Day 3 – Claremont-Ferand to Carcassonne

Mon, 29/06/2009 - 01:14 — Garry Taylor

Welcome to Day 3, which this time isn’t coming to you from a Novotel;  yes, that’s right, tonight we are live from Room 22 in the Hotel Mecure in Carcassonne!

The morning began in the usual hectic style, with a shower ..

.. followed by breakfast, car de-bugging, and finally, being handed our “special task of the day”...

Using the above kids modelling clay, we have to come up with and make a model depicting “summer” – which was to be judged at 10pm that night.

So we had all day to come up with an idea, and then build in on arrival at the hotel before dinner that evening!

Sounds simple huh?! With a couple of hours  at the end of the day, we were sure we could come up with something half-decent.

With that in mind, we checked out, packed the car and headed in search of petrol, which due to our previous evening’s unsuccessful hunt for a jet wash had left us with next to none.

Not only had the car gone “bing”,  but by the time we had found 2 garages both closed on Sundays and only accepting of Carte Bleu cards (which we are not fortunate enough to own) it had gone “bing bing”; in Evo words, this means “you’ll soon be walking”.

We decided to stop driving further out of our way, and instead head to our first clue of the day, hoping to find a service station on the motorway before running out.

Fortunately the gamble paid off and we were soon fait le plein-ing, where a very kind and somewhat familiar looking chap did the honours..

With a full tank, we were feeling a lot more relaxed, and headed off to the site of clue number 1 – “Be the French the French” – Arrival at Blesle we went in search of the question “What is Benito’s telephone number in Barcelona?”

After a brief hunt, we found this...

A closer inspection revealed a small plaque on the lower right-hand side that contained the information we were after..

Happy, we decided a coffee break was in order, so we selected a local establishment and sat down to enjoy the sun under an umbrella..

..then headed back for the car..

..to begin our merry trip to clue site number 2. “Its hot in France but I almost guess the ending” led us to head for Chaudes-Aigues .

We headed back to the motorway..

.. and enjoyed some of the sites on the way

 

 

Contrary to what you may think, there is no connection between the last two pictures, and in fact the nice Gendarmes had only pulled us over because they thought we didn’t have a front number plate.

Last time I got pulled over for a number plate infringement, I ended up buying a new car, but don’t get excited Steve, as fortunately, this time they realised that the number plate was of course not missing, it just wasn't in the ‘normal’ central place (we had passed them on a roundabout so they only saw one side of the car).

They let us be on our merry way, apologizing to us profusely for the inconvenience. At least we think thats what they said.

As it was nearing midday by this time, we decided the first thing to do at the next stop was have some lunch, so we started to consider our options..

Hmmm or maybe...

Our minds made up, we arrived in Chaude-Aigues and enjoyed a most enjoyable steak frites in a small restaurant, where they were so posh, even pets were given an umbrella to drink under..

The question here was “Saucy! But what is the temperature difference from the old days?”

As the town was built on a thermal spring, we figured the best place to look would be where the hot water came out..

The temperature of that water coming out of the ground is 82 Deg C, perfect for a nice cup of tea.

However, no time for that, and we continued our search for the answer, finding it on an information board

The text on the old looking picture at the bottom said that the water used to be 85 deg C, so we put “3” down on our sheet and headed back to the car for our penultimate clue.

The location clue for this was “Fifty Romans with the United Nations as here” prompted us to programme Lunas into Peirs’ data banks, and we set course for 20,000 leagues under the sea..

OK, not quite true, just a weak excuse to include that pic really.

Actually, our next stop was a motorway service station, to clean the screen of bugs..

Once done, and a topped up with fuel, a few euro’s lighter (and 4 valve caps lighter, it would transpire) we headed to Lunas, the route to which took us across one of our favourite bridges..

Obviously this has featured heavily in many a TV program, and indeed, more famously  on one of our previous years blogs, so we won’t bore you with too many pictures of the impressive Millau Bridge – just one, in a bid to recreate a master piece previously taken by Mike a few years ago..

We paid our very reasonable 6 euro toll, and shortly after, left the autoroute at the junction as instructed by Chip, in full agreement with Piers..

Soon after we arrived at the very picturesque town of Lunas, which was situated either side of a river with the most incredibly clear water..

The picture may not do it justice.

The clue here was “How many old washing machines are convenient” – which of course led us to the nearest WC (it was about time we had a clue in a toilet!) – although it wasn’t the first WC we found.

Eventually however, after checking out a few more public toilets, we decided that this was the answer..

We strolled back to the car, and began the drive to the final clue site of the day – Olargues (Starts with nothing but disagrees in the end), passing through a few of these..

And plenty of these..

Eventually, we arrived in Olargues, and we went in search of the final clue “On the tourst circuit what foods gets cross”.

We spent what seemed like forever, (but was probably more like an hour), walking around the medieval city in search of the answer, in typical Garry and Mike style, walking waaaay further than Chip had ever intended us too, however, despite getting to the very top where there was an old church..

...we found nothing, so walked all the way back down again. Eventually, we found what seemed to us like a pretty good answer...

(the bread had crosses all over them)

It transpired later that this wasn’t actually the answer!

It was too hot to look any further however, and as the time was now 6.45pm and we still had a 1hr 15min drive back to the hotel in Carcassonne in time for dinner at 8.30pm (not to mention a clay model to construct!), we decided to head back into air conditioned luxury of the car to shelter from the intense heat of Southern France..

It was time to put our faith in Piers once again, as time was of the essence, and he duly directed us down some large open fast roads in our bid to make up some time..

Eventually, we did get to the hotel, although not until 8.15pm, which gave us 15minutes to start, perfect and finish our masterpiece.

We are quite proud of what we achieved given the time – and obviously this picture doesn’t do it justice!!

Is that laughter I hear??!!

The winner was a brilliant effort by the Blackstones father and son team – and in this case, the picture really DOESN’T do it justice..

There were some other equally exceptional efforts, which we will try and show in a further update, and goes to show what a bit of time and some artistic minds can achieve.

Unfortunately, there were only 15 points winning places available, and the judge didn’t deem ours to be in one of those 15, so Nil Point for us on that front alas!

Anyway, it was time for the clue results, and we had scored 100 out of a possible 130, which was never going to do us much good in the leader board..

Tomorrow is another day of course, although making up the difference in points will be nigh on impossible. However we have been plying the Blackstones with red wine all evening, and so far the ploy seems to be working! (if Chip isn’t able to get the wine stains off his shirt, maybe we will see the first ever points deduction being made!!)

Anyway, just time to congratulate Rich (aka Dicky!) on his correct answer of the “can you tell what it is?”  feature – it was of course an Evo X Vortex Generator! Duh! How easy was that? We’re working on the prize Dicky!

Here it is in its full glory..

We’ll bring you another exciting item to work out very soon!

Finally, here is today’s complete route – and as its now 01:50am and we’ve still to upload, it’s time to say goodnight and get on with uploading!