Day 4 – Carcassonne to Barcelona

Tue, 30/06/2009 - 09:12 — Garry Taylor

Well here we are at the end of Day 4; tonight we are coming to you from the 5 star Hotel Miramar in Barcelona (room 601, right at the top, if anyone is interested!).

But back to Carcassonne, where Day 4 started; this morning I had decided to make an early start in order to pop down the road to use a Jet Wash we had passed on the way in.

At 6.40am, the alarm reminded me of this stupid idea which, given we didn’t get to bed till 2.45am, wasn’t one of my best.

Not surprisingly, I left Mike sleeping like a baby and headed off to breakfast, after which I went outside to the car to drive round the corner to the Jet Wash station; unfortunately this was where the well executed plan ended, as my car was blocked in and there was no one about to move it.

Still, being as I was up, it only seemed fair that Mike was woken up as well, so that was the next task.

After the usual morning preparations, including breakfast and getting the days clues, we made a sharp exit, and headed for that all important first clue of the day, via the more important Jet Wash...

Car cleaned and happy once more, we headed for Axat – “A reversing tax” – in search of the answer to “Choo! Choo! How high can you get in red?”

On the way, we were subjected to views such as this...

...and roads like this one...

On arrival at Axat, we headed to a railway station at the top of the town, which seemed a good place to start given the nature of the clue.

Judging by all the other teams there, they thought the same too.

However after spending a bit of time looking around a touristique railway information area, we hadn’t come up with anything particularly concrete, so we decided to lets the crowds subdue for a bit and head down into the town for our morning coffee break.

After a coffee and the worlds fattest chocolate eclaire...

...we headed back up to the railway station for a better look around now everyone had gone. Walking onto the platform, we discovered this:

...the perfect answer!

Happy with that answer, we set sail for “Transport a bird on water?” – ( Saillagouse obviously!) – and were soon back on the lovely roads, albeit stuck behind some large vehicles..

...going under low bridges...

And we spent the next hour getting higher and higher..

All the steep twisty roads had taken their toll on our fuel supplies, and we had already reverted to economy driving mode, having failed to get petrol at the previous 2 stations as the automated machines wouldn’t accept our credit cards.

However arrival at a station just before Saillagouse gave us a bit more confidence of success due to the clear and concise instructions provided..

Despite that, we did manage to fill up, and on arrival at Clue site 2, we parked, had some lunch, then began looking for “How many snowballs appear to be in flight?”

We quite quickly found this...

..although as a 40 point question, we thought this was a bit too simple and suspected there may be more to it.

After a quick look around the centre ville, we also found this..

Relatively confident that the answer was now 5, we headed for what would be the final clue site of the day – Ripoll – “Oll’s gravestone?” .

Before long, the beautifully decorated and somewhat classy border sign informed us that we were about to enter Spain..

We headed into the twisty roads of the mountains, where we disproved the theory that in Spain, the rain falls mainly on the plain..

After negotiating the hgv’s, we then negotiated the next obstacles we came across..

..and continued winding our way through the mountains, passing an almost headless statue.

After a quick game of chicken...

...we eventually found ourselves in Ripoll, where after a quick drive around the town, we found another railway station, which seemed a fitting place to look for the clue of “All aboard! Milk – Yellow, Apple – Orange, Paper - ?”.

We walked onto the platform, and after very little time (quite unusual for us!) we found this:

Very happy with our answer of blue, we returned to the car, and decided that seeing as we had parked outside a tyre fitting centre, we would practise our Spanish to ask “do you have any valves caps por-favor” – it seemed to work...

..and after Mike practised his haggling (well actually, the nice chap gave them to us for nothing – probably because he nicked them from one of the quality parked vehicles in the car park...)

..we headed on the final leg of the journey to Barcelona.

About an hour or so’s drive, we took in some nice roads, and had a warm welcome from the local boy-racer community..

We were soon arriving in Barcelona, and seemed to be heading straight for an early bath..

..and at one point we even wondered if we had taken a wrong turn to Cape Canaveral..

Before long however, we arrived at our luxury hotel, checked in, gave our clue sheet to the waiting Chip, and went to our room to survey the views from our balcony..

Not bad on the inside either! Although the glass partition between the bedroom and the shower room may provide for some amusement in the morning...!

Once we had savoured the atmosphere of our room, we headed downstairs for drinks and nibbles on the veranda..

Before long, we assembled at the tables, where we studied the menu..

...although very nice, the Veal was definitely not Veal, not that it mattered, as it was delicious all the same!
In case any of you were wondering, this is what the starter looked like..

After dinner, it was time for the final standing results to be revealed – and here they are!

Our huge congratulations to Geoff and Chris Blackstone, who as you can see, were delighted with their final winning position and worthy opponents to our crown (at last!)

And a very good challenge from 2nd place finishers Tom and Andrea, who kept everyone on their toes (particularly Andrea!!)

We were genuinely thrilled with our third place finish and our prize...

A massive thanks to everyone involved, and of course to Chip and Heidi for organizing such a great tour again – not a small task as i’m sure you can imagine!

Here Chip can be seen having been awarded a plate of 4.66667 cakes!

After a few relaxing drinks at the bar (till about 3am) we retired to our balcony for one last beer, and to survey the views at night..

Finally, before we go, here is today’s “what is it...” question for you to ponder.

And as usual, here is the complete route of Day 4, which saw us covering about 200miles and arrive in Barcelona at around 7pm.

That’s it for now – apologies for the late update, we decided sleep was needed – and to be fair, had we tried updating it last night, it may not have made an awful lot of sense.

Not that I’m saying it necessarily does anyway!

We are going to upload for your perusal, and then plan where to head tonight on “Garry and Mikes extended tour” section of the trip.

So those not yet bored of 4 days of updates can continue to follow our progress back to St Malo over the next few days.

I’m now off to find some double-sided sticky tape to fix my front rubber splitter back to the car – Ian, get the rivets ready, the only ones we haven’t yet replaced now need doing !!