Gallery Rally—Jersey to Geneva 2010

Day 1 with Garry and James

Hello everybody, and welcome to Day 1 of the trip, coming live to you from the Hotel Le Cavier, in Avrille! But more on that later...

So here we are again! I say "we" - but of course I can't start without mentioning that whilst it may be another year, another Gallery Rally, I'm not with my usual partner on the trip! After 12 years, Mike has taken a year off and deserted me for sunnier climbs—but James has stepped in ably* to fill the void!

*Keep reading to see just how ably!

The day started bright and early with breakfast at the Grand for all, (well, all except Team RJ that is) followed by everyone congregating at Peoples park...




At 07.45am precisely (give or take a number of minutes and seconds) we left one by one, destined for the Harbour....




Complete with "boat leg" in hand, we were extremely pleased when we successfully arrived at Condor check-in, marking James first success of the trip! Good work James!

Checked in, queued up, ready to board the boat, (still no team RJ), we began work on the boat leg, fathoming out questions like "How can you use the letters in NEW DOOR to make one word?" and 19 other challenging riddles.

Upon embarkation, we quickly found our seats and continued our work, when who should pop-up but this fella...




... He seemed friendly enough, and looked immensely intelligent, so we chatted for a bit. Turned out he used to work at ISD! Chances eh.. Thought he looked familiar!

Anyway, soon the journey was over and it was time to disembark, hand in the clues, and congregate in the car park at St Malo.

Magically, team RJ had appeared, somewhere between us leaving Jersey and arriving in France..



And so began for the first annual Chip prep talk of 2010..

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its amazing, he doesn't look any older or different even
after all these years!

After being told not to forget to put sun tan cream on and warned that trip related fatalities will incur penalties, we were handed the clue sheet for Day 1.

We set to work solving the first location clue of Princess finishes off a grandmother and plotted our route to Dinan, (obvious isn't it?!) in order to solve the clue "In the English Garden how many elephants are hiding amongst the bamboo?"

On arrival in Dinan, we headed for the old city and spotted signs for Le Jardin Anglais - a pretty garden area overlooking the Rance. Once inside the garden, we went off in search of Bamboo, and found carved out of a stone a bust, and on either end of the bust was this:




Two elephants later, and after a brief lunch stop consisting a sausage wrapped in a gallette, we headed to clue site number 3, "Holy men take e and get big". The clue led us to a typically picturesque town called St Meel Le Grand, and on arrival we headed for a bar.



Mainly because the clue was "Drink with patt on the front, Didier Peroni drove number 28, but what word followed his speedline?"

After spending a bit of time wondering around the bar, we eventually stumbled across a framed picture of various Ferrari Formula 1 cars across the years, and this one seemed to fit the bill;

Happy with our answer of "arexons", we headed to "Where the blue 66 points to the X"

Not really a location clue that can be explained unless you happen to be looking at the same Michelin map as we were, but the location turned out to be Loheac, a place a few of us have attended track days at on a few occasions recently.

The clue "In the house of cars find out what type Mistinguett drove" led us to the Loheac Car museum and eventually led us to this (after walking around the enormous museum there for over an hour!)



Happy with our answer of Panhard 73 Coupe Vulka, we headed to Le Lion D'Angers (The big cat gets cross) where we were greeted with lovely views up the river such as these.



Onwards with the search for "On the west bank if 89 is the highest number what is the lowest?" and we found the following;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure if it's that clear on the pic but on                                  
the distant measure, the highest is 89...























Happy with our answer of 54, we began the final few miles of the trip to the hotel, with our own personal escort..



Amazingly, we arrived back at the hotel with a couple of hours to spare—not something I'm that used to.

Obviously i'm by no means implying our traditional late arrival is Mikes fault—goodness me no!!

Our Hotel is a very pleasant little affair, and comes complete with its own Windmill..



So here were are then, nearly 2am and nearly ready to hit the "publish" button (free Wiff-eee here, AND i can pick up a signal)

I think that is a fairly record early night for me—admittedly, James is fast asleep already—no real change there from usual years accept he snores less than Mike!!

All that remains then is for me to upload the Leader board.... (see below)

 

To view today's route, see below!

The route will be moderately accurate, given than some of the roads we were using today are so new that they didn't appear on my sat nav OR James' sat nav —but we coped. Admirably. With a bit of old fashioned map work by James. Mike, you'd be so proud.

So that's it until tomorrow—many thanks for the guest book comments so far. I'm just impressed you all managed to work out what 4 + 6 was!

Tomorrow's mathematical challenge won't be so easy though!

Anyway, please keep them coming and don't forget to put your name on them so we know who to thank! Although maybe half the fun is working it out!

Goodbye from me, and i'm sure if James wasn't already asleep he would also say goodbye!

Oh and if anyone can tell me why what I see on my Publisher document bares no resemblance to how it looks as a webpage, please do tell! I’ve just spent an hour respacing it all....!!