Gallery Rally—Jersey to Geneva 2010

Day 2 with Garry and James

Evenin' all! Welcome to Day 2..... tonight coming to you live from a Novotel in Orleans!

After a good solid 5 and a bit hours sleep, I was wide awake when James' s alarm went off this morning, and jumped out of bed, eager to start the day.

Ok, that last bit was a bit of a lie, but after snoozing the alarm for 30mins, thinking about it a bit longer, and finally realising that breakfast wasn't going to wait for ever, we began the start of day procedures.

Breakfast was the usual affair of French bread (who'd have thought it), butter, cheese, ham, and coffee (which tends to make the bread a little soggy), after which I decided a quick debug of the car was required.

Unlike Phil Balderson in Car 12, who had got up at the crack of dawn and drove to a Jet Wash not too far away and gave his car a complete thorough clean; impressed I was. Eager to do the same.. not so much.

Moments later and we were being given the clues for the day, and it was time to start work!

After the usual head scratching....

.....we set course for Les Rosiers-sur Loire, which was as a result of having worked out the meaning of "The French and an English girl on the river".

As the clue was "If you were Zen how many positions could make you wet?" we headed for the first water related feature we came across

.

It soon became apparent that it had nothing to do with what we were looking for, but as by that time I'd taken a pic of it, it seemed only right to put it on the website for you.

We continued exploring, and soon came across something that seemed far more fitting... Although we didn't entirely know why just yet.

After watching for a few minutes, pondering on how many positions could make us wet, it suddenly fell over!

Obviously our initial thoughts were to run and pretend nothing had happened, but after waiting a few more minutes, it did it again, but this time it fell over in a different position. So began the quest to establish exactly HOW many positions it would fall over in and make us wet.

Fortunately, whilst one option was to wait and count, the other option was to read the information board located just a few meters away...

Most impressive we thought!

Anyway, happy with our answer, were headed back to where we had parked the car, and had a quick diet coke break, followed by some fantastic chocolate brownies that James had bought with him (thanks Beverly, we know it was you who did all the hard work with the cake sales!)

Refreshed, it was time to hit the road again...

We decided to follow the river ...

....which we ended up doing for the next few miles..

We enjoyed some of the sights on the way...

Eventually however, we got bored, so decided to take a diversion....

But soon realised the errors of our way, and headed back onto a better surface and crossed the river.

Eventually, we arrived at Clue Site no.3—Azay (The alphabet and then nearly another alphabet start here).

As we had been pre-warned we needed to pay to get in and indeed it was a Big House, we headed for the Chateaux...



A fantastic place, so here are a couple of pics for your uninterrupted enjoyment.....

In the back garden, we even found a giant gramophone..... (quite some horn i think you'll agree!)

Anyway, I would mention that we had by this time left the building happy with our answer, which was the answer to the question "How many drawers are there in the first room" - however, as we got it wrong, I can't bring myself to talk about it!

Next stop was lunch in the streets around the corner....

...after which, we headed onwards to Amboise (Clue site 4: Just before where I am French wood?).

It was "Just before" because the actual clue was "Get a Chinese erection. What's the highest possible score at four ball bagatelle?" and as were were approaching Amboise, we saw signs for a Pagoda. James informed me this was a Chinese thing, so seemed like the place to go!

Once there, we asked a local for directions to their games room...

He didn't know, so he referred us to a mate who was just flying past at the time...

He didn't know, so we took matters into our own hands and headed to the Chinese erection, which i'm sure you'll agree is a very impressive one, although I'm sure its on the slant...

Having walked all the way out to it, and having not yet found an answer to the question, it seemed sensible to climb all the way to the top in our search. It was pretty scary up there, stood on a very narrow balcony with nothing but a rickety metal railing to prevent falling to a certain death, but I bravely took the next pic which looks back to where I took the previous pic from.

After returning to the safety of terra ferma, we walked back to where we had started and searched in the garden of games again, and eventually found the below pinball machine, which i'm told was referred to as a bagatelle back in the old ages!

We correctly calculated that the highest possible score with 4 balls was 2225, and returned to the car to cool down in the air conditioned luxury, as it was a very hot day here again, and walking around the Pagoda for over an hour had taken its toll on us.

Next and final clue site of the day was "Chambord" - "Muddled comb hard" and we headed that way , hoping for a nice easy result to the question "What's got thorns in its sides in the garden?"

We headed for the gardens of Chateux Chambord, and, fresh with the knowledge that the clue involved "water" we quickly headed for the moat that surrounded the castle.

An hour or so later, we were still searching, by now very tired and extremely hot, and also knowing that we needed to design a paper aeroplane for presentation and flight testing at 7.30pm at the Hotel, which was about 45mins drive from where we currently are.

At times like this, its usually a good idea to stand on a bridge and look down at your feet, which we did, and thank goodness we did!

On the floor, either side of the bridge along its length, were small plastic electrical plates with the name "thorn" on top.

You can imagine our relief—so excited that I even forgot to take a picture.

As it was now 6.20pm, we headed back to the car and plotted a course for the Novotel in Orleans, and arrived there shortly after 7pm.

No time to unpack the car, it was straight to the room to design our aircraft for the evening paper plane flying challenge, proudly using our new coloured pencils that we'd bought in a town earlier that day, then it was off to compete.

We all assembled in the grounds at the back of the hotel, and so began the challenge.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm sure it looks more like Richard is using Yoda mind tricks to fly his plane here....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, rather predictably, we scored a meagre 10 points out of a possible 90 for the plane section, and coupled with the incorrect answer to Clue 2, the leader board has been shaken up somewhat!

See below to see how bad things have gotten in the last 24 hours!

But lets not be disheartened—there's still two more days left, and tomorrow morning there is a Quiz—we've no idea on what, so this may be a very bad thing, but we'll do our best!

Well, as its now heading towards 2.30am, I just need to click the upload button, and then I can go to bed!

James of course is sound asleep already (its a very familiar pattern I'm seeing—I can only presume its my company that has this affect).

Here is todays route....

So anyway, wish us luck for tomorrow, and we'll be updating you again in the very near future. Oh and for those that were concerned (although no one was concerned enough to offer me any advice!), I have solved my Publisher problems. Hurrah!

Until the next time... Garry and James.