Gallery Rally — Jersey to Monaco 2011

Day 1 - St Malo to Amboise

Hello everybody, and a very warm welcome to the first day of the Gallery Rally 2011, in support of the Jersey Hospice!

We need to start off by announcing a small change to our team name.

"it was nearly an evo adventure" is really a far more accurate description!

Due to reasons completely out of our control, the Evo didn't make it, however a massive thanks must go out to Matt and Joe at TRL Developments Ltd, Cheryl at TDI Developements Ltd, Ian Gough, Adrian Renouf, and quite a few other friends, who really have done everything they could possibly do to try and get the car on the road in time for the "off".

Joe, thanks for coming over; I hope the airbed wasn't too uncomfortable for you, and I'm sorry I had to desert you and go to France at 7.30am this morning! I look forward to seeing you back again in 3weeks !! ;o)

In memory of "the car that nearly made it" - here it is!

After a lot of panel beating, painting and a fair bit of last minute organisation, we eventually made it to the start line this morning, having turned it into this overnight....

So, without further ado, welcome to "its a Golf Adventure" ....!

The 20 teams all gathered for breakfast at 8am at the Royal Yacht, where our launch platform was ably errected by Ben and Co. (thanks to them and the JMC&LCC once again)

Amongst the competitors were the all ISD team of James and Adam...

(we have no idea who put that there, Honest - it wasn't us!)

James was very keen to disprove their team didnt live up to that name however, so allowed us to take a picture of him in his natural state..

Also, for the first time in the history of the Gallery Rally, there is an all motorbike team of Chris Halford (yes, he of Channel 103 fame!) and his trusty companion, James Perrett.

So far the weather has held for them - lets hope it stays that way. And that they don't run out of bananas.

The experienced Rally go-ers will know that there is often a hidden clue in the Starter pack, and this year was no dissapointment. Mike set to work late last night building our crowns..

(yes, thats me on the phone, trying to be all serious and arrange delivery and collection of parts, whilst looking stupid in a crown).

In fact, it has to be said that Mike did SUCH a good job with his crown design that we actually won the "best designed crown" prize; that being an upgrade to a Suite at our Monaco hotel on Monday night. Did we mention that this hotel recently won the award for being the best hotel in Monaco?

 

As always, we were provided with a "Boat Leg" challenge. This year, the challenge had been designed to prevent people cheating. Why Chip thought this year would be any different to any other we will never know. Obviously we never cheat - never have, never will. A big thanks to Kate, and my sister Sharon and all at La Motte Ford for their input though!

Actually, it wasnt something you could cheat at very easily as it turned out. A word search, created by Heidi, thus un-google-able!

Amongst the letters were hidden 70 different types of tree..

I think we managed 52 in the end - something we were quite proud of. Not as proud as I was when i found "Mug" tree - although Mike was cleverer as he explained it was probably "Gum" tree. But it worked either way!

Annoyingly, we'd also spotted a few other random words, like POO, WEE, WEY. Obviously, none of them were trees, so we discounted them. How annoyed were we tonight when James K pointed out that WEY backwards is YEW. DOH!

Anyway, arrival in St Malo on the Condor "not so" Rapide was suitably late - we got in at around 13:30 local time, so we gathered in the usual car park, well away from previous years scary red headed lady, and were given our prep talk.

After that, we collected our first days Clue sheet and searched for our first location of "Hair utensil finishes with our thousand" - which we quickly narrowed down to a town called Combourg

We expertly navigated our way there, and on arrival half an hour later, the search of the answer to "What time is it in SW1?"

We wondered in the usual aimless way, looking for something that might be related to London - and whilst munching on a baguette, noticed the following artwork on a shop front:

Happy with the answer 5 o'clock, we merrily returned to the car and began the search for "Smelly you on the river!" - which took us to a town called "Bouloire"

As the name would suggest, we found ourselves crossing the Loire..

...there was actually a Clue 2, which due to circumstances out of Chips control, had to be cancelled.

It was probably for the best, as it allowed us to cover some good mileage, and make up for the very late start from St Malo.

So back to the story. Once we arrived in Bouloire, we set about looking for the answer to "How many customers are there in Frank Ryan's Pub?"

We parked the car, and went to the closest bar to get a coffee, and whilst looking around, found a painting on the wall inside the bar.

We'll let you work out the answer for yourselves!

So, 2 clues down, 1 to go. We headed for "Castle Car?" - which it soon became apparent was "Chateux-Renault"

On the drive between Bouloire and Chateux-Renault, we had watched in awe as Phil and Wendy in their blue Porsche over-took us and every car in front of us as far as the eye could see.

Alas, we were somewhat powerless to respond, so we carried on at our leisurely but consistent pace (ahhh, you've gotta love Cruise Control!) and followed Mikes expert naviation for the remainder of the journey.

Imagine our surprise when we rolled into Chateux-Renault and looked in the mirror to see this!

None of us can explain how it came to be like that, as they'd not stopped, but we'll just put it down to the tortoise and hare affect. You don't need to go fast to be in front it would appear! But its probably a lot more fun!

Anyway, we parked up near the Chateux and went in search of "At the big house, which family stayed at the Garden gate for 100 years"

After a brief wonder round the grounds, we found a big gate into a Park, with large stone pillars, and various grafiti carved into it. As is usual on these trips, we found ourselves reading everything very closely. We didnt get any phone numbers, but we did find this:

if you look closer...

Excellent, just what we had hoped to find. Menager it was.

All three clues hopefully in the bag, we headed to the night stop, which upon arrival meant we had covered 225miles today.

It was at this point I spotted a fault with Mikes' car; evidentally the fuel guage is faulty as there is no way we can have done 225miles on 1/3 of a tank of diesel. Indeed, even the trip computer must be faulty, as that says we can still do another 470miles before refuelling is required. This is illogical. Or if nothing else, has given me cause for thought.

Perhaps, with the ever increasing price of fuel, its time to look into the future....

Or then again.....

Mind you, slow and steady does appear to win the day, as we were the second competitive car to get to the hotel - and we certainly weren't the first to leave St. Malo!

Tonight, the hotel is a beatiful little property full of character and charm. It has free Wifi in everyroom, which always wins our vote. There is also reading material provided.

We can only imagine this is France's answer to The Hoff.

After a quick read, we headed downstairs for a pre-dinner drink with the other teams, most of which had by now arrived as well.

It was soon time for dinner, which was a very pleasant affair, followed by the traditional explanation of the days clues by Chip and the publication of the leaderboard.

So after a very long and busy day, our 20 points for arriving in a black crown, along with 52 trees and full marks on the clues has put us in a nice 3rd place. Remember, as Jan Dart always used to say, "never peak to early" - advice that we have treasured for the past 12 years!

So, here were are, 1230 and the update is all but ready to publish - we'll leave you with one last picture of the Hotel by night, and todays route, and bid you a fond farwell.

Good night from Garry and Mike