Gallery Rally — Jersey to Monaco 2011

Day 3 - Le Mont Dore to Avignons

Welcome to Day 3's update! Tonight we are in a Mecure Hotel in the central square of Avignons, with a rather impressive view out of our window.

Mind you, it wasn't all plain sailing finding our way here, but more of that later!

So we woke from our all too short nights sleep in the Ski resort of Le Mont Dore to some lovely views from our Balcony.

Mind you, whilst the views were stunning, this mornings shower involved using what is probably the worlds smallest shower cubicle; you could barely turn around in it without opening the doors!

..Oh and check out the orange "70's" stool in the pic!

Other than that though, the Hotel was really pleasant, although we are convinced it may have initially been designed as a Sauna rather than a hotel.

After a breakfast of freshly cooked pancakes (thanks Adam, you did a fine job of serving us!)...

... we packed the car, and prepared ourselves for the morning quiz that had been threatened the night before.

At 9am sharp, the marshals, after gathering us to our examination room, provided us with a sheet of paper and advised that we now had 5 minutes to name as many Disney animated films as we could with 3 points on offer for each film named. A strict watch was kept to ensure no-one used technology to aid them!

Apparently there are 87 to choose from, although there was no where near that many on our sheet by the time the 5 minutes was up. But we did the best we could, and duly handed our sheet in, and accepted the days sheet of clues, and set about working out which 5 locations we needed to visit on the way to the nights accomodation.

So, we waved goodbye to our hotel...

...and said a fond farewell to some friends I had made last night..

...and we set about solving the first location clue of the day; "You are nothing amongst 1050 Romans" - which eventually we made the town of "Murol" fit nicely, and began the 40minute drive to search for the answer to "Near the big house, what did Alain Volle write in 1963?"

It was a very slow start for us; not only did we arrive Murol and walked right to the top of a very tall slope where a Chateau was, hoping to find the clue there (well it did say "Near the big house"! - but its never that simple is it!), but also because both of us were feeling decidely unwell after our breakfast.

I'm not sure if Adam had actually spiked our pancakes, but we both felt decidely sick!

Mine was more motion sickness (yes, i appear to be making myself car sick even with driving the Golf!), and perhaps I'm starting to make Mike carsick too!

Fortunately, I came prepared and took a travel sickness pill. Unfortuantely this left me barely able to keep my eyes open for rest of the day as a result - although i did manage to drive without feeling sick - so one mustn't complain!

So perhaps it was for the best that we got a bit of fresh air to start! Having made the climb and returned back to the bottom of the steep hill, we found the clue quite easily not very far from where we had parked. Typical!

....and opposite that was the clue we'd search so hard for....

Happy (eventually) with our first answer, and less happy with having wasted an hour, but at least feeling slightly better, we headed to the next clue site.

"Go to see this saint at the Hague for tea" found us heading for a town called "Paulhaguet"

The drive there saw us getting caught up in lots of traffic due to some medieval fare, and we had to dodge various things en-route

..but we eventually made it to the clue site and parked up in the Centre Ville and set about searching for the answer to "How many people are in the water in the Vallee de la Senouire"

As it was gone midday, and we were both still feeling somewhat jaded, we decided to find a restaurant, have some lunch, then set about the clue solving on a full stomach.

A pleasant if somewhat time consuming lunch saw us being the last people there, so we headed back to the centre ville and quite quickly found this

At first it seemed quite straight forward, but over the years we have built up a healthy mistrust of anything too easy, so we studied both sides of the board for a while longer. Eventually we decided the answer was 4!

There was one of these chaps...(we discounted the man in the boat as he was ON the water, not IN the water)

..and 3 of these symbols.

Happy that it fitted in nicely with Chips cryptic mind, we headed back to the car and went to the next clue site of Loudes ("Fifty romans where of the French")

Every year, there is a Toilet clue - and this year was no different to any other! And this town was evidently the time to roll it out.

Just near to where the car park is for the Centre Ville is a small toilet block.

In our search for "If you add the Italian fractions together, what do you get?", we identified a tap in the toilet that had "Made in Italy" cast into one of its surfaces.

...whilst on another part of it was "1/2" and further round, "3/4".

When added together, that makes 1 and a quarter in our book!

Duly noted down on the clue sheet, it was back to the car, and as we now had a lengthy journey ahead of us, and had reached nearly 574 miles since Mike had filled up in Jersey on Thursday night...

...we decided it was time to treat the car to a well earned drink

That done (which should see us safely to Monaco and half way back again), we pressed on to Clue site 3 to see if we could catch anyone up.

Boy, we were really flying now..

"Rum so confused" meant that we wanted to head to Ruoms, and upon arrival, found some of the other teams still there (which always makes us happy!) and we set about searching for the answer to "How many beautiful windows does Joan of Arc have in the old town"

On arrival, we parked up, and followed signs to Vieille Ville

Once there, we wandered around the streets, past a church..

and eventually discovered a map that suggested that the Number 11 was "Fenetres rue Jeanne d'Arc."

So we headed back to where it was referring to and found this:

Happy with the answer of 3, we had a quick drink stop, then headed back to the car to find the final clue site of the day.

"Does the Holy spirit cross here" saw us set the controls for Pont St Esprit

As the clue itself was "Choo! Choo! All Aboard! What are the two stops between Paris and Marseille", Mike expertly programmed the Sat Nav with the Gare at Pont St Esprit (shhhh, don't tell Chip we used Sat Nav; he gets very emotional about that!) - and we drove to the door of a very deserted looking SNCF Train Station.

As it was all locked up, there was no where to be going inside of, so we did a perimeter walk, and Mike discovered this on the side of an old BP Trailer that looked as if it had been abandoned many years ago in the corner of the car park:

VERY happy with that answer, it was time to complete the day and head for the Hotel, somewhat relieved we were nearly home, as it had been a very long, hot and tiring day for both of us.

Unfortuantely, entering Avignons is far from a relaxing experience. First we took the long route in, as we had been attempting to appease Chip and follow his detailed instructions on how to enter the Hotel. The sat nav had planned to bring us off at Junction 22 of the motorway, but as Chips instruction said 23, we obediently ignored the Sat Nav and carried on to Junction 23. Unfortunately, we hadn't taken account the fact that Chips junction 23 was actually a totally different motorway to the one we were on. DOH!

After eventually ending up coming into Avignons from the wrong direction, it was a then a slow and steady crawl through traffic jams to enter the old town walls...

At this point, as we weren't where Chip had intended us to be, we referred back to the Sat Nav. After all, Daniel hadn't let us down so far, so why would he do so now?

Unfortuantely, he wasn't in full ownership of the latest one-way systems of Avignons' old town, so just when we thought we were minutes away from the Hotel Mercure, we suddenly found him telling us to go up a No Entry.

We asked a wizard for advice..

...but he just told us to obey the road signs at all times, so we just ended up getting ourselves in a tangled mess of loops. A network engineers worst nightmare!

To make matters EVEN worse, because we were in amongst very tall buildings, the sat nav kept losing sight of any satelites, and we ended up relying on manual maps. And a fair amount of luck to be fair!

Mike's manual tour of the old town saw us going down many very tight roads including this one:

As we turned that corner, you can imagine our delight when we literally stumbled across the Hotel Mercure purely by chance and found Chip waiting for us at the door!

After he made his feelings regarding our failure to follow his instructions quite clear, he then gave us ANOTHER map to direct us to where to park - only for us to find even HIS map was telling us to go up No Entrys!

As James Perrett on his motorbike was now relying on US to get to the carpark (after he had got lost for an hour within the walls!), the pressure was really on Mike to perform.

And perform he did! Ten minutes later, we actually found our way to the car park. What's more, we managed to park and find our way back to the Hotel again - which is a LOT easier when on foot!

The morale of this story is.... walk everywhere. Its easier, it burns even less diesel than a Golf.

So we eventually got to our room at 8.20pm, which was a fat lot of use to us, as we'd wanted to be here by 7pm to watch the Canadian Grand Prix. Although as it happens, there was still plenty of time to catch that! Unfortuantely, we were wanted downstairs for dinner, so we had to go, not knowing what was happening - well other than the fact people were getting very wet!)

After a very enjoyable dinner, it was once again time for the answers to the days clues.

Chip was very vocal about how much enjoyment he gets from setting a clue that NO one gets right - something that doesn't happen often, but he always strives to achieve. He had apparently been quietly confident that todays Clue number 2 was the one he had his hopes set on.

He was even more vocal in explaining his dismay that Mike and I had ruined this for him by being the only team to get it right. Sorry Chip!

So, after a reasonable score on the Disney quiz, but a full house on the clues themselves, we have amazingly extended our lead!

Tomorrow there are no clues.. Horray! Unfortunately there is a scavenger hunt with around 400 points up for grabs. Boo!

Here is the leaderboard after Day 3:

After 2 days of posting what some may feel are unflattering pictures of James K, we have given him another oppurtunity...

And a special mention to Emma Kennedy who for some unknown reason managed to travel 100 miles in the wrong direction before her co-driver Suzie Ruffley plucked up enough courage to tell her, and persuade her to turn round. For their "efforts" they were awarded a bottle of champagne!

So as usual, here is our days complete route for you to enjoy!

Untill the next update, its good night from the two of us!