Gallery Rally — Jersey to Saint-Tropez 2012

Welcome to Day 8 - Reims to Jersey

Hello everybody, and tonight we come to you from - well, Jersey!

This morning we awoke at 8am to the theme tune to Tom and Jerry; i've no idea whether Mike thinks of me as Tom or Jerry, and to save any offence, i didn't ask!

After a very pleasant breakfast of pancakes, ham and cheese, and the best coffee of the trip so far, we checked out, loaded up the car (4 suitcases and 3 rucksacks for a weeks trip is probably a bit over kill!) and we set course for our final destination of Saint Malo.

We spent the next few hours on wet autoroutes...

....stopping at many of these along our route...

 

We were looking well on schedule to arrive at Saint Malo in plenty of time, but as we approached Paris

 

 

......the traffic had other ideas....

Very kindly, and at times somewhat annoyingly, the sat nav had been offering us alternative routes every few minutes for the last half hour or so, as it recieves dynamic updates from somewhere magic in the sky; but we knew best, and chose to ignore it. Turns out it was right!

 

 

...but once we saw the error of our ways, we went back to manual methods, using a real map and making real inteligent decisions. Chip, you would have been so proud!

Eventually, we were back on the open road...

 

(well 'open' accept for the other traffic of course - but at least the other cars were moving - even if it was on the back of a transporter!)

We passed many of these...

...but unfortuantely not at a time when we were actually hungry, Shame, as we have happy memories of their food! Next time, me thinks a Buffalo Grill tour of Europe is called for!

As the journey progressed, we saw all sorts of odd artwork by the side of the roads, presumably just to keep the autoroute users entertained as they drive by, lapping up the miles...

....and before long we took our last one of these...

 

 

....took our last shot of this....

....and popped in here for a spot of lunch.....

Cue "lunch picture"......

 

Just as our progress was gathering pace, it started to rain again.....

But this wasn't going to dampen our spirits, as we soon saw good signs ahead...

A sign that can mean only one thing; Jet Wash time, French style! Because these wheels aint gonna clean themselves!

Once I had washed many litres of fuel and exhaust stains off the rear of the car, and plenty of Ferodo DS2500 dust from the wheels, it was finally starting to look white again!

After a very brief visit to the Hypermarket (so brief in fact, we didnt have time to buy anything!) we drive the final 10 minutes down the road to the port of Saint Malo, checked in and jointed the queue of cars, just in time to see our boat pulling away without us!

Just kidding! It was just arriving. Shortly afterwards, we boarded, and set sail for Sunny Jersey. The trip was a little bumpy, but we were both so tired we slept a fair bit of it, and before long we were pulling into St Helier harbour, driving off the boat and driving on the left!

So, for the last time this trip.... here is today's route!

For those who are still following (or awake!), here are a few nerdy statistics from our trip!

The total mileage on the trip was 2440 miles, in order to do this we needed petrol this year!. Lots of it. In fact, we filled up 11 times, spent €750 on it, and used 430 litres of it!

In case you are planning a trip soon, the average fuel cost (for Super 98!) was €1.712 per litre (the highest was €2.034, and the lowest was €1.549)

We visited 6 countries during our brief trip (France, Italy, Switzerland, Litzchenstein, Austria and Germany).

We ate our way through 2 family packs of peanut M&Ms, a pack of toffee bonbons, a pack of minstrels and a bag of Jelly Babies! And there is a bag of smarties still in the glove box! (obviously we've not included the countless number of steak frites we ate our way through!)

We also carried a melon, a pineapple and a Lavendar plant around 5 countries, but finally we had to say goodbye to the melon and the pineapple yesterday. (I say 'goodbye' - by which I mean we dumped them unceremoniously in a service area bin)

We did however keep this little fella, appearing here for the first time since Monday!

So thats about it from us for the 2012 Gallery Rally. To see our Complete route over the last week, click <<here>>

Thank you all for your donations and your input on the Guest Book, we have loved reading all your comments. You can still sponsor us of course, for a few more days - by clicking <<here>>

And the Guestbook will remain open for comments for a while yet, so click the link <<here>> to leave any comments!

All of the above links are also available from the top left of each page!

Finally, a few thanks; to Chip and Heidi for another fantastic rally, to everyone on the trip for their great company, competition and sense of fun - congratualtions once again to Ben and Ben on the win this year!

And thanks to all the countries we visited for allowing us across their borders.

Until next year... Good night from us both!