Gallery Rally — Jersey to Biarritz 2013

Day 2 - Saint-Herblain to Angouleme

Welcome back! We are coming to you live (and alive - always a bonus) from the Mercure Hotel in Angouleme.

We could just leave it at that, but at least some of you may want to hear about the days' goings on, so let us start. At the beginning.

Having not finished last nights update until 2am, and needing to be up at 7am, we were both feeling a little jaded when the alarm went off. Somewhat aptly, Mike had set his alarm ring tone to 'Singing in the Rain' - something we had plenty of today!

After a slender breakfast of small sausages, a strip of bacon and no eggs (because there were no eggs left - not because we were avoiding them), we packed the car and assembled in the Hotel lobby for the first of the trip's quizes; name as many words as you can that begin with the letter 'J' in 2 minutes.

Its amazing how many words sprang to mind - AFTER the 2 minutes was up. Still, we tried our best, its all we can do.

To ensure no cheating went on, everyones mobile phones were confiscated throughout the quiz. As IF any one would do such a thing.

In order to maximize our chances of success today, certain sacrafices had to be made.

Its not an exception I would make for everybody.

Anyway, that being over, the Days clue sheet was handed out, and we began working out where our first stop of the day was!

51 Roman SS in the middle of a fraud led us to a town called Clisson.

A reasonably short drive later saw us arriving at our first destination, whereby we began the search for the answer to "Through the hall to the big house if you were neither halfway up or down what part of France would you light upon".

We followed signs to a Historic monument that implied there were some Halls and a castle. Having parked up, we walked across a small bridge to the castle entrance, but found the doors to be locked. Having tried the door a few times, just to make sure it really was locked, another entrance door next to where we stood opened, and a slightly grumpy french man appeared and explained that frankly, as the doors were shut, it meant the castle was closed! We surmize that perhaps we weren't the first people to have rattled his door that morning and disrupted his sleep in the presumably large gardens!

Anyway, having established that we obviously didn't need to go in the castle, we retraced our steps slightly and found ourselves at the top of a flight of stone steps.

With the idea that we should be 'neither halfway up or down' - we walked roughly half way down the stairs and found a lamp post.

Ahh, a classic Chip - something to do with a light! We balanced precariously on the wall and found printed just inside the lamp and below the light bulb was the word 'Montmartre'

Mike assured me this was a part of France, so we opted to put this down as our answer!

We figured we were in the right area as we weren't alone, however there was more than one lampost.

Mike sat on the wall for a bit whilst we chatted to Chris.

To be fair to Chris, he doesn't always stand like that when we talk to him. It might have been his ploy to make Mike sit on the wall for a little longer; a decision that Mike shortly afterwards regretted...

It made fellow competitor Graham laugh so much that he had to hang on to something to prevent himself falling over...

Or at least, that's what he told us!

Due to our slender breakfast, coffee and pain au chocolate was the next priorty, so we found ourselves a nice little Cafe and had our second breakfast and a jovial chat with James and Adam...

Refreshed and raring to go, we returned to the car, and set course for Clue Site Number 2, which we worked out to be St-Michel-Mont-Mecure - based on the clue of M and S and a mountain hotel chain?

A few wrong directions later...

... and after gate crashing someones wedding...

...we arrived at St-Michel-Mont-Mecure

As the clue we needed to solve upon arrival was High up what shoe size does the Archangel have? we assumed we would need to find somewhere 'up high', and as we neared the town there was a sign post pointing to a Church at the top of a hill - so we headed straight there!

We parked up...

....and went in search of the Archangel, who we found cowering inside the church, looking slightly scary if i'm honest!

Fortunately for us, St Michel had listed all of his important measurement for us...

The above picture shows details of the Statue that is actually being renovated on the top of the church spire ('up high!).

Happy that his feet took 0.62m large shoes (you know what they say about the size of the Archangels feet...) (large Archangel shoes....), we headed back to the car again.

Clue site No.3 was a place called Champdeniers-St-Denis - derived from the clue Short Champion ends with holy menace - obvious i hear you cry!

On the way here, we had recieved a text message from 'mission control' to warn us that there was a Police Speed check along the road we would all be travelling on.

Not an issue for us as we were law abiding citizens.

Not to worry, he seemed like a frindly chap. I think he just wanted to warm his cold hands on my bonnet...

And take a picture of the Rally plate....

We imagine he was just going to upload it to his facebook page. Either that or put out an APB for anything seen in possesion of these plates!

Once he had checked all was in order, we were allowed to leave. No money exchanged hands. Mainly because we actually were law abiding citizens at this moment in time. I mean, 'as per normal'.

Shortly afterwards, having resisted the temptation to Booooooooost itttttttt away from the friendly Gendarme, we carried on our merry way....

and soon arrived at Champdeniers-St-Denis.

The clue here was The essence of the Honda Garden but how much for a litre so we picked the first place to park that we could, which unusually for us was actually right next to where the clue site actually was!

When we then saw a row of Petrol pumps, we thought this one's in the bag!

Evidentally, so did James and Adam!

However, its never quite that straight forward; there was SUPER, GASOIL, and something else. All had different prices per litre. SUPER would seem the most likely candidate, being that Essence is french for gasoline, which is a lot closer to being SUPER than GASOIL is. However a sneaky look behind one of the pumps revealed a sight that left that nice warm feeling inside....

You might not quite be able to see it from the pic, but the price per litre for 'essence' was 7.27F so we duly noted it down. And of course took a picture of it for you all to feel a part of it.

At this point, as it was 1.15pm, we decided a lunch stop was in order. Unfortunately, most of France had other ideas, so it took a lot longer than expected, but we eventually found a pleasant cafe, which was actually at the 4th clue site..

On the subject of the 4th Clue site, this was a place called Bougon - which we had calculated from the clue of Put you in the middle of a bog on this site.

In our morning briefing, we had been told that we needed to allow plenty of time at this Clue, and 'to take any help that was offered'. Also, on the map itself, there was a Dolmen symbol, so we put two and two together and headed for the only Pre-historic site in that area. It was a huge area, so it made sense we would need to allow plenty of time there. We were also told we would be required to pay €4.50 to enter this site, and as that was what the price was to enter, we were confident it was the place to go.

We wondered up and down the seemingly endless area, in and out of dolmens....

After failing to find anything that matched the clue What geometric shape is a goat, and as we had seen a sign saying there were audible guides available, we decided to 'take any help offered to us' and we all got ourselves a cool device to walk around with..

There were over 40 'snippets' of audio information available, so we each took a section, and listened to some fascinating things about prehistoric man and all things related.

After we sat on the wall (this time it was a dry one!) listening intently, Mike was the first to reach an interesting bit of information.

Apparently, a wooden triangle used for moving stones is known as a 'goat'...

As we were all in agreement that a triangle was a geometric shape, this was a very fitting answer!

We'd spent 2 hours here (in the rain) so decided to go back to the comfort and dryness of the car and hit the road..

Our 5th and final clue site of the day was a place called Chef-Boutonne (Cook with B.O. finishes you with a weight).

The clue we had to solve was; Beneath the big eye how may I help you? But what language would an Englishman have to speak to learn about meat and poultry?

Although we parked opposite an Opticians, we felt we were more likely to be looking for a Tourist Information place, and had a quick look on the town plan to see if one existed. Which it did...

Underneath the big 'i' you can probably just make out a screen. It actually says 'May I help you?'

When we arrived however, a peice of brown paper that you can see just to the right of the screen in the pic above was mysteriously covering up anything that might have been useful to help us solve the clue.

Suspecting foul play (not that any of us are competetive or paranoid) we removed it and bizarely, the touch screen was fully functioning and able to connect! (it later transpired that one of the other teams (who shall remain nameless) (Asa and Mark), had tried to eek an advantage and bought a roll of brown paper, some sellotape and a pen, and put up the fake sign above!

Having seen around their devious plan, further investigation into the touch screen information established that if you selected Local Products in English, the third one down still appeared in German. A splattering of German helped with this one but basically that is 'meat and poultry' in German. Evidentally a software bug.

Having satisfied ourselves with the answer, we returned to the cars and plotted a route to the evenings hotel.

Adam was just about to drive off when we reminded him of an important fact...

..the car would be a lot quieter and more aerodynamic if he shut the boot first!!!

After a quick stop for fuel (only the second fill-up of the trip!)...

...we returned to the highway..

...and before long were pulling up to our accommodation for the evening.

We had a most pleasant evening meal...

Heidi especially enjoyed her vegetarian option...

It was soon time for the Chipster to tell us how everyone had done and to reveal the scores on the doors...

(the above scores don't yet include the mornings 'J' quiz - we can't help feeling no-one can have done much worse than us. We at least remembered to put Jersey on the list though!)

Before the daily route pic, we just had to show off one really cool feature of the bathrooms in this hotel...

 

Now you see me....

 

Now you don't....

All at the touch of an electric switch! How cool is that!

Anyway, after that bit of excitement, what could be better than a nice map of our route for today!

So thats all for today, time to upload and send you all the links. Lets hope it takes a little bit less time than last night!

Till tomorrow, don't forget you can sign our guest book by clicking on the link towards the top left of this page (thank you all for your comments so far!) and don't forget you can also sponsor us if you feeling generous (anything, no matter how big or small, will be greatfully recieved by the good people at Jersey Hospice Care).

Good night all!

Garry and Mike