Balderdash Rally — Jersey to Paris 2014

Maison Tirel Guerin, Saint-Meloir des Ondes to Les Manoirs de Tourgevile (near Deauville)

Hello everybody and welcome to Day 2 of the Balderdash Rally!

After a late night, what with not getting to the Hotel till 9pm, then updating the website, we didn't really get that much sleep last night.

But like the troopers we are, we got up, donned our slippers...

and admired the view out of the window..

We went downstairs and had our Breakfast (runny eggs and french sausages), packed our bags and assembled in the bar at 9am ready for the mornings instructions to be handed out by Chip and Heidi.

After a cursory check of our route, we loaded the car, and said good bye to our 4 Star Hotel..

(clearly they didn't get 4 stars based on their ability to centralise the stars on the front of the hotel!)

We then hit the road (remembering to drive on the RIGHT...)

Our first clue site meant deciphering "Find this British Dol and mount her" - which led us to Mont Dol, just outside Dol De Bretagne.

The first clue upon arrival here was "If you went nuts at the top, what French motorway would you be on?"

Naturally, we headed for the highest point, which meant a bit of an early morning walk, but the view on arrival was worth the effort. Although we then realised we had to walk yet higher..

After climbing the stairs to the top of the tower, we had a good look around and the only thing we noticed was a hand rail which was secured to the stonework with nuts and bolts..

You might not quite be able to make it out, but there is an "A2" embossed on the head of the bolt.

Happy with our answer, we moved onto Part B of Question 1, which was "And further afield, through the glass darkly, what car can you see?"

After ruling out one potential answer.. (after all, who's ever heard of a Galaxy?)

..we carefully scoured the area for answers that might fit better, and discovered that if you looked though the metal grate in the door of the small building next to the tower, there was a stained glass window on the back wall. Upon closer inspection, we could see an asnwer that left us with a warm feeling inside...

We walked back down the hill to the car, and went in search of clue site number 2; "Holy Peas" - clearly, this meant we were looking for a small town called St Pois, which we immediately transported ourselves off to...

We were soon arriving at our destination..

Our challenge upon arrival at St Pois was "Gustave was a deadly bore. But How old was he?"

The clue suggested a cemetary might be involved, and as luck would have it, we parked right opposite one (more luck than judgement if we're honest!)..

We also assumed we must be in the right general area due to the amount of expensive machinery around!

Clearly this little car was a bit ashamed to be amongst such vehicles and decided to hide behind a bush.

Unfortunately for us, the Cemetary was a little bit bigger than the size of that bush; in fact it spanned a fairly large area.

It also soon became clear that there were quite a few Gustaves and Bores in residence, but the real trick was trying to find one where they were both appeared together.

So we called in the search team...

Some time later...

Bingo. The poor fella only lived to 52, bless him....

Happy with that one, despite it taking the best part of an hour, we headed to Clue Site Number 3 which was. "You went missing for some French flowers".

Seasoned ralliers would immediately be looking for Fleurs without the U - and sure enough, Flers was perfectly placed on the map to fit the bill.

So we hit the road...

...and had a nice leisurely drive to Flers...

The clue on arrival was "Choo! Choo! But what is the name of the young man from Utopia?"

So naturally, we headed for the SNCF Gare, clocked in...

...and began scouring the area for suitable answers.

A short while later, we stumbled across this photo booth in the ticket hall.

The front of the booth had a couple of example driving licences, and on one of them, this cheeky chappy caught our eye..

Very happy with that answer, we decided it was definately time for a well earned lunch, so we stopped off some good old fashioned Steak Frites - clearly, a meal fit for a princess...

Fed and watered, time for Clue Site number 4. "Holy man goes under water" - after a scan of the map, we located a town called St-Pierre-s-Dives so programmed the sat nav and set off at walking pace so as not to attract any unwanted attention.

After travelling down the usual busy French roads..

and passing some interesting sights..

(we can only assume either a very strong man threw them up there for a laugh, or a random tornado had hit earlier in the day)

On arrival in St-Pierre-s-Dives, the clue was "Near the Halls, 97.15 starts the run, but what number finishes it?"

So we followed the obvious signs...

...passed a random bag of pipes...

(For those wondering why there was a set of bagpipes adorning the square, see below.)

And so began the search around the ancient halls for a fitting answer.

This one had a lot of teams flumoxed for a while, ourselves included.

Eventually, 90 minutes later, we found an answer in the old meat hall..

Up in the rafters, we spotted a series of metal boxes - not entirely sure what they did - but they were all numbered - starting at one end with 97.15, and ending the run with...

Keen to make up some lost time, we headed on to the final clue which was "Confused Car Member" - after a bit of map studying, we found a town on it called Cambremer, and set off, chasing anybody in our way..

We arrived in Cambremer and began searching for the answer to "What footwear is up near the bulls arse?"

As luck would have it, we very quickly stumbled across this fella...

Hanging on the wall behind the bull were these...

That being the final clue of the day, we set course for our evenings hotel, where we knew we had to build and fly a paper aeroplane for the annual "Wright Brothers Concorde Challenge"

Arrival at the hotel was a nice surprise..

You may be thinking it looks like it resembles a film set. Well actually, it originally was built for this purpose!

Once parked up, we were chauffer driven to our block (the picture above)....

and then spent the next hour wandering around our enormous suite!

The place was so big that we weren't left with much time to build our planes, but we gave it our best shot in the time available to us!

We then made our way back to the front of the hotel complex and assembled ready for flight testing...

After we all took turns to throw our planes, and re-affirming to Chip that, even after decades of practice, we were still useless at flying paper aeroplanes, we assembled for our evening meal.

And soon it was time for the leaderboard after the days activities.

Not surprisingly, our position in the standings has crashed and burned (rather like our planes!)

We'll leave you with this moody night-time shot of our nights accommodation..

And here is todays route (including last nights leg)

Until tomorrow, its good night from the both of us.

Garry and Mike