Balderdash Rally — Jersey to Paris 2014
Les Manoirs de Tourgevile (near Deauville) to L'Hotel de Collectionneur, Paris
Hello everybody, welcome to Day 3!
We just about managed 5 hours sleep last night - but in fairness, they were 5 comfortable hours in our Hobbit style suite!
The walk to breakfast provided us with a misty view of the hotel complex...
After a leisurely breakfast, we packed our bags, and said goodbye to the neighbour...
...and headed back to the Hotel to congregate ready for the days instructions...
Today saw us having a small quiz, to tax our brains before setting off! Never a good thing after 5 hours sleep! Although compared to some, i'm sure that was quite a lot!
The quiz is pictured below - our answers by the way aren't necessarily correct - in fact, as we found out later on this evening, 50% of them are wrong, so don't go doing your own quizzes based on our answers !!
We were also given a list of things to collect for the days Scavenger hunt. Yes, a Scavenger hunt; two words that generally fill us with fear (a bit like a paper aeroplane competition!)
Oh well, how bad could it possibly be...
*Gulp*
Ok, so before we left the hotel, we did managed to convince the Chef to sing (we use the word 'sing' in its loosest sense) the national Anthem for us. To save his blushes, we won't post the video of it - we're just glad Chip didn't specify the standard of singing had to be high or have more than two notes in it !
Having also managed to gain ownership of a printed napkin from the restaurant, we said our goodbyes to the helpful and very friendly staff..
...and began decipering the first location clue.
"I'm sick in the middle of a terrible score" was the clue to be found on the map. This lead is to a town called Cormeilles, where upon arrival we had to go in search of the answer to "If it's very dry in Paris what's it like in Redier?"
After walking around the Centre ville for a bit (now on general alert for dogs that looked like we might be able to entice into the Evo) we found this building...
On closer inspection, on the wall of the building was the following meteorologic device...
One of those answers that fits perfectly. Clearly it was Tempete in Redier, so happy with that answer, we walked back to the car (via a few chemists and supermarkets looking for hygenic toilet seat covers) and left the lovely town behind us.
The next clue to find on the map was "The French male starts with Hades in the middle?" - this saw us setting course for a town called Le Bec-Hellouin to solve the next clue.
On the way there we didn't pass any dogs, but we were happily crusing along midning our own business when we spotted this along the side of the road...
It's not often we are looking for one, but on this occasion it seemed like a good idea to stop and see if we could persaude the Gendarmes to give us their autograph, so we slammed on the brakes, parked up and went in to work our charms on this kind officer.
That being sorted, we continued onwards to Le Bec-Hellouin, and because the clue once there was "In the abbey gardens who was in Bury St.Edmunds for 5 years?" we followed signs to the Abbey once entering the town.
After a walk around the gardens of the Abbey, we came across this plaque...
Happy that Albold was our man, we said goodbye to the Abbey...
...and hit the road.
Still on the look out for dogs.
We did pass a man walking his lawn mower but Chip tends to be quite strict on the interpretation of the words in clues, so a picture of this in the car probably wouldn't suffice.
We continued along our route, this time headed for Le Neubourg ("Retarded Gruobuen")...
The clue we needed to answer upon arrival was "If you were hungry all the time, day and night, how much would a Tartiflette Pizza cost you?"
Clearly, the first thoughts in our head was too look for a Pizza Takeaway....preferably one that serves food 24/7.
Having found that, we discovered it had a self service screen where you can select your pizza anytime day or night. So we selected our Tartiflette, paid our €8.80, and headed off for lunch!
Ok, we didnt actually buy the pizza, but we did head off for lunch....
After a very nice steak frites, we headed back to the car and decided we would hang around for a while, on the prowl for dogs.
Unfortuantely, no dogs. Just a bird, keen to feed off the dead insects on my car.
Giving up that idea, we decided to head for the Hyper Market in the hope for some better dog results there. And also in the hope of finding some other bits for the Scavenger Hunt list.
We arrived at the hyper market, and having found a chemist selling a hygenic toilet seat cover, we hung around the car park approaching dog owners to ask if we could 'borrow their dog to put in our car'.
One man we asked got rather alarmed. He didn't speak a word of English, and our attempts to explain that it was all for charity didn't seem to work, and he walked off at a fast pace looking like he might call the Gendarmes. We didn't need that - we already had our signature, so we decided to move on.
In hindsight, having around a Hyper Market Carpark with a blue clipboard looking using words like 'charity' probably wasn't our brightest move!
So we headed back to the car before we got arrested and re-joined our route towards Paris, hoping to pass a sleepy village with people out walking their dogs before we got to close to the motorway.
Luck was finally on our side when we came across the little fella.
I say "fella" - i've got no idea if it was a boy or a girl, but 'it' was really cute and took an instant like to Mike! After thanking the owner profusely for letting us borrow her dog, we gave "En-Gie" back to her and got back on the road!
We began to look out for possible contenders for next years cars for the Rally...
But then became aware of the fact that here we were, on Day 3 (mileage wise, perhaps day 2.5) and we hadn't yet put any petrol in the car since leaving Jersey! Mainly because the fuel gauge binged. Then double binged. Loosely translated as "you're gonna run out, fill me up" - fortunately, not too many miles further (after going into eco driving mode), we came across this:
After €80 euro's of Shells finest 98 V-Power, (its as good as it gets in France)...
...we were about to drive off when we came across a man taking his parrot for a walk.
Not something you see every day at a service station. Takes all sorts!
We rejoined the motorway, passing a sheep on the way...
....and followed the signs...
and enjoyed the views....
As time was ticking, and we were starting to get precariously close to our 6pm deadline to hand in our days work (or lose everything!), we decided it was time to hit the warp power button (standard fit on a fast'n'furious Evo)
Having hit warp speed for longer than expected, we found ourselves in amongst some famous land marks...
and some odd metal thing randomly placed at the side of the road.
Anyway, at least we weren't about to end up driving around the crazy chaos that is the Arc de Triomph, because thats one thing I've never fancied doing!
Ahh... about that...
Poor Piers had never had so many exits to instruct us on.
Fortuntately for me, Mike was right at the top of his game and correctly identified which exit we neeed to attempt to get off at.
Unfortunately I ignored him and took the wrong exit, so we ended up going up a Bus lane and doing a U-turn and rejoining the mayhem around the Arc de Triomph.
At least we got to see if from a different angle though!
There was even a brass band....
But we made it eventually and once the blood pressure had returned to normal levels, and I begged Mike for forgiveness for ignoring his directions, we found our way into our 5 star hotel
We managed to get parked up in the exclusive undergound car park (half of which was filled with Stella McCarteny vehicles) and found our way to reception just in time to hand our bits and peices in to Chip before the deadline.
Although having driven around the Arc du Triomph (twice) we weren't actually worried anymore about how many points we scored, we were just happy to be alive!
Here are a few of the bits we amassed, along with the dog and the Gendarme, both of which we should probably let out of the car soon!
After checking in, we went off to explore our luxurious room....
Although the phone in this room was a bit old fashioned.
After we had discovered it was better at taking creases out of our clothes, we put on our (semi) smart glad rags, and headed downstairs to get a taxi to our Michelin starred restuarant called Lucas Carton just around the corner. €27 of 'around the corner' - which we still owe Karl for!
Bang opposite this place...
After a superb meal, it was time for the all important scores and results, which are posted just below!
Huge congratulations to Karl and Neil - who have proved the whole 'tortoise versus the hair' theory really does work, but winning it in their VW Camper Van!
And their trusty chariot...
Because of the terrible internet in our 5 star hotel last night, and due to lack of sleep, we decided to do this update this morning - however as we are about to get kicked out of our room, we will add more pictures of the teams and our evening meal tomorrow evening!
Here is yesterdays route.
Until this evenings update, please feel free to add any comments to the Guest book which is here: http://www.itsanevoadventure.org.je/Guestbook/gbook.php
Until later, it's goodbye from both of us!
Garry and Mike.