Gallery Rally 2015 — Jersey to Paris
Saint-Briac-sur-Mer to Avrille
Hello everybody, and a warm welcome to Day 2 of the 2015 Gallery Rally.
Today is the first full day of the trip - yesterday evening was really just a gentle break in. (although by the time we had travelled the Channel, done the boat leg quizzes, driven to the lovely overnight accommodation in Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, eaten our evening meal, and done the first night's update, it was well past 1am, so it felt like a pretty full day!)
7am saw (well, heard) our alarms going off, to which we both sprang out of our respective beds. Sometime later.
First things first; we checked out the view from our bedroom window, where we found a most un-usual sight...
After calling security to remove the obstruction, we got a better look at what lay beyond..
After that and the usual oblutions, it was time for a hearty breakfast (another oppurtunity for the cheese board was presented, although most of us were all cheesed out from last night and didn't want to risk the nightmares), so we stuck to bread and cereal.
Once done, we packed up the car and admired the overnight accomodation from the front. As we had arrived in darkness the previous night, we hadn't been able to admire its beauty until now!
There was even musical entertainment....
Greg is actually on our trip, but we're not sure if he always travels with bagpipes or just found them in a cupboard in the old house; we'll let you know if we get a repeat performance tomorrow morning!
After that, we packed our bits and pieces in the car, and went back to the breakfast room to sit down for the morning's quiz. We had to link the three words on each line with a word that could be matched to each. Harder than it looks given we had 5 minutes to submit our answers..
The above is the answer sheet, not our sheet! We managed about 9 correct answers in the end. It's funny how many of them came to us later in the day when we looked back at it over lunch. Hindsight and all that....
Anyway, as if the morning's proceedings hadn't already been strenuous enough, it was now time to be given our marching orders from Chip...
..after which we were then handed the days map clues and it was time to work out where on earth we were going to be going today!
This years Michelin Map is definately a smaller scale than last years (either that or both mine and Mike's eyesight is fading fast) so it took a fair bit of time to even focus on the map, let alone find our route for the day - obviously none of this was helped by Chip's cryptic clues!
But we got there in the end and were soon plotting the First location of the day in the Sat Nav and beginning the drive out of the House onto the French roads - we even remembered to drive on the right - always a bonus this early on in the trip.
The First location clue was "Old railway starts nothing and nothing goes North South"
If we tell you the location for site 1 was "Broons" does that help? No? OK, we'll try and explain our workings; Old railway - British Rail. (BR) starts (aka 'is in front of') nothing. (o looks like 0 - which is nothing). Another Nothing (o) (this is starting to sound like an episode of Countdown) - then an N and an S for "goes North South" - and we're left with BRooNS - clear now? Trust us, it makes more sense when you then find a town on the map with that name going in the general direction we expect to be going!
Anyway, don't worry about how we got there - we just did. Once arriving in Broons - which was about 30miles from our departure point - we headed to Centre Ville, parked the car and started the search for Part 2 of the Clue - which was "If you drove a car with reg 956 what would your job be?"
After a meander around the Centre Ville, and looking at anything that might resemble a car, we stumbled across this shop..
A closer look at the orange sign hanging to the left of the shop revealed this...
A bit blurry, but you can just about make out the number "956" on the registration plate. So we think the answer is your job would be a "Key Cutter".
Happy with our start to the day, it was time to solve Clue Number 2. The location to find was "Less goes backwards in the middle of a join"
We approached this one a bit differently. We wrote down "Less" backwards. Put it in the middle of a "join" - so that makes Jo - ssel - in - and when put together, "Josselin" ; armed with that information, we looked on the map in the general area beyond the first stop, and sure enough, the town of Josselin jumped out at us!
After setting the Sat Nav, we hit the road and upon arrival in Josselin, our first task was lunch, as i was starting to fade...
No Rally would be complete without the traditional steak frites...
Trust us, it did actually taste a LOT nicer than it looks !!
Next task, now we'd eaten was to search for the answer to "What are the leprechauns fighting over?"
Clearly, the Leprechauns WE found were fighting over the door!
As it transpired later, they were fighting over beer. The beer was clearly in-between them, not underneath them.... We must stop over thinking these things!! Anyway, we've moved on. :)
So we hit the road again...
and headed onto Clue No.3... The location clue was "The French and 100 sick Romans get in this happy state."
The French for "The" is La. 100 Sick Romans = "C" and "ill" - which get in to the happy state of Gay - Voila, we were looking for a town called La Gacilly ! Simples!
Arrival in La Gacilly saw us looking for "If you went to Burkina Faso and Austria on a day-return how far would you have travelled?"
After a brief look around, we stumbled across this sign post...
Going with the logic that a 'return-trip' to Hollersbach (in Austria) is 2900km and a return trip to Diapaga (who everyone clearly knows is in Burkina Faso !) is 10,876km, so if you'd done a return trip to them both, then you will have travelled 13,776km. Nice taxing bit of maths for the day!
Whilst here, we also bumped into Sara and Hannah, our two marshalls, looking rather chuffed, as they had just found their map tucked away behind a bar... half way through Day 2. Of all the bars in all the towns... (don't ask - we think they're having their own treasure hunt!!)
Happy not only with our answer, but for their recent success, we headed back to the car and set course for Clue Site No.4 - "Gee you start and finish with an enclosure for attention of"
Obviously, that saw us heading to a town called Guemene-penfao - we'll let you work that one out for yourselves!
Once we had arrived here, we were looking for the answer to the question "On the vedette what does the A scale reely go up to?"
We were looking for something related to 'vedette' which we felt was boat related, but eventually we stumbled across this sign outside of a watch and jewellry shop..
Confident we were in the right place, we spent a lot of time examining every inch of the exterior of the shop looking for something related to Scales, A and Reels. We even went into the shop, in case anything in there stood out.
After a confusing conversation with the very friendly owner, who didn't understand much of what we said (which was just us trying to explain we were on a Charity treasure hunt and not to worry, we were "just looking around"), he then called his wife - who then appeared with her sister, all three of which then tried to understand what we were saying in our very broken French (which was still "don't worry, we are just looking") - and after a very awkard ten minute conversation, we managed to extract ourselves from their shop and carry on looking outside.
Having explored the whole shop front, roof, signs, anything that might lead us to the answer, we gave up and decided to walk around the back of the nearby Church in search of divine inspiration, we then discovered a Cinema.
In the entrance of the cinema was a very old looking projector...
A-ha! This is looking more promising!
A closer inspection found us the A scale we were looking for...
The answer of 100 now fitted perfectly!
Delighted with that one, back to the car we went, and headed to Clue Site number 5 - the final clue of today, to a place called "Le Louroux-Beconnais" - which we had got from interpreting Chips clue of "The French next to a toilet sound and a white sauce"
Thank goodness Mike had heard of Roux being a white sauce, as I certainly hadn't. I managed to get Lou, although was looking for things named plop or poop initially!
The clue, upon arrival at the toilet sounding town was "How many clever people get relief" - past experience told us that this seemed likely to be something worth visiting a toilet for!
Its also an oppurtunity to take pictures of toilets, something that doesn't seem to be odd looking to passers by over here!
We looked for 'clever people' in the two toilet cubicles. And we were not dissapointed!
Both cubicles had these clever people in them, so we thanked them profusely for their hard work, and noted down the number 2 on our clue sheets and headed back to the car.
Sat Nav was now programmed with tonight's Hotel, and after a quick Chocolate Brownie break courtesey of Mr Coleman's wonderfull cooking skills (not sure if the positioning of the text and images here may be somewhat inappropriate, but it's just how it happened, honestly!) we made hay whilst the sun shone.
Sometime later we were arriving at our lovely hotel for the evening - actually this is the third time we've stayed in this hotel, but it has undergone some reonvations and the rooms are much improved from some of our previous trips!
As we arrived at the hotel at 6pm, we made an initial start on tonights update, then headed to the restaurant for another fine 3 course meal, and a well deserved beer.
Before long it was time for the traditional scores on the doors, which are attached for your delight and pleasure below!
Clearly we have some catching up to do!! But nothing ventured, nothing gained, we'll see what tomorrow's Quiz and Clues bring!
Todays route is pasted for your enjoyment below this, but until tomorrow, its goodbye from the both of us!
