Gallery Rally 2016 — Jersey to San Sebastian - Day 2

Ploermel to Rochefort sur Mer

Hello once again, and thanks for tuning back in to catch our Day 2 update!

We do know there are some of you reading this due to the Guest Book Entries, and thankyou very much for those, loving reading them, so keep them coming!

Today saw us awakened rudely (just 5 hours after going to sleep) by the alarm going off at 0700. Naturally we ignored it for as long as we could until one of us broke and got up.

We were greeted with a not to unpleasant view from our balcony ...

After taking that in for a few moments, it was time to check out the bathroom facilities.

The shower was pretty good as they go, despite the fact that someone had changed the shower head for an 80's microphone..

After Mike recited his rendition of "I want to break free" we headed down for breakfast at 8am as instructed by our Cluemaster, and after indulging in hot coffee and tasty treats, and checking for any small text on any small badges...

....we assembled for the morning briefing and quiz.

Todays Quiz, as hinted at the night before, was to name as many of the 96 French Departments that you could. As is customary for such quizes, everyone's phones were taken off them prior to the quiz, to ensure no cheating could occur. (As if that would stop anyone !!)

That done, it was time to get our heads down and plot some routes.

Todays first clue location was "If you have time, stay in Peer Moll" - which turned out to be an anagram of the very town we were in already - Ploermel. So we headed into town in search of our first clue of "Visit an old favourite, and tell me how long it takes to make time."

As we approached Ploermel, we both had a sense of deja-vu, which turned out to be correct as we had come here on Day 1 of 2013's trip. Fortunately for us, unlike then, the place we were going to was open this time, which saved asking a friendly Monk to let us in.

Having headed to the site of an astronomical clock...

We set about our search in the rain...

and found this placard below the clock..

Clearly it takes 5 years to make time!

Loving that, we then realised we had a second part of the question to answer; "How many of these clocks can you hear in France?". Whilst setting all the clocks off then driving around France at high speed to see where we could hear it from did appeal to us, we opted to press the button to listen to a recorded explanation of the clocks and how they work, where the nice man told us (in English, no less) which places in France have this type of clock, the answer being 8..

So that being that, we headed back to the car and set about finding clue site No.2 - "Find the United Emirates in a Great town". The town of Guerande seemed to fit this nicely ( GUErande ), so we punched it into the Sat Nav and began the journey.

Arrival saw us pay our dues (it was considerably more complicated that you might imagine to do this)...

Once that complex task was completed, it was time to attend to the all important first coffee stop of the day, where we enjoyed a lovely Grande Cafe au Lait with a pleasant view of the surrounding area...

After that we thought we'd go off in search of the clue which was "How many holy men are there?" . As we were parked outside of a walled city with a church in it, we thought that might be a good place to start. And what a good decision that turned out to be.

As we walked around the church, looking up and down, we spotted various candidates for our holy men...

None of these gave us that comfortable feeling we like to feel when we know we're close to the right answer, but we rounded the next corner and stumbled across these charming little fellas...

Some of them, as you may be able to see, were full of holes...

So after walking amongst them, and back again, making sure every one of them were men (don't ask) and that they all had holes in them (again, don't ask), we settled on our answer of 6.

We were pleased with how we were finally tuning in on Phil's wavelength...

...and as it was now heading towards midday, we thought we'd stop here for lunch, where we had ourselves a splendid Gallette each.

Now fuelled and ready for the next leg of the journey, we set about solving the location clue "Go to the holy place where A Zanier lives". St.Nazaire seemed to fit this one nicely (Saint and an anagram of A Zanier), so we once again put our trust in the German Sat Nav (ok, she's not actually German, although she does have a very irritating habit of telling us to "prepare for a roundabout" just after we've passed it, but lets not get into that)

Arrival at St Nazaire meant we could only be heading to one place in our opinion. The infamous U Boat Pens. As the clue was "In the place where stuff goes down, where would you celebrate Christmas eve?" this seemed even more fitting. And as the Cluemaster had given us a hint that we were looking for a huge man made structure, there was little doubt in our minds!

And huge it was... (the pic below shows a very small section of the huge pens)

We had a brief look around inside a couple of the pens.. (a great setting for the next Indiana Jones movie we think)

and then headed for what looked like the main gathering points for visitors, and after much hunting high and low (literally) we eventually found the following number on one of the walls.

Unfortuantely, since Phil and Emma had originally set the clue, it transpired that a load of posters had been put up, slightly obscuring the "12" and making it possibly look like a 19, however we had been given a heads up to say that the clue here will work even if you think there are 19 months in a year.

As this seemed to fit what we were looking for, all we had to do was work out what was meant by the "where would you celebrate" part of the clue. After much discussion, the only answer we could come up with was "Pen 9"...

.

..so we went with that one. As it transpired, we were close but not close enough (it should have been 9B, but someone had decided to knock that part of the lettering out and replace it with a display cabinet of some kind.

Still, we got part points for that.

One of the bonus questions (new for 2016) for today was extra points for "Best Yoga pose of the day" and what better place to try it!

 

Happy with our attempts, it was time to feed the thirst of the German...

...and head off across the river..

After a full tank and hitting L'ile Botty, we joined the motorway towards clue No. 4.....

..which was "Roll the dice, it's not off"

Obviously this was referring to the town of Lucon (Lucky, On)

The clue here was in two parts. 1) "How many little white children can you find" - and 2) If you're really getting tired, what's the earliest you could leave the Cardinal's company?"

After parking up in Centre Ville, we took a wonder around the Centre and found this statue Cardinal Richelieu..

Confident we were in the right area, we checked everything in the nearby vicinity and settled on this bus timetable just in front of the Statue..

And a closer look showed us that the earliest bus from this location departs at 08:31am, so if you're tired, perhaps this is the bus you might take to leave the Cardinal (although what you would have been doing there all night to leave at that time still remains a mystery)..

As it turns out, the answer we got for how many little white children was completely wrong, so we won't bore you with how we had come up with that - and as we only found out what the right answer was once we got back to the hotel, we can't even show you a picture of it!)

We now only had one clue to do (which was also at the site of our evening hotel) so we programmed the Sat Nav for Rochefort sur Mer.

During our briefing at the hotel this morning, we had been informed that anyone arrving back at the hotel after 1800 would be deducted 50% of their days points, so we sincerely hoped the German lady was lying when she said our ETA to the hotel was 17:45, as this would only give us 15 minutes to find the last answer.

As it happened, we had a few navigational difficulties (how DO you prepare for a roundabout after you've already past it?), so 17:45 quickly became 17:55 and the stress was starting to take its toll..

We made the decision that should we get back to the hotel without sufficient time to find the final clue, we'd make a guess at it rather than risk losing half our days points tally.. So when posed with the question that was "When the water is flooding in, whats the most satisfying position?" we simply took an immature punt at "69"

As it turns out, we got back to the hotel with minutes to spare, handed our paper in to the Clue Mistress, and made sure our time of arrival was noted on top of the page (17:55). As we had a full 5 minutes in hand, we asked if we could take the paper back and go and have a proper effort to find the final clue. Imagine our delight when Emma asked "Why, you've already answered it correctly??"

Who said you can't guess the right answers from time to time!

We decided we'd only get our own personal satisfaction if we actually went and found out why we had the correct answer, so off we went.

Just outside the back of the hotel was a small marina accessed via a set of lock gates..

And on slightly closer inspection, we saw this:

Clearly, when the water comes flooding in, 69 is the peak! And it was still 17:59 at this point!

Satisfied, we headed back inside, only to be told that there was to be a Pilates challenge out the front shortly, and all teams needed to assemble to be judged on their Pilates skills!

Devastingly, I failed in round one, but Mike made it through to the final...

 

Whilst he didn't make the final 3, he did us proud and scored a valuable 10 points towards our days points tally. Well done Mike! We're beginning to see how you got that Silver medal now!

So, after a final check of the car park...

 

..we were finally able to relax, and head for some well earned drinks in the bar followed by our evening meal in the dining room..

After which it was time for the Clue master to give us our evening debrief and tell us all how badly we had done...

One of the biggest points tally of the day was a bonus 200 points for a Geocache, the co-ordinates of which were anounced by text earlier in the afternoon.This added a new dimension to the challenge, as depending on your location at the time, you needed to choose between going after the massive points haul, or continuing your clue searches and doing your best to meet the 6pm deadline or risk losing even more!

As it happens, a quick check of the co-ordinates told us that the Geocache was a good hour away from where we were at the time, and it had been claimed long before we got anywhere near it, so that solved that problem.

Phil's debrief also drew attention to some of the rather impressive Yoga pictures, some of which we could only publish after the watershed (which given its now gone 2am, is unlikely to be a problem!)

(be prepared for scenes of some nudity!)

Unsurprisingly, this cracking photo was the winner!

(we've doctored the photo to protect the more sensitive amongst you!)

Another worthy effort from this team however..

Brilliant, there are no words!

So for tonights leaderboard. As you can imagine, with the mixture of todays tasks, it is now thrown wide open!

 

Who knows that tomorrow will bring - but we'll be sure to update you tomorrow with any exciting developments!

So until then, thanks for reading and below you will find todays route!

Goodnight all!