Gallery Rally 2016 — Jersey to San Sebastian - Day 3

Rochefort-sur-Mer to Mont-de-Marsan

Welcome back to Day 3 for anyone still following!

Last night it was once again gone 2am by the time we had finished doing this, so today we have both been feeling pretty jaded - apparently we're not as young as we used to be! This might be reflected in our points haul by the end of today we suspect!

Anyway, you'll not be wanting to read about that, you'll be keen to hear where we've been and what silly pictures we've taken!

So lets start at the beginning.

A quick look out of our bedroom window revealed where all the splashing noises the night before had come from..

Unless the noises were coming from the other direction..

Either way, water was involved somewhere.

We headed down to breakfast at 8am which was followed by a quiz. With the usual anti-cheat policies being put in place, we had to resort to good old grey matter (as always) and we gave it our best shot! (NB. These pics were taken before we had started filling many answers in, just incase you thought the extent of our grey matter was reflected below!)

So now that was out of the way, we could pack up the car, clean the pigeon poop off the back...

...and set about deciphering the clues from the cunning mind of Mr and Mrs Cluemaster, aka the Baldersons, who we had studied closely over breakfast in case they were wearing any secret clues about their person..

(You may have to zoom in a bit to read the vertical text)

Anyway, onwards and upwards, time for Clue 1, and as per most days, it all started with Champagne.

The town of Champagne to be precise.

(The clue was Head for the bubbly place, and how many people drink there?)

662 seemed like a nice fit, so we put down our answer and headed back to the car, to continue towards St.Sulpice - the clue being "Now go to the holy man of Speculi (near crumpled Rayon), and count the Egyptians." (our reasoning being that St. refers to Holy, and Speculi is an anagram of Sulpice).

(Not entirely sure what that is, but seemed a shame not to add it after Mike had kindly spent time resizing it!)

Once at St Sulspice, we parked up and as luck would have it, nature was calling, so rather fortuitously, Mike took his camera in with him (dodgy? much?).

In there, were a couple of things you may expect to find in a WC..

But what we really liked about these ones was this:

Happy that the answer was 2 (both urinals had the same printed on them), we of course continued looking around the rest of the Centre Ville in case there was any other similar matching answers. (We can still never bring ourselves to accept the obvious)

But it appeared this was the only answer that fitted perfectly, and in a bid not to over complicate things, and especially given the warnings of how tight time was going to be today, we headed back to the car!

Clue 4 was Head for crumpled Rayon (which is a nice simple anagram of Royan), so we set the sat nav to work, and made our way to the large Market there. We mainly knew to head for a Market because the next part of the clue said "when you get there find the market" (we're sorry to disappoint anyone who thought we were actually really intelligent - the answer was just in the question on this occasion!)

However the next part was "Getting a beach body is an expensive business, what drink would help you?" - so that required a bit more exploring, and we eventually spotted this little beauty...

After stopping for a coffee (which we're disappointed to say we forgot to take a picture of), and armed with the knowledge that we had to be at the next clue site by 11:45am sharp, we took the informed decision to head for the Royan Ferry port (when we say informed, we really mean that, as the clue was "When you're at SEA, how much would a horse pay to join you?"

We waited patiently......

 

Whilst waiting for our ferry to take us across to Le Verdon-Sur-Mer, (we knew that was our destination even without a clue - we're that good!) we got chatting to John and James, a father and son team from Skegness who had taken it upon themselves to cycle from Roscoff, destination Malaga.

Clearly cycling is nothing compared to DRIVING from Jersey all the way to San Sebastian (we jest of course - hats off to them - how impressive are they, and best of luck to them. We gave them our website address, so John and James, if you remember it and get a chance, leave us a message!

We said goodbye to John and James and soon after were boarding our ferry to Le Verdon-Sur-Mer...

First things first; there was some business we needed to attend to before anything else could be done...

If you were unable to zoom in on the earlier pictures of the Cluemasters T-shirts, Emma's said "Do it on the Royan Boat and there's Ten points in it for you" and Phil's said "In Royan, stroke my beard and there's ten points in it for you"

That done, the next task was to find out how much it would cost in case you ever wanted to have a Horse join you on-board (you never know when this might come in useful, although its not clear if the Horse would need to be in a Horse box or simply free to roam around the ship)

As we had half an hour or so of ferry crossing still to kill, it was time to think about Item Number 1 on todays bonus question opportunities:

Clearly Item 1 was a challenge to relish, as myself and Mike are all to frequently mistaken for Jack and Rose when out and about.

It started off well we thought..

 

We were pleased with it, but Mike felt he could do better, so we set about recreating one of his personal favourites from the film, one he is often being asked to perform for his adoring public as it turns out.

See if you can tell which is the original, and which is Mike...

Ready??

 

Mike can be heard saying "Draw me like one of your French Girls, Jack" if you put your ear really close to the screen and listen very carefully....

The original High Definition poster size uncompressed full frontal image is available on request for anyone who would like it. As is Mike's.

All to soon (or perhaps, just in time, as there was one other scene we contemplated re-creating whilst the car was parked up), we docked at our destination.

The next clue was "When you are back on dry land, seek the light shining in the darkness". so we were fairly sure it would involve a lighthouse. However there are quite a few around the area, so we read on the second part of the question, which was in 3 parts;

Feeling the pressure, just how much?

How big is Richard's erection?

Now go high, but to get high how far would you go?

After studying the map, we came across a "Phare Richard", which to us seemed like a good Lighthouse to start off with, so we set course for there, and upon arrival, it seemed a couple of other teams shared our logic..

We were aware we needed to pay to enter this clue site, and there was indeed a small museum/stairs to the top of the lightouse here with a small €2 per person charge (Phil had earlier told us we needed to pay a €3 charge, but presumed he was probably rounding up!)

The lightouse was currently locked up...

But the Lighthouse keeper was at lunch till 2pm, and it was around 13:20 at this point, we thought we'd hunt high and low for part 1 of the question, being fairly confident we would find parts 2 and 3 inside the lighthouse itself.

After a lot of hunting around, we found a model of the original Lighthouse...

But no references to any pressure.

Eventually however. after opening hatches on old lights...

...we eventually managed to find something with a pressure reading on it!

220mbar seemed to fit the question - well, it was the only thing we'd seen in the entire area with any reference to pressure, so we went with it!

Good timing, as the Lighthouse keeper arrived back shortly afterwards, so we paid of bargain €2 entry fee and began the search for the other parts of the question.

The information sheet in the museum seemed to answer what we needed to know for both parts of the question....

But we walked to the top of it just to count the number of steps any way...

(If i'm looking slighty terrified and like I am holding on for dear life, its because I was and I am. I seem to have inherited by Dad's fear of heights!

Anyway, now that ordeal was over, we walked back down the 63 steps (turns out the information pack wasn't lying after all) and returned to the car, now desperately hungry as we'd still not had lunch.

As it later turned out, we had gone to the wrong lighthouse, although admittedly, one of the three questions was actually the same answer regardless... DOH!

Anyway, back to the story....

We drove and we drove, trying a couple of places en-route

Evenutally we managed to stop for lunch in a place called Lespare Medoc..

I know what you are all thinking it looks like, but honestly, it was really delicious! And by this time, we wouldn't have cared that much, we just needed food!

We were sat there enjoying said food, looking out the window, watching the traffic (as you do) when we suddenly spotted two guys on push bikes. Yup, News update on John and James on their bikes; they've at least made it from Royan to Lespare Medoc. In fact at the rate they're going, by the time you get to read this, they'll probably be in Malaga! (they can certainly cycle quicker than I can think and type!)

Now we had refuelled our bodies, we returned to the tracks...

...and headed onto the next clue site, a place called Hourtin (deciphered from the clue Sounds Painful. You'd be unlucky to see this.

On arrival, we thought about all the things that might be unlucky; 13, Black Cats, Magpies, - and why you might "See" it.

Imagine our excitement when we saw this...

 

And imagine how well we thought it fitted when we realised that was the number of this place....

So that being that, and as father time was marching on towards the 6pm cut off to lose 50% of the days points, we headed straight back to the car and set the sat nav for the last clue site as well as the hotel, just to see how close we were on time. The sat nav put our arrival at 17:52 which was tight but we've been in tighter spots so we pressed on towards a town called Pissos - from the clue "Head here to take a piss".

Upon arrival here, we were looking to answer "How does Postman Pat deliver the mail?".

Fortunately there was a Post Office just near the Centre Ville, so we parked up and had a good look around it. Nothing. So we walked around the Centre Ville a bit further, but still nothing jumped out at us. Back to the Post Office, Back to the Centre Ville. Eventually after what seemed like forever, Mike noticed a statue of what looked like a postman on stilts. That seemed a fitting answer, although in our rush, we never got chance to photograph it, as by the time we got back to the car and began the last leg of the journey, the German was now telling us that our ETA was now 18:21.

Not good, but we hoped we could make up some time and pushed on down the motorway at a reasonably good pace, just fast enough to avoid detection!

We were clawing back minutes here and there, but it seemed unlikely that we would claw back 21 minutes in a half hour journey !

Eventually we arrived back at the hotel at about 18:15, and were amazed at not only how late we were, but how half the cars in the car park had been immaculately prepared for the Concours D'Elegance later that night. Normally an area we would be strong at, but owing to our abismal timing today and the judging was shortly to take place, and we hadn't even had time to stop for petrol so were currently running on fumes, we didn't have time (or fuel) to go out in search of a jet wash, then detail the car by 7pm!

Apoligies to our judge, Richard, who I didn't get chance to explain our pridacament to before he started to judge the rather filthy brake dust covered Black wheels of the Audi before he had laid his hands all over them. I'm sure it will scub off though.... !

After that, we all gathered outside the front of the Hotel...

...for the "Park on a 2pence in a Car Park" challenge, which was embarked upon by all competitors. The objective of the game was that they had to drive their car from a starting point and end up with their front right tyre as close to a 2 pence piece as possible, in a 15 second time limit.

Fun, although not as fun as the look on Phil Balderson's face as mainly powerful German machinery launched themselves towards the almost invisible 2p piece with more and more vigor!!

 

So that being done, it was time for dinner, and then time for the Day 3 debrief!

Some wonderful "Titanic poses" were shown on the screen (including Mikes wonderful attempt!), however the Winner was Frankie and Anna - Team Glam Turismo!

Whilst we are unable to show you the picture, take our word for it, it was a stunning recreation of an iconic scene. We can however share the story that led to its creation!

The tale begins with Frankie and Anna minding their own business and driving through the woods parallel to the motorway towards Pisson when Anna saw what she thought was a Chaise Longue in the woods!

They of course turned around and went back to double check, where they found a couple with a professional photographer who were having some arty photo's taken of themselves in the woods on the Chaise Longue!

Frankie and Anna managed to explain in their broken French the challenge they had been given to recreate a scene from the Titanic movie.

Prior to this, they had stopped at a Carrefour supermarket and acquired some play dough, which they had shaped into the "Heart of the Ocean" (the neckless worn by Kate Winslet in the movie).

As you can imagine, having explained all of this, the photographer was more than happy to take a picture of the naked Frankie reclining on the Chaise Longue with stategically placed props to preserve her modesty on film. And that is the story of how this image came to fruition! Good work girls!

It was then Richards turn to debrief everyone on the Car Park challenges..

Congratulations to Simon Webster and Graham Buckle (Team Brexit the Building) for winning the Concourse D'Elegance.

And to the "Parking on a 2pence" challenge winners, Adam and Peter Coleman, Team VR6Pack

 

The leaderboard below shows how today has mixed up the scores!

Well done to the other all girl team of Sara Felton and Emma Long (Team Gallery) who are leaders of the pack on the penultimate day, with a 100% score on todays clue's!

They have also asked us to share their wonderful recreation of their chosen Titanic scene - another brilliant effort by the girls! On this occasion, we genuinely do need to point out that their picture is the one on the right!

So that's it for Day 3 except for the obligatory full Days route which appears below!

Until tomorrow, (hopefully) from San Sebastian, its goodnight from both of us!