Gallery Rally 2016 — Jersey to San Sebastian - Day 4

Mont-de-Marsan to San Sebastian

Welcome to Day 4.

We know, we know, we are SO sorry it's technically 24 hours late.

It was a long day and a late night, but lets come to that later if we / you all manage to stay awake that long..

So Day 4 started with a bang.

Literally.

A HUUUUUUGE clap of thunder at around 6am woke up pretty much everyone in the hotel except the most intoxicated!

This was real thunder, not the namby pamby stuff we were used to in Jersey!

Anyway, having recovered from that shock and just dozed back of again, the other alarm clock informed us it was time to get up, so we did.

After a shower (Sadly, whilst there were no 80's showers head this time, there was a properly cool retro hair dryer)...

After waiting for Mike and his shampoo and set, we headed down to breakfast, which was the biggest finest spread of food you could ever imagine.

Well, perhaps not. In reality, we managed to scrape together a peice of bread, butter and almost a full cup of coffee.

The plate of cheese and ham we had to "borrow" from next the room next door which had been set up for "non Gallery" personnel; clearly someone must have upset them the night before!

But still, it was all the sustinence we needed (well, all we were going to get) before heading into the briefing room to be addressed by our friendly leader... (quiet at the back please)....

....and be presented with our TLA Quiz, to be filled in over the following ten minutes...

 

After doing our very best (by 'very best', we mean what we didn't know or guess, we simply made up), we were handed our sheet of the final day's clues and bonus questions, and we set-to working out where we needed to go!

Clearly this is scarier for some teams that we realised..

Either that, or the site of Mike still wearing his hair curlers was not expected.

 

It was shortly after this point we learnt of an illness in one of the competitors. Well, one of the competitors vehicles. Karls beloved VW Camper van had devleoped a terrible cold overnight, and a doctor was called...

As is customary for times like this, there is always a spare vehicle waiting in the wings for just such occurences..

 

That's not it though.

Karl is actually now in a stunning left hand drive Ford Fiesta hire car as we speak!

Following the overnight storms, it hadn't cleared up at all by the time we came to leave the hotel, by which I mean it was raining cats and dogs.

Whilst the original plan had been to give us the usual 6pm "with 50% reduced points" deadline, having set off and seen the state of the standing water on the roads, the clue master and mistress decided that a tight deadline significantly increased the risk of powerful German (and the odd Italian) car ending up in ditches or off the sides of mountain passes. As a result of their caring loving side, the rules were relaxed and we were relieved to receive a message telling us we could arrive back by 8pm instead.

With that in mind, we headed off for St.Sever (based on the clue Head to the holy cut off) and could see why our Cluemasters had advised caution on the roads...

 

Once arriving in St.Sever, we started our search for Who's got the boot?And If it's midday here what time is it in Paris?

On arrival, armed with the umbrella, we began our search. It was a little bit like a Chuckle Brothers sketch, with me (the short arse) holding the umbrella and Mike (taller and faster) walking off and away from the protection of the brolley all the time, then me chasing after him. But we managed. (next year, two umbrellas!)

We found a perfect looking site for the answer to the time question...

And eventually deduced that if it was Midday where we were, Paris (which was to our East) would therefore be 12:11 and 38 seconds!

So, happy with that, we went in search of the Boot question - and found what appeared to be a likely candidate...

It didn't actually turn out to be the right place, so we made something fit - to us we were already winners!

We'd have probably carried on looking for something a bit more fitting, but the lady in the Shoe shop invited us in thinking we wanted to actually buy shoes, which was a bit awkard.

Not too mention she didn't speak a word of English. After about ten minutes 'chatting' (about what, neither of us has a clue) we managed to make our apologies and run off up the road to recover with a cup of coffee...

... after which we sought the privacy of a local WC....

.. returned to the car, and set course for Orthez (which we deduced from Sounds like writers live here)

Whilst en-route, we passed a big chair that a giant had randomly left in the middle of the roundabout...

Around about now, we recieved a text message to say the Part 1 of the next clue had been cancelled (which was What is the answer to life the universe everything)

But the second part was still fine to search for, which was When did Tom Simpson win the world.

On arrival , we chatted to this poor fella who had clearly been in some kind of accident as he was trapped in a shop window..

.... and then clocked in to start the real task of finding the clue... (the time is wrong, in case any rally teams think we've been cheating and leaving before them)

(given our scores thus far, it is far from likely anyone would be suspecting us of that anyway!)

 

After walking around the entire town, we suddenly remembered that the text message had also told us "it was near the church" - which did help focus our attentions a little to the right area, and eventually we discovered the below shop....

Upon closer inspection, this gave us the answer we were looking for..

After stopping for a quick lunch and a well earnt drink...

... we headed back to the car and began the next leg of the journey to Sauveterre-de-Bearn (the location hint being Dapper earth is on fire!)

On arrival here we were searching for Hanging out by the river, who is in love more recently.

After driving around in circles for a bit (including down a No Entry, which the on-coming French van made quite clear to us!), we eventually spotted this:

This seemed like it would need further investigation, so we parked nearer, and went for a walk, eventually discovering Florian's love declaration (not being sure who it was declared to, we decided to leave my number after taking the below pic, just in case. I'll let you know if I get the call...)

From here, we headed back to the car and back on the road, eventually reaching Cambo-les-Bains (A comb messed up needs the baths)

The clue here was Head for the old farmhouse oven. In the big house, how many fingers has Prince Charming. And Who is the American writer?

We drove in and out of Cambo-les-Bains and saw signed for a Historical monument, which seemed a good place to find a Big House (perhaps a Chateaux). We were also pre-informed we'd need to pay to enter, so when we saw signs to Anarga, a large gardens and old house, we felt it was most likely.

And huge they were...

 

We were relieved when we saw the big house at the far end, as it at least gave us some comfort we were in the right place...

It wasn't until we had spent a good while walking around the large house stuggling to working out what the clues were, and desperately trying to find an old farmhouse oven to link it all together that I said to Mike "old farmhouse oven though? Who makes old farmhouse ovens.... Arga?" and Mike answered "Yes, perhaps An Arga...."- that the penny dropped as to why were were even here!

Knowing we weren't still trying to find an old farmhouse oven made the search a little easer and we then found the following American writer...

A closer inspection revealed why this was the answer and more specifically who it was...

And better still, we then spotted Prince Charming ...

....and his odd hands (although the jury is still out even now as to how many fingers were technically fingers and not thumbs!)

 

After leaving Cambo-les-Bains, we set course for Bera (the clue had been Muddled Bear - a nice simple anagram for this stage in the day!),

After studying the map, along with advice given to us earlier that day, we decided to take the scenic route via Col d'Ispeguy, which as the weather had improved somewhat now, seemed like a good way to go!

And a good decision that turned out to be, as we got to drive up some fantastic mountain roads.

When we finally reached the peak..

 

....we were delighted to be greeted by a friendly furry welcoming committee

Once at the top, we crossed the Border into Spain ...

....and began the descent again.

Once in Bera,the clue itself was Go to the high place and tell me how much you can earn?

We had been previously told that it wasn't the town centre we would be looking for, but that the location would be "obvious" - which to us meant to go up "high" - so we drove through Bera, out the other side and followed signs for a Col up high a few miles beyond it.

Well, as it turned out, that wasn't what we were looking for at all (it transpired later that the "high place" had actually meant the Church in Bera), however, we were rewarded with a specatucular drive up another mountain, and an even more spectacular view from the top looking over the corner of the Bay of Biscay where Spain and France meet, so we're not complaining!

 

As you can imagine, the answer to the question was never going to be found up here, but we searched for it regardless, still unaware we weren't in the right place!

After half an hour, we decided we had to give up and begin the approach into San Sebastian as it was now gone 7pm, so we headed back to the car (fortunately before we had walked the last 500m to the peak of the mountain) and set course for the hotel at our final destination.

The route took us throught a few of these...

We eventually arrived at the hotel and managed to work out where to park just before 8pm, and with just seconds to spare we made our way to the final nights debriefing session...

 

....where the days clues were explained, and awards were presented!

 

The final standings are below for your enjoyment!

Massive congratulations to Simon and Graham (Brexit the Building) on their first place - made even more impressive by the fact that one of the additional challenges today had been a Geocache, the co-ordinates of which were given out in the mornings briefing, and they had managed to get to it before Phil and Emma had even got there themselves to check it was still in place!

Another of the extra challenges for today had been a bonus of 50 points if you can find a toy version of your car.

Chris and Nick (Les Amateurs D'Essence) had actually managed to find a model of almost everyone's car on their travels, so one can only imagine how much they became worth to competitors as they got closer to having to hand in their answers that evening!

Unfortunately, there was no Audi RS3's in their line up, so we didn't have to find out what it would take.

Perhaps even more impressive was Karl and Ryan who not only found a model of Karl's beloved VW Camper van, but also of the tow truck that was last seen taking it away!

Congraulations to Team Gallery on there second place finish for a strongly fought challenge, and to everyone else, for what has been an excellent and very challenging Gallery Rally, but extremely well put together by Phil and Emma Balderson.

There was then the prize giving ceremony! A huge thank you to Ben for awarding us with another maxi bag of Peanut M&M's for our abysmal 11th Place finish (something that team 7th place finishers VR6PACK will never let us forget, mainly because I work with one of them).

However, we'd like to say its all about the taking part and not the winning!

Sometime later, 10pm to be precise, a fleet of taxis took us to a fine Restaurant in deepest darkest San Sebastian for a delicious meal (the Spanish do eat rather late though!) and possibly the best steak we've ever had.

Below is a selection of photographs of the wonderful people who particpated this year!

 

 

After that mayhem, a few of us decided that we would walk back to the hotel via the scenic route, and test how our navigational skills were when not actually in a car. Obivously this involved mobile phones and GPS mapping, so don't worry, we didn't get lost.

We did get a few nice pictures on our walk back though...

 

Tim and Stuart decided to check out a potential new car for next years challenge...

 

So finally, that is Day 4's update, albeit it's now the end of Day 5 and nearly the beginning of Day 6 by the time anyone will read it!

As it was 2am by the time we had got back to the hotel , we didn't have the energy to start what is generally a 2 to 3 hour process, so we thought we would make you wait !

Hopefully some elements of it were worth the wait, even if it is just the knowledge that we got some sleep!

Tomorrow we will set off on the return leg, and we will update you with our progress on Monday evening if anyone wants to continue to follow us!

Thank you everyone so much for your Guest Book comments so far - some of them have made us LOL - in some cases even ROTFL (if you don't know what that means, it is likely you wouldn't have fared so well on the mornings TLA quiz!!

We will try and address some of them directly over the next few days (Chip, don't give up on us !) - but unfortunately owing to my inability to design websites very well, I don't know how to set it up in such a way that is reply-able yet !!

That's it, other than the complete Map of Day 4 which follows directly below, its goodnight from us both until a time in the not to distance future!