Gallery Rally 2016 — Jersey to San Sebastian - Day 5

San Sebastian to Rochefort

Hello everyone, welcome to Day 5 of the Gallery Rally - technically no longer the Gallery Rally, simply 'Garry and Mike's return to Jersey leg', but it doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Today started a couple of hours later than the past few days have - so we got a whole 7 hours sleep, which was most pleasant.

A quick look out the window confirmed that it was going to be a lovely day here in Sunny Spain..

But right now that didn't matter, as we had managed to find a channel showing the Sepang F1 Grand Prix, which meant we didn't actually get down to breakfast until 2mins before the 11am cut off - but fine timing is our thing and unlike on some days of this years rally, we actually made it this time without having any points deducted!

After eating the left overs, we headed back to the room, packed, checked out and made our way to the fantastic car park.

To some people, a car park is a car park. To us, this place is a thing of beauty, with its squeaky clean floors and walls!

After a quick check of the vehicle to ensure sufficient air and oil (making sure to get them the right way round), we headed up from Floor -3 to the Ground Floor level and managed to find the button which opened the garage door.

Having pulled right up to the door and let Mike get out to press the button which was bizzarely some metres back from where you would expect it to be, it soon became clear why it was there, as I hastily threw it into reverse and accelerated backwards just before the Garage Door crashed into the front of the car!

Anyway, disaster averted, and moments later, we were let loose on the streets of San Sebastian...

...where we made our way out and headed for France!

Having taken advice from Camper Van Karl, we decided we would head to Arcachon for lunch.

We arrived here at around 2pm.

Although on the way in, having passed this charming little boat...

.... we suddenly felt a strong desire to stop for a cuppa...

 

(we know, that's just SO immature...)

Anyway, we then saw a statue that was beckoning us to Arcachon...

So we carried on into the main town, eventually arriving at a clever little street...

 

Arcachon is a beautiful liltte place and if you are ever in the area, we thoroughly recommend it.. Well, we had a whale of a time exploring it anyway....

 

 

But by this time we were getting hungry, so after looking at the footprints of some people we had never heard of...

 

we found a lovely little restaurant, serving some local food...

After which, we headed back to the car and knuckled down to get some miles under our belt...

And some calories...

This helped keep us amused (although that was mainly because it was just funny watching Mike try to catch the smarties everytime I 'accidentally' knocked the throttle pedal..).

The views out of the window were nice too...

 

Wait a minute, I don't remember seeing that....!

Whilst we had been driving back up, we decided that we wanted to return to the lighthouse at Verdon Sur Mer that we were supposed to have gone to on the way up, just for our own satisfaction....

Unfortunately, when we got there, it was shut, so we couldn't actually go in and double check the answers that we should have got, so instead, we drove straight onto the Le Gironde Ferry...

 

And we were soon waving goodbye to Le Verdon sur Mer...

We enjoyed a half hour bob across the River Gironde, (top speed was 14 mph for anyone interested), this time though we decided not to bother recreating any Titanic scenes, much to the disappointment of the people on-board one presumes!

On arrival at Royan the other side of the river, the sun was starting to set....

....but as we had already pre-booked a Hotel near Rochefort whilst waiting for the ferry, (ahh, the magic of mobile internet!), we simply punched it into the sat nav and arrived there 30 minutes later!

Having deliberately picked this particular hotel due to it having a restaurant, you can imagine our dismay when, on checking in, we were informed the Restaurant was "reservation only" on Sunday nights. We asked if we could make a reservation, but I think our humour may have been lost on the hotel guy.

However, our puppy dog eyes must have had some effect, as after looking around the empty restaurant, he agreed that he could set up a table for us if we were quick.

Not needing a second invitation, we ran to our rooms, dropped the bags off and headed excitedly back to the restaurant, only to be told that he'd forgotten to mention there were no hot plates available. We'd have happily had food on cold plates, but we don't think he understood us. (again)

Eventually we ascertained we could have anything we wanted provided it was cold, including a starter and desert from the buffet table.

That transpired to be "you can have anything you want from the buffet table but that's all there is".

Anyway, the beer was nice.

After eating as much of the left over buffet table as we could, we headed back to the room and got round to writing Day 4's update. Which by now you may even have finished reading!

The good news is, we haven't done much today to write about (so how come its already heading towards 1am??), but as we didn't get chance to actually write Day 5 up on Day 5, we're now writing up Day 5 AND Day 6, which you will get to read on Day 6 and 7. Confused yet? Us too.

Good luck, below is the route we have covered today, until tomorrow (or is it today) its goodbye from the two of us!