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Friday 21st September (Half? 1)
7:21 and it was time to climb out of the top bunk. Plenty of time to make the start. 7:45 came and went. Actually, progress was surprisingly good and by just gone 8 we were on the road to the start. Not entirely sure where the start was meant to be, but we spied a gathering of competitors cars and pulled into join them. Evidently we were in the wrong place - but a short trip later we'd found where we needed to be and had taken our position on the grid.
As seems to be tradition with S2N and evidently H2R, there was a disproportionate number of Volvos adorning the start line. Lots of pictures later and a certain wood effect BMW pulled into the car park. I sauntered over for a nostalgic hello with it's proud new owners. Fortunately, they still seemed pleased with the car.
Keeping pretty much to schedule the event officially began at 9am. We'd been given the challenge for the day - to collect photographs of French car numberplates and devise a game of scrabble to play with them. Just 30 photographs to take and the small matter of almost 600 miles of motoring between us and the end of the day!
We'd not had breakfast at the hotel in the morning, so decided a trip to the supermarket to stock up on supplies was in order. Also, the Volvo was looking a little "ordinary" in relation to it's colourful competition, so we decided to see what we could get to spruce it up a bit.
130Euro's later and at almost 11 o'clock we were finally on our way.
I'd had the idea, that it would be worth devising a good scrabble board and then taking the necessary photo's to collect the required letters. Giving myself a limit of 60 letters, I'd got what we felt to be a fairly reasonable score of just under 800 and so the photographing began.
The first 160 miles passed pretty much without incident. We thought we would be well behind the pack setting off so late, but it transpired we were only 50 miles behind the marshalls. Mike, who was marshalling this event, sent me his first text shortly after 11 to say they'd passed our old BMW by the side of the road. Oh - hope there was nothing wrong. Fortunately we didn't pass them, so I hope they managed to get on their way. The next text came through shortly before 12 to say the Marshalls had been pulled over for speeding. A short while later they passed us on the motorway. Clearly we weren't too far behind the rest of the pack.
Disappointing to note the Sanef telepayage device I'd gotten hold of didn't seem to work but by 1:30 we'd made it to our first driver change and lunch stop. Whilst Jem prepared us a feast of a lunch, we started cutting up the vinyl we'd bought in the morning to adorn the bonnet of the volvo with the Italian flag. Adhering the stickers turned out to be very much a team event, but with the bonnet now looking smart, we were back on the road at 2:30.
Just 450 miles to go..
Clearly we were the wrong side of Paris at the wrong time. Still, here I find myself now, stuck in traffic but catching up on the web page. Traffic's just starting to clear, so I'll sign out for now and hopefully will find opportunity to keep this vaguely up to date for the remainder of the trip. Watch this space.. :D
Friday 21st September (The 2nd bit..)
6 and a
Eventually the traffic after Paris started to ease and we were back on our way. Jem had taken the helm for the first time both driving on the wrong side of the road and driving an automatic. Fortunately, she and Ian got on famously and with our cunning strategy for the Scrabble game devised, the hours passed by whilst we seemingly photographed every car and lorry on the French motorways. Another stroke of luck - the Telepage device had decided to work and we found ourselves zooming through the motorway tolls.
The hours rolled by. Driver change after driver change. Night started to set in. Seemingly the journey was destined to go on forever. Finally just before midnight we eventually arrived in Montelimar. Starving! We'd long since missed the opportunity to hand in our days challenge, but seemingly we were far from the last in. After a swift pint and pizza we retired to the hotel to finish off our Scrabble challenge.
2:30am. Finally, time for bed. Just 6 and a half ours till day 2 to begin.. must sleep..
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