LATEST NEWS!: Sunday 26th August 2007

ickle brcX

No lie in for us today! We were ready and in the car for the 9am start and soon found ourselves heading to Cambridge for today's first checkpoint. For 15 - 20 minutes at the start of our journey we had a little fun with the Blues Brothers in their cobra but that all came to a sudden end when they pulled into the services to refuel....again!

Andrew and I weren't so excited about driving to Cambridge or the prospect of today being mostly East Anglia based, not that there is anything wrong with that part of the country it's just we enjoyed the rolling hills and element of surprise that Wales gave us yesterday. Today we would be driving around rather flat countryside in areas we both knew fairly well.

As we travelled the lonely road to Cambridge we decided we'd try and collect 2 of the days 'must get' items, so, we pulled into a services to pick up a MacDonalds sugar pouch/packet and a blue smartie! Now, blue smarties went out of production quite some time ago but thanks to having a little brother who likes cookies I knew that blue 'smarties' could still be found on cookies...but not in this services!

The first control sheet also included a riddle. I am useless at things like this and, after reading it before we set off, Andrew didn't seem to be much better. A little silence followed and then Andrew asked me to read the riddle to him again. It seems men don't always read things through properly (isn't that right Andrew?) and once he'd processed the correct wording he said '182'. I have every faith in Andrew's abilities (honestly) so I wrote it down and looked forward to getting back tonight and seeing if he was right!

Time seemed to go quite quickly and it wasn't long before I recognised the streets of Cambridge and began to look for our first checkpoint of the day. Cambridge is full of footbridges over the river but thankfully we knew that this one was opposite a particular house number so whilst Andrew slowly drove along the road I began number spotting and soon found 71. Thanks to my disabled badge we were able to stop quite close to the bridge and Andrew was sent to look for the answer to the first clue.

The RAF boys (Lotus) and Team KillerViral (Roadster)

The only item we needed to collect in Cambridge was the cheapest pay and display ticket we could get. Easy you might all say! Well you'd be wrong! Parking in Cambridge on a Sunday is free, this meant that the pay and display machines wouldn't accept our money and there was no way we could get a ticket! This item was quite important as it would have seen us getting 50 points added to our score (team with the LEAST points wins!). We resigned ourselves to the fact that there was nothing we could do and began to drive to our next checkpoint. Before we left Cambridge I asked Andrew to stop for a moment and listen to an idea I had come up with!

The night before, over dinner, the RAF boys had been talking about thinking outside the box. So, with an unhappy silence in the car I was busy trying to think outside the box. Explaining my idea to Andrew I fully expected him to say 'stop talking nonsense woman' but he actually managed half a smile. So, as Andrew went off to try and execute my idea I hobbled over to the local shop and managed to find our blue smartie. It would seem that landlords in Cambridge aren't very obliging and once again it looked like we'd end up without our pay and display ticket.

This called for some drastic action so I adjusted myself accordingly and headed for a car valeting place on the corner of the street where I thought I would try my luck and see if they could provide us with a receipt for parking on their forecourt. The first slightly tanned young man I saw stopped and asked if he could help. I explained 'my' situation and he then called another of his colleagues over and their boss. A few minutes and a little harmless flirting later I exchanged 1p with 'the boss' and he handed me a 'pay and display' ticket. Job done! Getting back in the car I desperately hoped that I'd not have to do anything like that again for a very long time!

'That' Pay and Display Ticket!

From Cambridge we headed for Kings Lynn. The journey seemed to be taking a while so I decided to keep myself busy and wrote Andrew a list of instructions for when he got out at the next stop:

1. Press walkie talkie and tell T the answer to the clue
2. Complete brass rubbing and then use enclosed wet wipes to clean your hands (don't wipe them on your trousers!)
3. Check paper shop or knock on someones door and obtain an old or new copy of the Lynn News
4. Now have a cigarette and head back to the car

Perfect teamwork I'd say :o) At this point our control sheet was telling us we should be 35% into Day 2 and we were pleased to see that we were making good time :o) From Kings Lynn we went to Peterborough where I got talking to a couple of bikers whilst Andrew searched for something 'Posh'.

We'd like to take a moment to say thank you to the kind gentleman in Peterborough who asked what we were doing and then went to a cashpoint and brought back a donation for Rose's Tribute Fund :o)

I'd like to have written more about Peterborough but in Andrew's search for our 'must get' items he mislaid the information sheet...sorry Andrew but you didn't think I'd keep quiet about that did you? ;o) From Peterborough we made our way to Leicester, not before stopping so I could stretch my legs and we could have lunch. On opening my door I was greeted by a rather disgusting smell and asked Andrew to kindly move away from the drain as there was no way I could eat lunch with this smell in the air! Once we had taken a wander we got back in the car to find a message on the NavMan...

"are you in a lay by just past peterborough on the a 47?"

Thanks to Andrew's work colleague for really making us chuckle! Due to the smell and a rather odd sandwich containing mashed up pear we didn't stay for very long and we were soon back on the road to Leicester and searching for a used bingo ticket with our car number on (33).

Leicester was quite a good stop and we managed to find the bingo ticket, used cinema ticket and a toilet quite quickly! We could also see the Walkers Stadium where we needed to collect our next clue which would open the envelope containing what we hoped would be our final control sheet for the day! We weren't disappointed.

I was begining to get very, very uncomfortable and was fighting the pain in my leg the best I could but I already knew this wasn't a good sign :o( As we hit the motorway heading for Warwick Andrew remembered that we had a quiz tonight and we suddenly realised what all the 'Did you know?' sections on the control sheets were about! I began reading them out in the hope that we'd remember at least some of them but it really was no use. I couldn't concentrate on anything other than my leg and Andrew needed all eyes on the road so we decided to leave it for now and hope that we'd get a bit of time to revise before dinner.

'Our baby'

I was suffering a great deal by the time we reached the end venue in Warwick, my foot was going funny shades of purple and putting it to the floor caused me quite a lot of pain. Not good news, but, a sip of Andrew's nice cold beer made me feel a little better :o)

Once we had gone through all of the items we had collected with Batman it was then the moment we had been dreading. At the navigators briefing on Saturday morning Andrew had been given an egg and told that the egg must be returned on Sunday evening with no damage or cracks. Andrew placed some 'packing' in his top hat and put the little egg in the middle then put a little more 'packing' on the top and we hoped that it would be good enough to keep it from breaking! Thankfully, as a new top hat would cost us £200, the egg was perfectly intact and we received our minus bonus points! :o)

There was just enough time for us to get changed before dinner and divide the control sheets in 2 in the hope that we could each remember enough from our sheets to get us through the quiz. I wasn't doing too badly with my sheets...

Aberaeron is famous for honey and especially honey ice cream and honey mustard.
70% of it's inhabitants spoke welsh (2001 census)

There were a few more too but I felt confident that I would do ok should the quiz contain any questions about my sheets! Andrew took advantage of my very slow hobble over to the pub to go through the facts on his sheets, don't think I didn't know you were trying to get me to remember your sheets too Andrew!

~~Unfortunately~~ Thankfully our quick revision wasn't needed! Sadly the pub we were at for dinner provided a very poor service and waiting times meant it just got too late to do the quiz. We had been saved...until the morning!

What on earth is this??

Although waiting for dinner and drinks became a little annoying after a while we were entertained by allsorts of stories and jokes which made the time pass quite quickly. It wouldn't be right for me not to at least tell you one of the things that made us chuckle...

With my legs giving me a lot of trouble it fell to a few of the other participants to help me to and from the toilet during the evening. The funniest of those trips was the first when I was escorted by one of the RAF gents. As we approached the door we both burst out laughing, what on earth was the symbol on the door?? Definitely something worthy of a photo and a mention here I thought! After much laughter about just what might possibly be wrong with this poor fellow on the door Porky and Algie decided that this wasn't a bad case of constipation but the new symbol for Apples iBog! Laughter is most definitely the best medicine and sitting with these guys there was certainly plenty of it!

Another successful day, now all we had to worry about was whether I'd be able to walk when I woke up, what the mornings drive would have instore for us and if we'd done enough revision for the quiz!

Here's a few shots from the evening of Day 2...