03 November 2001 - Wind (not that kind of wind!)
The day started in the usual fashion - a huge hangover! This is starting to take its toll....! Alex was, in his own words, not in a good mood this morning. The previous night's escapades out on the town had left us in quite a mess!
Today we were to complete the second last leg of our mission, travelling about 300 miles up to Reims in northern France. The short straw for the first leg of the journey was drawn by Dan, who struggled out of the foothills of the alps to travel the long autoroute up through France.
Some confusion regarding the road signs near Geneva (only about 30 miles out of Annecy!) caused us to take a wrong turning, and we ended up heading into Switzerland... Lovely as Switzerland is, it wasn't the right direction.... but there wasn't anywhere to turn around unfortunately. There was only one option - go over the border and pull a U-turn, and come straight back over again. Some bemused looking customs officials watched us pull off our manoeuvre and we sped back into France.
Then it got strange. A rather suspicious looking Peugeot 306 pulled out of the hard shoulder and started following us.....? On closer inspection, it turned out to have a hidden (obviously not hidden enough though as we spotted it straight away even in our state!) camera in the back of the car..... After a few glances from the driver, we were left alone to carry on our journey. How odd!
The rest of the journey took us through some flat, but still pleasant countryside. Taking a small detour off the Autoroute, we finally found somewhere to fly our power kites - so we slipped of the road, parked up, and got flying. While Alex was flying the kites, Dan discovered a small quarry just over the top of the hill - concealed from the road and looking very tempting! Too good an opportunity to miss, the kites were packed up and the car was taken down into the quarry for a good solid ragging! And we've got it all on video - watch this site for the proof, to be posted soon.
Emerging finally from the quarry, the car was looking suitably sprayed with mud, although we were slightly concerned as we appeared to have a puncture....! Fortunately, it was a false alarm, and we carried on our journey up to Reims without much more in the way of excitement.
On arriving at Reims, we really couldn't handle another night like the previous one, so we went slightly out of character and went to to bed...
More soon.....
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