The plan was for all of us to travel together from the tunnel to Azincourt, Vimy RIdge and onto Bethune. As is the blatequette on these occcasions the group is subdivided into smaller manageable groups with a pack leader responsible for each group should we get seperated. It is almost impossible to keep 13 cars together across a couple of hundred miles of France so Mark led one group and I took the other.
I have to admit I was somewhat overcome with trepidation about the whole weekend before we went as I'd never done anything like this before and more importantly neither had my 13 year old son been a co-pilot - navigator and in France to boot. Saturday started badly with my group getting seperated from Mark's group at a set of lights following a deviation from the agreed route to avoid a blooked room. Then the Sat Nav started throwing me a curve ball, it was my fault really as I hadn't deleted the original waypoints before pointing it at Azincourt so it tried to send my back to the start. So long story short Azincourt was lost and we went straight to Vimy Ridge as this was one place we were not going to miss. Moving experience:
Suitably humbled we pointed for Bethune and arrived at the fuelling station in the town just as Mark's group came out of it. So to the hotel. Check in, dust the car off (Mer is my friend), cover it up, a quick wash for not the car, and off to the town square for food. No1 son and I were in bed by 11.30pm not like the hardcore boys who made a night of it.
7am rendezvous by the cars to head into the town square for the days proceedings. We were there early and got lined up by the organisers, at which point a cardboard sheet was placed under all the cars to stop oil dripping on the cobbled town square.... bl**dy cheek. What a beautiful morning in a beautiful location as the sun cracked the roof tops:
Having gotten the road books, placed the stickers on the car and got in line to avante. We got waved off and into the day. All nerves soon went and a couple of cars grouped up and off we went. Funny to see the number of cars crossing each other for the first few km's while we settled into our stride. We missed / misread (French is NOT my first language) the "games" sheet and didn't capture the numbers we were suppose to record as we were looking for signed put up by the organisers but in fact it was the yellow painted concrete road markers were were meant to read.... nil points. We also messed up on the Stage 2 game of the village names by scratching out the ones we went through instead of circling the ones we didn't. oh silly us. To be honest it didn't matter a jot. We had a fantastic time and saw some beautiful scenery, roads, cars and people.
The weather was perfect and when we got back to Bethune at the end where we turned the corner towards the town square to be greeted like "proper" drivers by a huge crowd and to be interviewed as we crossed the line was a memory we'll keep forever.
Couple of pictures to end with, but suffice to say, I'll be signing up for next year if not sooner.:
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