Word of our fun the previous day had got around and Nigel and Sonia (Team 34)
asked if they could join us. They were representing NCH, the charity
supported by the Italian Job, and were travelling in a car loaned to them by
John Cooper Garages. They were leaving earlier than us to go into Annecy
town, so they met up with us in a petrol station just after we'd crossed the
Swiss border heading towards Geneva.
We found the centre of Geneva and tried to find
somewhere to park, in the process doing a few circuits of their one-way
system. Eventually we found an underground car
park. Finding spaces for five Minis to park near each
other proved troublesome as it was pretty full. The others managed
to find spaces but we were having a problem. The next thing we knew
Mark found us a space - if you could call it that!
We had a wander through the town and
found a sort of floating platform on the lake where we could have
coffee. It was quite warm, but a little blowy. The place we
found had an outdoor swimming pool and sauna as well, and we were amazed
to find people sunbathing naked or topless. Bit cold for that I'd
have thought, but the guys all seemed to agree that it was a good idea.
When we got back to the car park
Ben and Mark couldn't start their car as they'd left the fridge on - I
don't think I've mentioned before that they were carrying a fridge in
their Mini? Came as a surprise to us as well first of all!
Anyway they eventually got it started and we emerged from the car park and
headed for the road out of town towards the lake. We wanted to find a nice
spot as we were about to have a small party for Sputnik. Everyone
was watching their milometers and it was looking dangerously as if the
party was going to be at the edge of a dual carriageway, but miraculously
Ben spotted a small turnoff and we emerged in an idyllic spot beside the
lake.
Sputnik's clock
was about to change from 99999.9...
After a drive round a tree in the car park...
...to 00000.0
(click pic to
enlarge)
Meanwhile Cuan and Nigel had decided to go for a swim.
Anyone interested in a Mini Special LE with 0 miles on the clock?
We'd been looking forward to celebrating
the occasion ever since we left home, and it seemed somehow appropriate as
Sputnik had just had a narrow escape from being written off after his
accident. It was his rebirthday party and we'd made sure we'd got a
bottle of bubbly to celebrate it with.
Karen had a bit of a problem getting the bottle open, so
Cuan came to the rescue - in his underpants!
There wasn't much left to drink after that, just as well as we were all
driving!
We didn't leave the side of the lake until about 3.00 p.m., by
which time we'd only done about 40 miles of our journey to Reims.
Again we took the mountain route rather than the motorway
for the majority of the journey and went through some magnificent scenery
on the way. Luckily the roads were a lot faster going than the
previous day
Up to this time we'd had no delays at all in crossing borders, but
we got held up at the Swiss/French border where they seemed to think that
five British Minis crossing the border over the mountains were prime
suspects for drug trafficing. Luckily Ben's fluent French came to
the rescue once again and he talked our way through. He was in the
lead car and told them there was no point talking to any of the rest of us
as we didn't speak any French.
A long, fast run on the motorway once we'd left the mountains, meant
that we arrived at Reims at a reasonable time, well reasonable for us -
about 9.30 p.m. They didn't start dinner until late so we were
actually able to sit down at the table and talk to some of the others who
hadn't yet finished.
There were several comments about how we were always the last to reach
our destination and that we'd better take the motorway and not find our
own alternative route the next day as we had a ferry to catch. The
ferry departure time of 12.30 was stressed to us countless times and we
promised not to be late for it!
