RoadRacer: Rallye des Jonquilles 2011

STOP PRESS (Part II)

2 Sunrisers get a mention on the Village of Bomy website !!! Good work !! (Click the pic below to go to their website)

STOP PRESS......We're on the front page of the organising club, Ecurie La Grange Aux Damiers website !

click here - www.lagrangeauxdamiers.com

Sunrise Sevens and The Southern Kit Car Club headed for France on a mission to conquer the Rallye Des Jonquilles.

a quick look at the roadbook before the start

The Rallye is run by the mythical 'La Grange aux Damiers' in Bethune, an elite group of car enthusiasts based near Bethune, about 50 miles South of Dunkerque.

After the monotony of 120 motorway miles on possibly the poorest road surface in the world, we reached the port of Dover....the real 'start-point' of our journey.

Unfortunately, on the way down to the ferry, we were diverted into the UK customs search facility !!!!!

After finding that there actually is nowhere to hide anything in a Caterham Seven, much less actually take ANY luggage, they released us without charge and we joined the queue , bound for great beer, super-smooth roads, very nice food, and quite possibly the best road trip we've been on !

The two hours on the ferry are a good break to ready you for the drive down to Bethune, and we had our last 'English meal' onboard. I had 'meat Pie' - the only problem being they couldn't actually specify WHICH meat !

Sunrise Sevens in Echelon Formation !

As the ferry ramp dropped in 3 Sunrise Sevens slipped rather noisily into France. The drive to Bethune was fairly uneventful (and without something now exceedingly common in UK - potholes), and we diverted to Nedonchel to pick up our road books from LaGrangeAuxDamiers HQ. Unfortunately we didn't locate it ! , but later Bruno mentioned he could hear the bark of a crossflow engine as we did a few circuits of Nedonchel, before heading for Bethune town square.

Arriving in the square was incredible. From the narrow streets of Bethune, you suddenly break into a medieval square, with cafe full of people , and our 3 noisy crossflow-engined cars do not go un-noticed !

We eventually find the car park, directly under the cobbled town square - an amazingly clean, neon-lit hi-tech car park, with painted floors, and would you believe it piped music....just the place to leave your pride and joy, and sample rather a lot of Leffe Ale and some great french food.

After quite too many ales we hit the sack, only to awake the next morning to a solitary Lotus Elise parked in the square. This was joined by over a hundred gleaming classics , from Testarossas to the most amazingly prepared British cars and their French Owners (The cars are of an amazingly high standard, so I'll have to do a little more polishing before returning !)

Final pre-rallye polishing, and fettling

On the first page of the Rallye Roadbook, we were told to ".....complete the page attached to your Roadboob' - clearly a typo, but 'Roadboobs' were to become a theme of our rallye - i.e. taking wrong turns ! - after completely getting lost on Stage 1, and missing the stop at La Granges HQ :(, we decided to just head for the pit-stop at Bomy to regroup with the rest of the Rallye. After my navigator had quaffed two very nice glasses of champagne, we jumped back into the car and headed into Stage 2......

Bruno and Pierre and 'LaGrangeAuxDamiers' had arranged a challenging route where the roads ranged from some very twisty narrow roads a bit like the UK B-roads we love so much, to farm tracks where you had to watch the bottom of your gearbox didn't ground. You also had to watch out for oncoming traffic ! as Andy Morgan and our 8 car convoy found out !!!!

Chateau de Tilques

At the end of our first successful stage, we rolled into the very auspicious Chateau de Tilques for a superb lunch and a look around all the other rallye-cars - some fantastic metal, notably a Matra-Bonnet, and some other special-bodied cars like the CC, all prepared to a fantastically-high standard.

The final leg of the Rallye took us back to Bethune square , where we were welcomed back by Pierre Degand on the mic, who told us sadly that we had not won !!!! :)

The UK - pack were also awarded a trophy alongside the winners - so congrats to Mark from the SKCC, who had to fit a replacement clutch-cable ON-Stage !. We then proceeded to the bottom of the clock tower for a final few glasses of Champagne.

???????

The cars began to leave the square, bound for their respective homes, but there was one last twist, from out of nowhere, a man with a large grey plastic bag appeared. From out of the bag he pulled a very strange looking thing that he then proceeded to photograph in my car, and with a lot of the other cars - Does anyone know this odd fellow ?- all we could get him to tell us is that the strange fish was somehow linked to 'une helicoptere' !

Thanks to Bruno , Pierre, LaGrangeAuxDamiers for arranging a very polished and professional rallye, the SKCC, and my wing men from the Sunrise Sevens for possibly the best driving weekend ever.

We even made the local paper, the next morning !