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Monday September 26th 2005
Day 4 was a bit of a mixed bag. Breakfast in the hotel comprised a chocolate croissant in the hotel lobby. Still, at least it made a welcome change from the staple ham and cheese sandwich I had become acustomed to! We'd left the car parked overnight with a whole bunch of other competitors vehicles in a public car park, so first order of the day was to sort out a parking permit. The morning registration was scheduled for 8:45, but becoming wise to the real time schedule of the event, we paid for parking until 10. A very wise move as it transpired!
It was disheartening to see quite a few of the cars had been vandalised overnight. One of the teams we had become friendly with had had their tyres slashed. Several other teams had had wings kicked in and the like. Fortunately, we'd pretty much escaped scott free with just a set of foot-prints over the roof and bonnet. Spirits were lifted as we all watched with amusement as the local polizei wondered what to do about a competing car that had been parked causing an obstruction. First of all 1 officer wonered over and blew his whistle whilst looking hopefully around. We all just watched on. The owners of the car were nowhere to be seen. The whistle blower was soon joined by a colleague and together they stood in the middle of the road having a discussion. After a short while a third policeman joined in the mothers meeting. Still the road remained blocked. After around 15 minutes somone spotted the offending team sauntering over towards the piazza where we were standing. Fortunately with a few shouts they broke into a run and reached their vehicle moments before the tow truck, that had evidently been summoned, arrived. The police seemed somewhat relieved that the vehicle was being moved without the need for paperwork and so stopped the traffic to allow the offenders to move their vehicle. Once safely out of the way, the 3 polizei struck up a, seemingly very humerous, conversation with the tow truck driver whose turn it evidently was to block the same road. Ah well.
So I digress. The challenge for the day was a pack containing photo's of 5 towns to be visited with a question on each to be answered to help solve the 'Lazio code'. The code in turn would reveal which of 5 envelopes to open to provide the location of 'Celeste' a post-card vendor somewhere in southern italy which we would need to visit. Opening of the wrong envelope would cost a 25% score deducion per envelope.
By lunchtime, spirits were high. We'd visited 3 of the required towns and were confident of our answers. Town 4 was only a short drive away. When we got there, however, we met another team looking somewhat dismayed. We needed to find the height of the 'clocktower' by the church in the town square. The other team told us that the plaque with the required height on it had been removed. Some time spent scouring the church and tower indeed revealed no plaque or indeed any clue as to the height of its tower. This got us wondering whether the question was infact a trick since the tower attached to the church was simple a bell tower - without a clock.
Directly across the square, however, was another tower - the "torne civic" which did indeed have a clock on it. By now, the first team had left so we all split up to try and find an answer. Another set of competitors were wondering randomly around and I attached myself to their group. Fortunately, one of their team spoke Italian and questioned a local. 42 meters we were told. "Oh, the same height as the civic tower" another member of their team announced. Perfect. The local had answered confidently and without hesitation, so I went back to find Simon and Mike feeling thoroughly pleased with myself. I met Simon first, also looking pleased with himself. "I know the answer", I announced - 42 meters. "Oh, not 47 then?" replied Simon. It turned out Simon had found a computer at the local tourist information that gave the height of tower as 47 meters, but which one? I went to investigate further. The problem, unfortunately, was not aided that by reading further down on the tourist information screen another height of 46 meters was mentioned. The problem we faced was that we needed the height exactly to crack the code. Even an answer out by 1 meter would break the whole thing. Since the code was calculated in base 5 it worked out that answers of either 42 or 47 would give us the same key, but this potential height of 46 would cause us a real problem. With the aid of the Collins mini-gem we managed to work out the Italian on the information computer and sussed that the height of the Church tower was most likely the 47 figure and the clock tower the 46. Which answer to use. We argued over this for some time before deciding to worry about it later and head off to find our final puzzle.
 It was late in the afternoon by the time we got to the final town and obtained the final clue. Which answer were we going to use for the clocktower?! I was outvoted by Mike and Si and we chose the 47 height. Envelope no. 3 needed to be opened. Mike tore it open like a small child with his presents at Christmas, but his glee was soon turned to dismay as the envelope contained only a blank piece of paper. Damn, we must've chosen the wrong height and forfeited 25% of our points. The only alternative was to use the height of 46m which yielded envelope 2. Again Mike did the honours, but revealed another blank piece of paper. Damn. Where had we gone wrong? I began to wonder whether my answer to the first clue (which only I had checked at the time) might've been wrong. Either way, it wasn't worth guessing and opening more envelopes. By now another team had pulled up next to us and managed to find the location of Celeste, so we set off to buy our obligatory postcard.
Off to find our hotel in Naples, spirits were pretty low. We'd done so well but seemingly fallen at the final hurdle. The organisers had provided photographic directions to the hotel for us, so we set off down the required road. We'd been driving for some time and the town center of Naples seemed to be looming all too close. We began to wonder whether we'd missed our turn-off so pulled into a local garage to find out. Simon fortunately managed to find an English speaker and it turned out we were about 20minutes too far south. Not a problem we were told, come off at the 2nd motorway junction and head back in the other direction. Either we tok the wrong "second junction" or the local was mistaken as there was no way to loop back onto the motorway in the other direction and we found ourselves stuck in the suburbs of Naples. Our europe-wide atlas was of no use and we didn't really have a clue where we were. We found the coast and headed north, but the roads seemed to be a tangled mess, not really heading anywhere in particular. We found another english speaking local who greated us with "The Grand Hotel, Pinetmare? ..its very far". Not a good start. However, he was able to give us quite clear directions, so we set off again. As seemed to be typical by now, none of the turnings or signs he told us to look out for seemed to actually exist and by now it was gone 8pm and completely dark. Simon was driving and clearly under stress. Time to turn to the GPS that he loathed so much. Fortunately, Mike's TOM TOM knew exactly where we were and by 8:30 we'd found the hotel. We decided to check in before registering for the day, but were told by the clerk that we had been moved to a different hotel, down the road. We decided to register first and attempt to explain that clearly we'd been given the wrong envelopes. As it happened, the poor marshall had spent the entire afternoon and evening being lynched by angry teams complaining that the height of the tower in Sabaudia was not displayed anywhere. It turned out that there was indeed a plaque, but it had, sometime in the last 2 weeks, been removed. As such, any answer for the height of the tower was acceptable and we regained our 100% score for the day. Feeling a little better, but very hungry we set off to find our new Hotel for the night. We should really have known better about taking instructions from Italians as after 20 minutes of driving we were convinced the new hotel didn't exist. We'd not managed to find any of the 3 "rounds" (roundabouts) that the clerk had mentioned, so headed back to the original hotel for clarification. In the car park we found another 4 of 5 teams all looking equally puzzled or annoyed that they too had been moved to the "Hotel Fontaine Bleu", but that it seemingly didn't exist. It was only meant to be 800m away, so we decided to have a recky of the local area on foot. 15minutes spent walking down an extremely seedy looking road in the middle of no-where we found a local who actually knew of the aforementioned hotel. Eventually we found the concrete monstrosity and checked in. Clearly it was of a different standard to "the Grand" in which we had a confirmed booking. Our room was a mini-apartment, so all was not so bad, but the common parts and lifts in the hotel were clearly designed by the same architect as a certain Multi Storey car-park in Croydon that I could think of.
By the time we'd ambled back to the Grand it was 9:15 and despite being thoroughly hungry we had to forgo dinner in order to make the prize-giving at 9:30.
First up was the "team who'd suffered the most" award aka the "biggest pile of rubbish" award. This went to a team driving a rather unreliable yellow Saab 900. Much agreement all round.
Second was the "Best bodge award" which rightly went to the "Rolling stones" team who had fabricated a gearbox cooling system on their Carlton using some stickly back plastic and an old water bottle. They had cunningly rigged their contraption up to the windscreen washers, so when activated, cold water was squired neatly over the gearbox housing. Marvellous. The "Rolling Stones" were also awarded the best TV-themed car for their fantastic Flintstones livery.
Next up were the individual day awards. We were hopeful for the Day 3 - Clint Eastwood award, but sadly 1st place eluded us.
Finally the overall awards. 3rd place, 2nd place and then in 1st place, "I suspect they will want to change their official name, but it's Team 83, TBC - London". "Oh, that's odd..", I thought. "That seems to be us.". Then it hit home. No-one else had stood up to collect the award and they'd read out our team name. Crikey - we'd won! What're the odds?! I stood up and followed by Mike and Si sauntered over to the stage to collect the very impressive trophy. Much applause and much shock.
The Volvo and months of hard work and organisation had done us proud. My thanks again to everyone who'd helped.
Lots of people we needed to buy drinks for that evening and much merryment was had by all. It was around 1am we ventured back, somewhat retisantly, to the car to get back to our hotel and see what practical joke (if any) had been played on us. We found the Volvo with a silver rear number plate, silvered out rear window's and graffitti across the Bonnet. We'd gotten away fairly lightly Mike and I thought, although clearly Simon was not amused.
Back at our hotel that evening Mike and I got ready for bed whilst we left Simon attempting to remove Silver spray paint. By 2am, I decided we needed the key back and went off to find Simon to get him to come to bed. Amazingly, he'd managed to get the number plate completely visible again and was scraping furiously away at the bonnet.
With the car road-legal again and the prize money weighing down my pockets, the Hotel Fontain Bleu suddenly seemed a wonderful place. A good night's sleep had by all.
P.S. If you really wanted to know how heigh the bell tower in Sabaudia, Italy is; it's aparantly 45 meters!
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