Day 2 update (Sunday 24th June)

Here is an summary of Sunday's activity

We all started the day at an 8am briefing except for one Rosbif who didnt turn up. Our set off time was 9am and with a little light rain everyone was ready to leave - but we were still missing one Rosbif! By 9.15am the decision was taken to leave without the lone Rosbif and let the support car bring the sleepy Rosbif along after getting the hotel reception to tell him we had all left without him! (more on this possibly separately).

We headed South through Airaines and regrouped for fuel at Grandvilliers after about an hour. Although the snails are surprisingly quick there are a lot of traffic lights and junctions on the side roads which have slowed us down a bit.

We arranged to reunite the "sleepy" Rosbif with his car at Beauvais and all met at a McDonald's. That was fine except for the "Boîte de Peu" which took a detour to the centre of Beavais and went to the wrong McDonald's!

After our late start we decided to make up time to Paris by joining the A16 motorway and eventually zoomed into Paris past the Stade de France with the Support Vehicle taking the lead. From the Perifique we headed into the centre of Paris and here the ViaMichelin navigator was extremely helpful directing us through the Parisian streets. We think we programmed the shortest route as we did take some frightening small and narrow back roads but successfully emerged, as a complete convoy, just by the Notre Dame at 1.30pm.

We were an hour and a half late and had lost our police parking, however we managed to park in a line right in front of Notre Dame where we met Richard Lamberts Sister. Many Pictures were taken around Notre Dame including a team photo at the start of the N7 in front of Notre Dame.

After about 1/2 hour we set off for our Paris tour, firstly travelling up the Champs Elysees, taking our life in our hands as we circled the Arc de Triumph several times and then on to the Eiffel Tour. We managed to park South East of the Tower in a line with a perfect picture pose. Many people came up to support us including several Japanese tourists wanting their pictures taken with the cars.

From here we headed back to the start of the N7 South of Notre Dame and then from there South to Orly. We had planned to meet some people from the 2CV club at Orly but this didn't happen so we carried on South to Fontaineblue.

We all parked at the back of the hotel and were met by a French camera crew making a film about the 2CV for its 60th birthday. We spent a lot of time giving interviews and talking to the crew until it was time to go to dinner.

Dinner was at an interesting restaurant within walking distance where the food was very good but service didn't quite live up to expectations. After that we headed back to the hotel for the evening fines for bad driving and general indiscretions and then to bed ready for day 3.