We’re coming to the close of our first day on the rally.

We made the 320km drive from St Malo to Tours after we finally left Guernsey some time after 3pm.

We landed in France close to 7pm (CET) and it’s taken us around four hours to get here.

Everyone has seemed to complete the journey apart from one car.

This is quite amazing considering that in the 2008 Bubblegum, cars were dropping like flies on the first day, with about five breaking down within 100km of St Malo.

This year, the unfortunate souls to have found themselves on the side of the road are the brother and sister team of Bart and Meriel Stratford-Hall – team Eurotrash.

Their old Mercedes’ engine has seized up.

They are spending the night in Rennes and are hoping to catch up with the Rally tomorrow.

Now tomorrow looks like it might be a hard slog.

We’ve all got to be ready to leave by 7.30am and apparently we’re going to be making our way down to Monaco.

No one knows for sure, because as usual, organiser Brin Harrison is keeping his cards close to his chest.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

It was a real pleasure driving in the MX5 with the top down.

It really was a gorgeous evening.

And I forgot how much fun it is driving with the other Bubblegummers on the road – lots of car horns and pumped fists.

I just want to finish this blog by wishing my very good friend Stuart Bisson and Ali Young all the best after they got married in Castel Church today.

Congratulations. I don’t know what you see in him Ali…

A new feature this year is that I’m going to list what me and Manno have been listening to on our iTrip each day.

Today we’ve been mainly listening to: Mumford and Sons (my fav at the moment – ‘Oh man is a guinea pig’), Pearl Jam, Left Lane Cruiser.

And a bit of: Gun N’ Roses, Queens of the Stone Age, Embrace, Clutch, Nickelback, Live, Rage against the Machine, Senser,

And… Penguin Café Orchestra.

Needless to say… We’ve been keeping it surreal.