Day 13 – Tuesday 14th May 2013
Whereas yesterday was ‘cultural’, today has been ‘civilised’! We had a very civilised breakfast, we were back in the Minis for a very civilised start time of 09:03:30hrs, which was immediately followed by a Special Stage in the car park of the hotel, an exactly 20 seconds time to go over the line, into a T shape to go in one way, reverse back, drive out again, and cross over the finish line, without hitting any cones, all in exactly the 20 seconds allowed. Again, we were fairly happy with this morning’s efforts, so fingers crossed! We were then straight out onto the roads of Rome, again following our road books, this time heading south, for the wine producing area of Rome. Approx 2/3rds of the way along the route, we came to a beautiful lake, and we had to take a picture of our Minis by the lake, and email or text the picture to Freddie, all of which are going to be judged later by our hotel manager, Davide, who has been absolutely brilliant. He has looked after us all during our time at Crowne Plaza, like an absolute gentleman, escorting us on various trips, as soon as we arrived in Rome after our exhausting 4 hour journey on Saturday and before the police motorbike escorted trip around Rome, Davide was at our meeting point with a list of Teams, all we had to do was confirm our dates of birth and, hey presto, we were presented with our 2 key cards for our rooms – surely the easiest hotel check-in service ever!!
After sorting out a suitable vantage point for our picture at the lake, and, after a few technical glitches, getting said photo emailed to Freddie, we proceeded to our destination of Monte Porzio Catone, arriving at 12.01.00hrs, after being instructed to arrive between 12.00 Noon and 12.30.00hrs. We were then treated to a guided tour of this delightful vineyard, where they also grow olives and what appeared to be oranges, their grapes are all totally organic, and they avoid the majority of the pesky creatures by training the vines up to approx 6 feet, so they are kept off the ground and substantially reduces the amount of insects, etc. This particular vineyard does not produce vast quantities, but is more aimed at quality rather than quantity and they keep the vines closely trimmed to get less fruit, but a better quality harvest. We were also given a guided tour around the underground wine stores that hold up to 240,000 bottles of wine at any one time, some dating back almost 35 years, and the vats where the wine is produced. Then, after sampling some of their produce and some people making purchases of same, they provided us with a very pleasant lunch which was eaten outside in the shade of parasols – how dreadfully civilised, what a way to spend a few hours on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, what, what!!! How the other ‘arf live! After that, we were ‘at leisure’, so we experimented with running our Brantz trip on kilometres, rather than miles, for our return trip to the hotel, as it wasn’t being timed although was included as part of the road book. After a relaxed couple of hours, we went for our last ‘informal’ dinner, as tomorrow is the last day, and tomorrow night’s dinner is a ‘posh job’ where we are all dressed up in DJs, posh frocks, etc! The winner of today’s lakeside photo competition was Team 64, who staged one of them wearing their spare tyre as a life ring around his waist and then cleverly positioned their Mini to make it look like he was diving off the Mini into the lake – very ingenious and well deserved prize!
