Part Three starts with what my father claims is a distortion of the facts.
After leaving Milan they headed to Lugano in Switzerland. At this point the official photographic record of the journey shows Geoffers hard at work first thing in the morning, clearing the ice from TALY prior to the next leg through the Simplon Pass to Geneva.
While the following picture.....
bears the caption "Ken is seen at breakfast the following morning. I'm not saying he is nursing another hangover but he had one hell of a job focusing on the croissant". Once again, this will be presented as evidence when he gets round to sueing for slander!
The fearless nature of our two pioneers (if you look up "fearless" in the theosaurus it gives "mad as a fish" as an alternative) is made clear by the view out of TALY as they tackled the Alps:-
They are in a white helicopter, with minimal instruments, no heater and they are flying over snow which, as my father points out not unreasonably, is both cold (no heater) and white (the colour of TALY) and in the event of a forced landing would have resulting in them not being found until global warming eventually cleared the Alps!
They were at 7000ft, attempting to squeeze over the top of the pass but as they followed the valley west, they ran into snow.
In fact, when disaster DID strike, and that it was obvious that they were not going to make to to the small airfield of Sion, they decided that discretion was the better part of valour and landed at a disused military airfield. The following picture documents what happened next. Depending on who's account you believe they either "enlisted the help of a friendly passer-by to locate a telephone" or they "hijacked a passing car and made a dash for the nearest pub", you will have to decide for yourselves...
What ever happened, the eventually made it safely to Sion where snow forced them to stay for a while.
But they eventually continued (after consuming their own weight in fondu apparently!) and made it to Geneva where they cleared customs.
They then completed the next leg to Troyes and put TALY to bed for night. Im going to draw a veil over the night at Troyes, suffice it to say that wild allegations have been made by Geoffers, denied by my father and are best left unrepeated until the legal action
From Troyes they set off the following morning to Le Touquet where they completed customs formalities once more and then put TALY's load carrying capacity to the test by investigating French cuisine for lunch
With lunch over they set off up the coast to Cap Gris Nez before my father's least favourite part of the trip, crossing the channel. No great fan of water as he can't swim, he has been known to wear a wet suit, life-jacket and deploy floats just to cross the Mersey so this was going to be a challenge....
But then TALY and our heroes caught sight of land....
and they were almost home.
At Gatwick, TALY touched her skids to English soil for the first time while import formalities were carried out...
and then off to Fairoaks for kitting out...
and that brings us to the End of Part Three.