Every year for a few years now we have sent a team of public sector workers from Portsmouth to take part in 'Les Courants de la Liberté' in Caen. This race takes place in June.
In return Caen sends us a team of public sector workers to take part in the 'Great South Run'. This year Caen also brought along around 16 public sector workers from their German Twin Town of Würzburg in Bavaria.
This year on the 22nd October, the Portsmouth Team's overall average time was 1 hour 30 minutes and 26 seconds, while Caen came in very near with an average time of one hour, 33 minutes and 24 seconds.
So this year the Brittany Ferries Trophy goes to Portsmouth. Well done team!
All runners got together at 'The Jolly Sailor' pub later on the Sunday evening for musical entertainment by local band 'The Machete'.
The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, Cllr Ken Ellcombe and Mrs Jo Ellcombe came along with very special guest: Mr John Jenkins MBE. A D-Day war veteran, 98-year-old John Jenkins MBE did the GSR the honour of being one of their official starters that morning.
John was indeed involved in liberating Caen after D-Day and recalls seeing the city in ruins.
We hope he can make it over there with members of the city council to have another look soon. Update April 2018 - he did visit in December 2017, with the D-Day Story Museum curators on their visit to Caen's Mémorial.
The band Machete were highly entertaining with their own brand of instrumental up-tempo beats.
Their website is here: Machete
They can be found on Facebook here: Machete Facebook
The recording taken of the concert at the Jolly Sailor for the GSR Twinning Party is available here.
This gallery is a collection of photos from the evening at 'The Jolly Sailor' and the previous evening at Southsea Castle's Courtyard Café.
An article from the Great South Run 2010 about Caen Twinning's involvement can be found here.