1 week to go

Friday next week, Paul and I will set off on our trip to Le Mans. After some toing and froing, we both have the same routes programmed into our Tomtoms. At one point it looked like we would be going our separate ways but with some settings tweaking done, we are both now in sync.

I let Paul dictate the petrol stops, as his Rocket drinks a lot quicker than Ginny. I reckon I could probably make it all the way from fill up at Ashford, to our hotel in Alencon on one tank, about 230 miles but he'll most likely be looking at around 160.

I've not really sat down and thought about what I'm taking with me. It's only 3 nights away, so I should be able to pack fairly light and maybe leave some room for some beers, if we get to a hypermarket. We are both going to take a picnic chair with us this time though. Mine will comfortably fit within the width of the panniers and I've bought some bungies to secure it with. It makes life a lot easier when you get to the circuit., otherwise, you're either standing or sitting on potentially hard/wet/muddy grass. We opted out of buying a grandstand ticket. As we only have general admission, we'll have to plan where we want to view from, to avoid wandering around aimlessly. Somewhere near to some toilets might be good though for us oldies.

When I get back, Ginny will have covered almost six thousand miles, so I've booked her in for a service on the Thursday after we return. That should cover me for the Spain tour and my trip to the Red Bull Ring in August, by which time she'll be up to twelve thousand and need another fettling before I go down to Aragon.

As I write this, it is peeing down, so I'm hoping the weather perks up for next week.

Au revoir

Les billets sont arrivés

A couple of weeks ago I got an email to say my tickets for the French MotoGP at Le Mans would be dispatched in April. April arrived and I had an email from DHL to say click this link to track your parcel, no reference to MotoGP or Le Mans. I did notice it said the package was coming from Clermont Ferrand and putting two and two together, I guessed it must be the tickets. Being cautious of links in emails though, I went onto the DHL website and pasted in the tracker number. It didn't give any more clues as to what it was but at least proved it wasn't a dodgy link in some spam email.

Today the package arrived and sure enough, it contained the tickets for Le Mans. That's the last piece of the jigsaw in place now for this trip. Eurotunnel is booked and we have a hotel booked in Alencon, the nearest place we could get to the circuit, for three nights. We both have IDPs (International Driving Permits) should we need them and I have my insurance green card sorted too. Roll on the 17th May.

Over the weekend, I managed to book my ticket for the Aragon MotoGP round in September. I'd already booked some hotels some weeks back but was having problems with the booking form on the circuit's website. They wanted something called an NIF number, which seems to be like our NI number. Without it completed, it wouldn't accept the form. I'd emailed the circuit to say we don't have NIF in UK but had had no response, even when sent in Spanish, so with a bit of googling, I found a forum saying that it should accept my passport number. Another try and hey presto the booking was made.

That's all for now.