Not your average spa!

Friday 2^nd May and Saturday 3^rd May

Well, I warned you this would be about cars.

Friday was practice day. We headed to the track after doing the washing and the weather was shit – no other way to describe it. It was overcast, foggy and cold with some showers. Getting to the track was easy, only 50k down the motorway. Parking, no problem. Finding somewhere out of the cold – the bar! As per usual at these sorts of functions where they have a captive audience (includes quilt shows too) the food is very average and pricey. We had to eat their food practice day but decided we would visit a bakery on the way out next day to buy supplies.

Looking pretty bleak. 

And worse by the time we left.

I settled in the bar area for the day and saw what I could from the windows. I should let Rob rabbit on about what a great day he had. Here is his spill of words.

He was able to explore the pits. Lots of carbon fibre. The noise of the maseratis and the aston martins was fantastic. There were prototype sports cars – their speed was just stunning even in the wet. The track itself is just stunning. He would love to have a go. The track is not for the faint-hearted. He liked the tyre changing areas and the tyres they had ready to go. Rob also commented that this is the track where Ayrton Senna died.

The old control tower.

Porsche race 1.

New porsche 919 prototype car.

Spare parts in the pits. You could eat off the floor.

One of the audis.

Practice laps. Aston martin about to be passed by the audi.

Mark Webber in for service. Mark standing on left.

Eventually even Rob admitted that it was miserable and he was ready to go. We were there 6 hours so that was more than long enough. We stopped on the way home at the kebab shop and enjoyed these more than our race track food.

Saturday, race day. 

We didn't head out too early because the feature race didn't start till 2.30. Big mistake! We were in a 3km queue of traffic waiting to get to the parking area and then we had a 1km walk to the track. At least the sun was shining cos I was not looking forward to spending my birthday feeling as cold and miserable as I had the day before. 

A few more people in attendance on race day. 

We found ourselves seats in one of the grandstands where we were in the sun and protected from the breeze that was blowing. It wasn't real warm but certainly nowhere near as cold as the day before.The number of people still queuing to get in the gates at 2pm was just amazing and as far as the eye could see around the track there were people standing 2 and 3 deep at the fences. There were probably better places to spectate than where we were, but without inside info we just stayed in the main area.

Thousands of people at every vantage point around the track.

Picking the high points.

I was really a car racing infidel – to me the cars were either porsches or race cars like formula 1s. Rob tells me that they were Ferraris and aston martins. Duh! They all made a lot of noise regardless. Rob left me and wandered around checking out the pit area and other vantage points. I was happy to stay put. We didn't stay for the end of the race as it was a 6hr endurance race and not due to finish till 8.30.

Racing.

 

Aston martin.

From where we were sitting we watched the cars go up this hill.
It was quite incredible to see the speed of the prototype cars
as they ate up the gap between them and the sports cars and
passed them before the top of the hill.
It took only 6 laps for the prototypes to lap the sports cars.

We are now in Luxembourg in a nowhere special town called Clervaux for the night. We headed to dinner about 8 only to be told we’d better decide quick because the kitchen was about to close. Apparently different to France and Belgium where everyone heads out to dinner after 8. But we had a very nice dinner here at the hotel, including vegetables, and are now watching Harry Potter in maybe German, Luxembourgian(?) but definitely not French .