Hey! Salut! Ça va?!

Nous avons dans un autre trip! Or something like that. My french is a bit rusty, but that didn’t make this trip any less successful. Last years trip to the MotoGP at the Sachsenring screamed for another one. So we agreed on visiting Le Mans this year.

The timing was a bit unfortunate. At least for me it was because I decided to sell my ST1300 Honda just a few weeks before it and buy a 1992 CBR1000F. Which of course first needed to be checked before going on a long trip. And oh yeah, the motor season just started, so everybody wants their bikes checked. Sorry for me, so I had to go on my Honda CBR1000RR. Quite a challenge, but it went beyond expectations!

The route..

Starting again from our homebase in Utrecht we started on friday the 18th of may around 2 o’clock. The trip to Sachsenring we did in one day but that was quite a stretch for us, so this year we decided to split it up and make it more relaxed. And I got to say that it worked out that way.

Since it was a long weekend it was expected to be very busy on the road with lots of traffic which made us want to drive around Antwerpen. Belgium is already a disaster with its bad roads but around Antwerpen people drive as bad as the roads themselves. So since our first goal was to get home safe we were heading to Bergen op Zoom. In about 4/5 hours time we reached Duinkerke for our first big stop.

We were already talking about burgers for a while over our intercoms so we headed for the Burger King. Sitting down for a Burger is was a small step to start talking about a fresh beer. End of that tale… we headed for the Ibis in Duinkerke with a nice bar just around the corner.

The first Duvels were soon be be followed by some deep thoughts and very high intellectual conversations..

Le Bleu campsite? Didn’t think so!

Wow! We tried to book a campsite in advance but that wasn’t an option. But staying on the Le Blue campsite wasn’t either. At least not for these three boys! We arrived the Saturday in the afternoon and entered the campsite. Dusty, loud, chaotic and all other things that would not contribute to the succes of our trip. So we left and headed on looking for something better..

With some luck we passed a home with in its garden had some tents. We saw it just in time and went back to ask whether they had room for three small tents. And they did! Sanitation was poor but hey, we would get over that! We got ourselves a place in their garden in the shade and also just across the circuit. Couldn’t have gotten any better then this!

La Chapelle didn’t disappoint

Sunday, raceday. We headed to the circuit really early to get a good spot. Not having a map of the area didn’t exactly helped us, but with a bit of luck we just sat down somewhere in a corner named La Chapelle. This appeared to be quite a good choice. We saw Dovi get down, Marco get down and Marquez overtake Lorenzo with a magnificent move (ok, I might be a bit subjective on this but hey, the move was good..)

Baking in the sun we got ourselves a nice tan before packing our stuff again and returning home.

All is well that ends well. Epic trip, epic race, epic weekend.

Some picas..