Aysedasi's Le Mans

By the time we got back to the hotel I felt physically tired although I was surprised to find myself mentally still quite alert (as alert as I ever am!).   I indulged in what I've always considered to be one of the greatest of the post Le Mans pleasures, the after race shower  - probably the most welcome shower of the year! Then I cranked up the TV in my room and started to watch the Canadian Grand Prix. I remembered watching the start and the next few laps but the next thing I knew they were on lap 21! The drift into exhaustion had clearly begun...

I had to put a stop to it there as the weekend still had one more "event" to go - the evening meal which James had booked at Le Belinois, an old Tourists haunt of course, last visited (very) late on the Friday night in 2009. What's more, we had a guest as not only was Tony joining us, but also Paul Truswell, fresh from the commentary box (well actually, probably fresher than any of us!). So we made our rendezvous with Paul at Le Belinois at 7.30 where I remedied another 2010 deficiency with foie gras, followed by delicious monkfish and a rather sensational Belinois special dessert. A fantastic meal enjoyed with discussion about the race, with (a very tired) Paul still able to keep us entertained with his mixture of gossip, insight and humour. This was definitely a meal for Le Mans anoraks, and I was very happy to count myself as one of those.

We said our farewells to Paul around 10 pm and headed back to the hotel to our beds for the hardest-earned sleep of 2010, particularly for Tony who had to be up at some outlandish hour to be on the road to catch his morning ferry.

Having had a good night's sleep there was no huge rush for James and I the following (Monday) morning. By the time we were up and about at around 9.15, Tony was well on the way to his ferry (if not already on it), and we took our time packing up and loading James's car for the journey back to Le Havre. We left our splendid little hotel (which deliberately remains anonymous here - so don't ask!), at about 10.15 but before we hit the road, we decided to play one last visit to "our" bar at St Saturnin for a last cup of that superb coffee!

But we were soon on the road away from Le Mans, reversing the journey we made eight days previously. A week is a long time (as Jayne reminded me regularly during it!) but to me, perhaps inevitably, it had absolutely flown by. We had decided sometime earlier to stop in Honfleur for lunch. This very picturesque little port had been a regular haunt for the Tourists some years ago, on the way to Le Mans or sometimes on the way back, although it was 10 years now since I was last there with them in 2000. We arrived at about 1.50 and parked up and then checked out the menus of the many restaurants that run along the sides of the harbour, eventually settling on one which seemed to offer a decent choice. After seemingly annoying the staff by wanting to eat outside - such an outlandish request (!), We both had an excellent starter of mussels in a cream sauce which I then followed by fish that was so disappointingly bland that I've since completely forgotten what it was...

After another coffee and a brief walk around, we returned to the car at about 4 pm for the relatively short drive to Le Havre where we hoped to experience again a quick crossing on the Fast Cat which was due to leave at 6.30, French time. Once on board we managed to get ourselves a table near one of the bars at the front of the boat, but our departure was delayed by about 20 minutes. It wasn't the greatest of journeys, at one point the captain telling the passengers that he had been forced to slow the boat down due to the state of the sea! But it wasn't really all that rough...

We finally made it to Portsmouth at 9.30 (English time), some 45 minutes late, but unfortunately that delay paled into insignificance as we waited for what seemed an eternity to leave the boat and then get through customs, finally getting to where my son (also James), had been waiting for a very long time to pick me up at 11 pm.

So there it is; Aysedasi's story of the 2010 trip to Le Mans. An absolutely brilliant experience which lived up entirely to all of my expectations and far more. For that I have to thank James, both for his organisation of the trip and his thoroughly excellent company throughout. The highlights? Well, being in France actually at Le Mans for a full eight days for starters; watching not only 23 hours or thereabouts of the race but also a full 10 hours of practice; the visit to Drayson racing; our wonderful meal at Le Belinois - all marvellous. But the real highlight for me was the visit to the Radio Le Mans studio with Paul on Friday afternoon, from where I could happily have surveyed the scene for hours and hours - with or without any cars on the track!  And next? Well it doesn't take much guessing that I'm hoping to do much the same thing again next year - roll on 2011!

Post script

This was my 25th visit to Le Mans, a fact which didn't go unnoticed by my Ten Tenths friend Pascal (PascaLM). At the Ten Tenths meeting on Saturday he kindly presented me with a delightful memento of the occasion - in the form of four photographs from the 1986 event out of his own collection. I have reproduced those photographs here. Thank you Pascal!