Another driving day, in more than one way. As our journeys go this was a short one. Only about 5 hours of actual routes. However, the planned itinerary included Le Mans and the famous circuit, so this added a fair bit of time behind the wheel. We took a few photos of the Belle Vallee grounds before we left though.
Steve and Mark had mentioned that, because Le Mans is a street circuit most of it is public road, like Monaco. Except in France they leave the Armco in place permanently. Thus we took advance and drove around the circuit, twice. Pen took a video and if/when there is time Mike will edit it and post it here.
The Museum was pretty good – lots and lots of cars obviously, plus information about drivers and key players behind Le Mans. One area compared the cars and racing back in the 1920 and the modern era – rather different. The cars are twice as fast on average, the top speeds are three times more etc. etc.
There was a Superbike race day on today so we couldn’t get near the Bugatti circuit without paying large amounts of money, so we just had lunch in the cafe then went off for our drive around the circuit.
Le Mans is a fairly industrialised city now so it was busy with people just trying to get on with their day jobs so we didn’t stay long and set off on a lovely, quiet drive south to the Loire valley. Almost no cars, a mixture of stupidly long, straight roads and some nice twisty bits to keep Mike awake and happy. Overtaking stuff in the BMW is trivially easy. We’re being sensible and being quite cautious but still can get past pretty much anything at any time. 332ftlb (450Nm) torque and 320bhp goes a long away versus Peugeots 205s and Citroen DS2s. It’s reassuring but it’s hard to find twisty bits twisty enough to push the car, in some ways it’s too easy.
Anyway, enough complaining about having a fast car. We arrived at the Chateau de Celle Guenand and there was no one about. We wandered until someone appeared and talked to us – it was Stephane… or rather Stephen who, despite having a very French name, is quintessentially English. As we arrived so did some other guests… or rather friends of Stephen and his father. They’re all lovely people and we had a rather nice chat out on the patio drinking tea and eating biscuits with an electrical storm brewing in the back ground. It was very pleasant.
We thought that Stephen had overlooked something so asked him for the key to our room, which was currently unlocked. The answer was a brief, and surprising: There are no keys. So there you go. Castle gate is open, keep gate is open, bailey door is open and the room doors are unlocked. I don’t expect to ever type that sentence again unless I time travel back to the Middle Ages. With a laptop.
A local village provided the restaurant ce soir – La Grand Ma. We were the only customers all evening. The lady was helpful and tolerant of our bad French. We struggled to understand the menu and had to ask for a translation (didn’t help that her handwriting made u, n, r, i, m all look the same) but she was great.
