Day 08 – F1 GP to La Seu D’Urgell …
Firstly, we must apologize to our millions of readers (yeah right!) for not posting an update – We’ve had literally hundreds of messages from you all, wondering if something terrible had happened to us to prevent us from posting (yeah, right.. again!).
We’d love to tell you its due to being thrown in a cell over-night, or some other exciting reason, but the truth is… we were SO tired by the time we reached last nights destination, it was all we could do to eat before falling asleep.
We had planned to do an update this morning before leaving our hotel, but we didn’t actually wake up until 11am, and we were supposed to check out by 11am… so alas, you’ve had to wait!
Anyway, enough with the apologies…on to the last two days exciting escapades! (is this starting to sound like a Famous Five story yet? Enid Blyton, eat your heart out…)
After ginger beer and Scones with fresh cream, we took Timmy for a walk and stumbled across Smugglers down at Smugglers cove….”Oh gosh!”, shouted Anne. “What is it little sister?”, asked Dick, concern in his voice..
Doh! Sorry.. I just can’t help myself….
Seriously though, we were up Sunday morning equally as early as Saturday, and began our now routine trek to the Circuit de Catalunya… although visibility was somewhat limited initially…
Eventually, the sun made an attempt to burn its way through…
… and before long, things were back to usual and the pace began to pick up again…
(I’m not sure if the damage was as a result of an early vehicle failing to wait for the fog to clear though!)
On the way to the track, we discovered that Coke was a LOT cheaper, and came in much bigger cans than the ones you get once inside…
On arrival, our entry to the track was far quicker this time, as the gates were already open (we’d had strong words with Bernie after the previous days problems…),
…and we were soon sat down in our Grandstand by 8am, miniature coffees at the ready, and watched a very enjoyable Seat Leon race; I’m sure they were very powerful cars in their own right, judging by the amount of anti-lag they were running, but in reality, they were more than 40 seconds slower per lap than an F1 car, and as Murray would say…. F1 is IF backwards… (hmmm, not sure where that fits in, but bare with me.. its been a long day!)
A little later on, the F1 drivers did their Parade lap on the back of a flat-bed truck…
…and then it wasn’t long until they were off and doing their warm up lap, shortly followed by a mad man (not sure if we just attract them, but every time we go to a GP, someone decides to jump on the track waving a banner!)…
…and then it was Go…Go…Go… as Murray would say (I think I got it right that time!)… and we were watching cars like this…
…and this…
…racing around the track at break-neck speeds… just not quite as break-neck as the German bloke in the red car!)
We spotted some keen fans; I’m not sure who they support as they had their backs to us, but they seemed nice enough…
And a few other people turned up as well..
..about 109,000 people we believe, according to the commentator.. mind you he did speak in Spanish, so he could have been saying anything!)
Before long, the race was over, and it was business as usual for Ferrari, but all credit to him. (I had to say that, I know of at least one Ferrari fan who’s reading…)
We then hung around at the end of the Paddock, where we saw this bloke..
(for those not in the know, that’s Dave Richards, head of BAR… and for those that don’t know, BAR is an F1 racing team, and not something you lean on whilst drinking beer… and for those that don’t know, F1 is a sport where cars go really really fast… (some may say “just round and round in circles”, but we don’t subscribe to this point of view).. and for those who don’t know, a car is a… jeepers, we could be going on like this all day – for those that don’t know.. ASK SOMEONE WHO DOES!
We then attempted to enter the paddock, but security was high, so we left the circuit and casually walked through the tunnel where the cars and media drive in, and managed to go unchallenged, and so made our way to the heart of the F1 world, where we bumped into this famous chap…
(a couple of our UK readers may recognise that cheeky chappy…!)
Unfortunately, we couldn’t find our way in, and Will couldn’t get away from the Pit lane for too long (actually, I don’t think he could find the way out either!), so we chatted through the fence!
For our breaking and entering skills, he awarded us three of these rather dashing caps, personally signed by Mark Webber, Jaguar Racing team driver…
Many thanks Will, we really appreciated your time and the caps… DC, Kimi, Ron, we’re sorry, but we CAN and HAVE been bought….! (If anyone else wants to see how easy it is, just try posting us some Paddock passes or similar, and see what happens!) (We’d even consider the Ferrari team if push comes to shove!) (I suppose)
And so we bid our farewells to the circuit…
…and headed back to the car-park (well, more of a field…I’d hardly call it a car-park Bernie, would you?) where we saw this REALLY cool car… (can anyone detect sarcasm… well, you choose…)
And spent the next hour or so with views like this…
…and this…
…and this…
Some of it wasn’t too bad though…
Eventually however, we got moving - mainly down to some excellent cross-country navigating by Michael (Nolan, not Schumacher!), who found us some awesome scenery to take our minds of the traffic problems we’d encountered…
…and we were soon cruising north, looking at proper views again!
We eventually arrived in a town called La Seu D’Urgell, about 10kms the Spanish side of Andorra, where we successfully managed to get lost (nice one Mike…. Ok, to be fair, the Parador wasn’t in Autoroute…nice one Bill!) but we stopped a friendly police car and explained to them our predicament, and they offered to give us an escort! (but who wants one of those??) Actually, for a while we seemed to be following signs to the Police Station, but he then stopped and pointed to the left, and sure enough, there was our nights accommodation!
After a non-too cheap 3 course meal, we retired for the first decent nights sleep since our arrival on the continent…