didnt stay out too late friday down Chelsea Bridge as i had a eurotunnel train to catch 7:33 sat morning(left bridge 1:20am). set alarm for 5am and woke up at 5:58 so no tIme to pop round mates and pick up my camcorder to capture any record braking laps. set off from camberwellish at 6:20 blasting thru new cross ,lewisham at *0mph with the traffic lights on my side for a change, rolled in the terminal at 7:05 with time to spare. no sign of the rest of the group, tough i’m on the train and doors have closed.
Fill up in Calais, dark looking clouds ahead and take off. It starts lashing down crossing into Belgium and pull in to don waterproofs and goretex socks. On my way again cruising at 120mph having to deal with showers now and again, no problem when you are dry. 2 fuel stops and 3hrs 35 mins later im at the Nurburgring. The place is packed already, so much a swinehund wouldn’t even let me into the carpark as the track hadn’t opened for carnage yet.Purchased 12 lap ticket for 155 euros and set off for a few laps when it eventually opened complete with rucksack on back. It was not totally dry so care needed to be heeded while trying to find the dry stuff and from there on it was carnage for the next 24hours. Bikes and cars crashed and smashed all over the place, the recovery people were having a field day charging 175 euors to be taken off the track,it worked out to 350 euros per collection as they had one bike and one car on each recovery. The track dried out quite well late in the afternoon then a small shower messed things up wetting a part of the track which caught loads of people out resulting in 8 crashes in quick sucsession and the track was closed while the clean-up began. One car driver i spoke to had a bill for 850 euros for recovery and damaging some armco.
Went out sat night,last time i saw the clock in the bar it was 4:15am and called it a night. Got up at 11am, the sky was blue and sun shining, the sound of squeeling tyres could be heard in the distance, time for buisness! Buisness was good for the recovery trucks yet again as the masses couldnt keep it on the black stuff,debris strewn across the track with clups of turf. One lap i set off and caught 5 cars all close together going reasonably quick, the last 2 cars, a BMW and Porsche were having a personal dice with each other and looked as if it would end in tears only it was the leading car that couldnt handle the pace and slammed into the armco doing some serious mud-flinging, the following cars scattered in all directions leaving me to ride over the grass and mud strewn over the track. No-one stopped, i saw the guy was getting out of his shell so resumed the lap too. Bought another 6 laps but didnt manage a decent lap due to traffic and crashes every lap,the track was closed late in the afternoon when a bike crashed badly, this took a good hour and a half to sort out.Just got to use all my laps in time befor heading back to UK at 6:20pm, getting indoors at 11:30pm. My legs and arms were aching badly as if i had a serious gym workout. Managed 21 laps and saw some higher speedo readings at a few different places which was good to see. Wont be back until next year now.
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