Our Honeymoon, Part 9

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8.

The next morning we left Maranello behind, heading along the Riviera towards Aix-en-Provence, on the way to Troyes. We didn’t have the time to stop off in Cannes or Monaco as we had planned, but the drive was smooth enough. Reaching France also meant that I was able to buy nice menthol cigarettes for the first time in a week.

Our hotel was just outside Aix-en-Provence in the middle of a pine forest. It was a beautiful setting and I decided to cool off from the drive by taking a quick dip in the pool – and it certainly was quick as the water was cold! We dined in the hotel restaurant that night, feasting on the best of French cuisine and wine – and George even let me eat his foie gras amuse-gueule!

The next day saw us arriving in Troyes, where I attended university for a year. It’s a beautiful town nestled in the middle of the Champagne region, about two hours south east of Paris. The streets that form the centre of town are actually in the shape of a champagne cork!

We were staying with my good friend Martine for the night in her pretty little house just outside the town centre. This was one address that I didn’t need the GPS to find!

Martine had invited Janine to join us for dinner and we had planned on raclette. The evening started with an aperitif as normal and then we moved on to wine with dinner. Raclette is a traditional dish in which raclette cheese is melted on a special apparatus, accompanied by potatoes, gherkins, mushrooms and a selection of dried meats. We washed all this down with a delicious Pouilly Fumé provided by Janine.

We chatted until late into the night and caught up on all the news of friends and family before retiring to bed for a good night’s sleep before our trip to Maastricht the next morning.

Maastricht was to be our base for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. We drove over from France on the Friday afternoon and discovered a curiosity about this city – you come in on the motorway through Belgium into the Netherlands heading for Maastricht and suddenly, almost without warning the motorway ends and turns into a city street. Our hotel, the Bastion Deluxe Maastricht, was easy to find and had large secure underground parking. Better still, it was only a five minute walk from the centre of town, marked by the Stadhuis, or Town Hall.

Maastricht is an ancient city, the oldest settlement in the Netherlands, dating from Roman times. In bad weather it can appear to be quite grey, which we had discovered the previous May, but this September the weather was much better and we found the city to be pretty and ideal for strolling around. We were also delighted to find the local Oil & Vinegar store as the one in Dublin had closed. We stocked up on all our favourites, including white truffle oil and discovered some new treats to tempt us – after all we had brought the car and had plenty of space for the bags!

On Saturday morning we headed back into Belgium for the Grand Prix. Locating Spa was quite easy as it seemed that we weren’t the only people commuting in from Maastricht. Traffic was light enough and we were directed to park in a field high above the track. Getting out of our car you could hear the engine noises as we headed down through the forest to the track.

We were excited to get down to the track to see the changes that had been made to the first hairpin, the bus stop chicane and the pit complex in order to bring Spa back onto the 2007 F1 calendar. The previous year we had popped into Spa to have a wander around on the way back to Brussels after the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. Having seen the track I immediately promised George that we would come back here for a grand prix if it made it back onto the calendar.

It was a long walk down to the track, but mercifully cooler than Monza had been. We made the mistake of walking around the outside of the track to our stand and had to slog up a large hill – never forget that Spa is in the middle of a very hilly area!

Our stand was again an uncovered one, this time more for reasons of cost, as tickets for covered grandstands in Spa are very expensive. Even though it regularly rains at the grands prix here, we had decided to take the risk, which paid off as the entire weekend was dry.

Our stand was a small one, directly opposite the new bus stop chicane and pit entrance, resulting in us seeing the cars braking heavily in order to make the corner – or miss it in a lot of cases! With toilets and concessions just behind us, it seemed like an ideal location.

We settled in and began to watch the qualifying, which turned out to be nearly the complete opposite of the previous weekend. Ferrari qualified 1-2 in a dramatic last minute showdown. Kimi Raikkonen emerged ahead of Felipe Massa by a tiny margin after the Brazilian locked his brakes in the final chicane. McLaren was not far behind – Fernando Alonso had a spin at Rivage on his penultimate run, but recovered quickly and was able to have a final run in which he ousted Lewis Hamilton for third place.

After the qualifying we headed into the F1 village to see what it had to offer. There seemed to be a lot more of the team stores than there had been in Monza and many other attractions as well. I got my picture taken with Ralf and Jarno as you can see!

A small area of the village was taken up with some road safety demonstrations, but these were no normal ‘preachy’ activities. They had a Peugeot car set up on a spindle and were strapping people in using normal seatbelts and then spinning the car around multiple times. I just had to have a go and joined the queue.

The nice policeman strapped me into the car, ensured that my seatbelt was well attached and took my glasses away. Suddenly the car began to swing from side to side and then fully upside down, where they left us hanging for nine seconds, but felt like a lot longer! Two rotations to the left and then two more to the right, my legs were swinging all over the place and banging into the inside of the car – it was sore! I’ve never been in a car that has rolled luckily, and now I never want to!