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Words: Matt Dearden Wednesday And so it begins. The biggest and longest journey any of us have made in our Tigers and the first time for all of us to drive them on the continent. Making the homage were Matt Dearden and his mate Simon in Matt's Cat, Rob Duke in his Cat and Matt Windows in his SuperCat. The two Somerset based Tigers met up along the A37 before convoying down to meet Rob at the ferry terminal in Poole. Disappointingly there weren't the masses of exotic cars there we were expecting, but our cars certainly drew some attention. There were a few chaps going down in a Morgan and a very old MG A but other than that, there wasn't any other noticeable Le Maners there.
The Tigers got on and off the ferry with no problems despite our fears of losing sumps etc. The ferry journey was passed playing poker and chatting about the days to come.
Upon arriving in Cherbourg the adventure began. Unfortunately not more than 5 miles out of the ferry terminal, Rob's car starting backfiring and missing badly. A quick roadside diagnostic didn't reveal any obvious problems and the engine was now running fine, so we proceeded onwards. Getting out of Cherbourg was easy enough, but locating petrol stations along the way would prove rather difficult. Because our route was on "A" roads and not toll roads, we had to turn off towards towns to find petrol. Still, we managed ok and during the second stop, had a bit of French cuisine, commonly called McDonalds ;o)
After our stop off, we somehow managed to get split up as Matt D and Simon took a wrong turn, which the other two failed to spot. So Matt D and Simon quickly got back onto the main road to try to catch-up. At this point a Jaguar D-Type blatted past them which they then decided to chase for about 10 minutes, up to three figure speeds at times (kms obviously ;o)). As they didn't seem to be catching the other two they decided to pull over and try to phone them. Within about 5 minutes the other two appeared and the convoy was reunited.
By this time it was beginning to get dark, being about 9:30pm, and we were still a fair way from Le Mans. Coming off a wet roundabout Simon, driving Matt D's car, span the car! Accelerating off the roundabout in second sent the back end of their car round and they bumped up onto the central reservation backwards stopping inches short of actually hitting anything! Rob very nearly under-steered into them adding to the drama. We all pulled over and parked up on the hard shoulder to collect ourselves and ensure no damage was done. Luckily the French pavements have nice slopes on them and the speed was pretty slow so all was fine and we continued our journey. We got to Le Mans city by about 10:30pm. However, none of us realised that the actual circuit isn't in Le Mans, but south of the city and not exactly signposted. It was at this point it started to rain. And by rain, I mean more like someone turning a power-shower on! Luckily for us a local French police car took pity on us and gave us a police escort to the circuit which was very nice of them. Matt D's electrics didn't like the rain one bit, causing his indicator relay to hiss, although unplugging it seemed to resolve the problem! By the time we got to the circuit the rain stopped. However, again the convoy managed to get split up, and this time all three cars got split up from each other! We could hear the race cars blatting round the circuit as a practice session was on. Unfortunately for us, this meant there were cars parked everywhere making navigation somewhat difficult. By some kind of miracle the convoy was reunited and the campsite, Houx Annexe, located. By now it was 11:30pm and the rain had started again. As we were now at the campsite we waited for it to stop before setting up camp. We located a pitch and erected the gazebo for shelter. Some friendly neighbours popped over and gave us some beer as we hadn't had a chance to stop and get some (or any other supplies for that matter!).
It was 2:30am by the time we'd setup our tents and finally went to sleep. Oh and it didn't rain at all after that. Typical!
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