 |
 |
 |
|
|
| 08:00ish - we walked around the camp. This was the most expensive camp so far, but seems more like a trip to a 80’s Butlin’s camp rather than a camp used by watches of the Grand Prix. Not impressed and definenately only rates slightly better than the Taunus camp. We can now appreciate how good the camp at Winninggen was. Also the temperature change meant that last night was bitterly cold and the tent was not straight, so a draft was also felt. | |
| 10:35 - left camp | |
| 10:53 - Petrol stop. 25.25 Litres. From here we followed the road to Nürburg. The town is small, but has an impressive castle and several hotel/restaurants if little else. The is an impressive building with a Nürburgring status in the roundabout outside. | |
| 11:19 - Left Nürburg to visit a small town called Virnevburg, in a valley near to Nürburgring. | |
| 12:48 - Parked in Virneburg. This small town is based in a small, but steep valley between Nürburgring and Mayan. The roads between these towns are very twisty, with many hairpin turns. Brian really enjoyed steering the car around these after all that straight motorway driving. The town has a castle ruin on top of one valley wall, with a picturesque church on a lower ledge. | |
| 13:45 - Visited the Erlebnis-welt direct am Nürburgring, which is a museum and visitors centre for the Nürburgring Grand Prix stadium. We also booked for the 15:00 tour of the Grand prix centre The Centre is broken into several areas within two main structures and connecting passages. The first sections is a museum showing the history for the old Nordschleife circuit, it removal from the Grand Prix calendar due to the number of crashes and deaths and the new Grand Prix track. It also pays homage to those who won and those who died at the track The second part is in the upper level of the museum and show current Grand prix memorabilia and the document allowing the new course to be used as part of the Grand Prix calendar The 3rd section is the most fun, with Playstation 2s lining the walls with Grand Tourismo 4 loaded with the Nordschleife track. These plus other arcade machines (static sit-in car and hydraulic versions), could have kept Brian and me busy for hours, but we only had minutes before the 15:00 tour. The next section was a go-kart track, but we skipped that due to time (boo!). The last section was a BMW museum and show room, which lead onto a café and souvenir-shop (called a fan-shop) | |
| 15:00 - The tour started at the entrance of the Erlebnis-welt, and the tour guide only spoke German. We were given fliers before the tour started with the English text for most of the tour (two side of A5). The tour took used past the conference centre and onto the historic pit area (a square of 53 pits, which still only took 1 or 2 minutes to perform a pit stop in it’s day). From here we entered the tunnel leading from the Historic Pit area to the back of the Grand Prix pit area, which has 33 Pits in the now expected straight line. Pits 1 to 3 are reserved for officials to use for vehicle inspection, which is performed to ensure all entered vehicles have passed an acceptance before using the track (This includes bikes, trucks, etc). Pit 4 is used to hold the Safety-cars, with 5-33 going to the individual teams. We even got to past through pit 4 and onto the Pit lane, where we got to see the Furher-training vehicles of BMW in motion and in the pits (cool). Next we were taken into the track control building, which sits above the pits on the include of the track. The tour covers the monitoring room where official have a small room with a wall full of monitors, so all parts of the track is watched and action taken in the event of a problem. The Media room where the 400 members of the media have access to the telephones, Internet and clear visibility of the two large straight of the course (including the start, finish line) We even got to visit the winners podium, which is about 15 feet above the pity lane, made of white painted metal, which white Velcro pads to hold the appropriate visuals for the race won. Finally we visited the very top of the building, were the observation deck is (about 6 floors up), and this gives visibility to most of the track from a single point. The tour ended by entering the basement of the building and walking under the track to a gate by the main stadium. I would recommend this tour, as it only costs €4 and last 1.5 hours. | |
| 16:46 - We reached the Nordschleife entrance after following the directions received on Tuesday. These lead to the building with the Nordschleife status outside, which was locked in the morning. We parked and found lots of other vehicles, covering decades of models and horsepower. Vehicles types included, motorbikes, cars, customer sport cars, vans, trucks and even a coach! There are two entrances, with one also providing an exit. The ticket office is next to a set of three parking barriers, in a pit lane style turn-off from the main track. Tickets are bought and programmed with a number of laps, each circuit involves turning off the fast straight at the south of the course and passing through the barriers again. The course also has suggested speed limits for certain areas, as public vehicles are not normally designed for Grand prix tracks. While waiting for the 17:15 starts, we watched several not public track users hurtling along the fast straight at speeds which caused nerves in more than a few people. To punctuate this, the normal 17:15 start was delayed. The had opened the entrance gate to the track, but the exit gate was still shut. Brian had noticed that no further performance cars had passed in a while. After a further delay a small (hatch-back type) and a normal sized pair of ambulances arrived and were lead onto the track. After some time, they returned (via the same entrance), and left with sirens and lights. A sobering thought for all the queued public waiting to try their hands on the course. After a short time, the officials gave the thumbs ups, opened the exit gate and the public were allow to queue and start their laps. The first one out was the coach, followed by several bikers and sport cars (with helmeted drivers) Brian made the decision to wait until a large group of drivers had finished their laps, so the course would be less congested. When ready Brian and me go back into the Aygo and drove to the traffic barrier, being right hand drive, an official help load the ticket and we were off! As we came up to the first bend, I grabbed by camera and took pictures of most of the bends (had to hold the door to keep steady) as Brian enjoyed throwing the Aygo around the track and had reach 90mph at some point. | |
| 18:26 - The lap was over and we pulled out of the Nordschleife public entrance and back onto normal roads. Brian pulled over immediately into the same car park we had used in the morning when visiting Nürburg. Afetr a short rest and to allow the adrenaline rush to end, we drove back to the Camping am Nürburgring, had a shower and returned to the tent. We had a couple of cans of soup to warm ourselves and adjusted the tent to reduce drafts. Tomorrow, we would go to Switzerland, where we would book a hotel for three nights, before moving onto Italy. |
 |
| eMail DenniseMail Brian |
 |