Travel 2008 – Spa-Francorchamps, Days 3 and 4

Saturday, 2nd/Sunday 3rd August 2008 – Spa-Francorchamps, Days 3 and 4 The heat continued somewhat abated into Saturday and we all ran round like headless chickens despite the fact that in theory there wasn’t that much left to do. Mind you we hadn’t been helped in the morning’s race by a series of short but…

Travel 2008 – Spa-Francorchamps, Day 2

Friday, 1st August 2008 – Spa-Francorchamps, Day 2 Friday had its complications, but also revealed the best typo of the season so far when Oliver Turvey somehow got transformed into Oliver Turkey, which he’s not likely to be able to live down any time soon. Especially as the rotten buggers at Carlin all know about…

Travel 2008 – Spa-Francorchamps, Day 1

Thursday, 31st July 2008 – Spa-Francorchamps, Day 1 So… Belgium. What happened, and what didn’t? I’ll take it a day at a time, I think. And today I’ll deal with Thursday… Thursday started at what can only be called stupid-o’clock, because under normal circumstances 4.45 is not an hour of the morning I want to…

Travel/Food 2008 – Monza, Day 4

Sunday, 18th May 2008 – Monza, Day 4 We woke up on Sunday to find that it was still raining the proverbial cats and dogs. I didn’t even want to think about the likely state of the car parks, and anyway Lynne and I had every intention of staying put at the hotel for the…

Travel/Food 2008 – Monza, Day 3

Saturday, 17th May 2008 – Monza, Day 3 Saturday was truly awful weather wise too… We woke up to torrential rain, and it just kept right on all the way through breakfast. By the time we got to the circuit it was starting to look as if Plan B might have to be put into…

Travel/Food 2008 – Monza, Day 2

Friday, 16th May 2008 – Monza, Day 2 Day 2 involved a hideously early start, with breakfast at 7 am, followed by a “stand by your bags” moment as we all pitched into the car at 7.45 and headed for the accreditation office. We must have been the first people there, because the girl in…

Travel/Food 2008 – Monza, Day 1

Thursday, 15th May 2008 – Monza, Day 1 We got off to a good start on the Thursday morning, even if a 6.45 flight is a lot too early for my liking. At least we were flying out of Birmingham, which isn’t too far away, and we were booked with flybe on a 49-seater Embraer…

Food 2008 – The Roade House, Roade

7th April 2008 – Antipodean Dinner, The Roade House, Roade This afternoon I dashed to the garage to get a new headlight bulb fitted to the Astra (I swear this car eats light bulbs – I’m averaging one every three months right now), before picking Andrea up from Bicester station to take her to ours,…

Food 2007 – Brussels

November 2007 – Brussels (Food, Glorious Food!) OK, so here’s the perennial food-lover’s dilemma in the UK. It’s lunchtime (or dinnertime) and you haven’t packed something to eat or bought something to cook. You want to go out. Your choices tend to be incredibly polarised. You don’t want to spend much? Well, there’s the greasy…

Travel 2007 – Lisbon, Day 2

Saturday, 20th October 2007 – Lisbon, Day 2 Saturday we had a late-ish breakfast then headed for the Praça do Comercio where we discovered that the princely sum of 17€ each we could play with the historic tourist tram, a splendid electric tram of some early vintage, which would take us for an hour and…