Scottish Elises

That's the tour now halfway through, and it's been a blast so far...I'm having to return to work tomorrow ( ), so am currently sitting in Stansted airport awaiting my flight back to Scotland...

Friday:

Herr Iddon and I set off from Edinburgh at 3am, and made good progress down the A1, arriving at North Weald before 9...Unfortunately the drunken miscreants that had set off a day earlier, were nowhere to be seen...When the finally arrived (in a dramatic fashion... ), there was talk of Pussy Willow, and a bizarre night out...Certainly a few looking green around the gils, and spinning cars around an airfield at 80mph probably didn't help...

After a play on the sprint circuit, it was off to the Chunnel, which was uneventful enough...Unfortunately Robin & I was sited in with the buses / tall stuff on the train, which meant being accosted by gangs of London school kids...Apparently Robin has a "Sick" car, and they were most sad to hear that we didn't know Richard Hammond...

Blitzed through France, and reached the hotel where the LOT gang were, just in time for some beerage and bed...Shattered!

Saturday:

Early start, as Folembray was some 30-40 miles from the hotel...On arrival, it looked like a small oval, but it became apparent it had a really fast section up the hill, round the back...It was really really good fun, with a challenging downhill chichane, taken at 70-80mph...Absolute blast, and the SE boys were the quickest out there, as usual...

The track is defintely worth a repeat visit - It's fast (Scotty / Craig / Ali / Andy were hitting 120mph at two points on it), picturesque (lined with trees), and very laid back...

Blatted to the next hotel afterwards, for much beerage - The Scotty / Andy / Ali / Walshy table managed to rack up 43 pints in a few hours, before heading into town for more...

There were several incident involving gaffa tape, and male nudity, but I'll leave that up to the others...

Sunday:

Abbeville - Right next to the hotel, so a late start...Amusing track - Really twisty, with not much to hit...Nowhere near as fast as Folembray (Just grabbing 4th for a second on the straight), but fun for the morning...

Robin's car had cried enough, and with a knackered wheel bearing / no brakes left, we set off early for the Chunnel...Ended up staying at Kelvin's last night, and Robin took off this morning for Eliseparts / Steve Gugliemi's to make repairs on the car, skipping Snetterton in order to have a working car for OP...

It's been a blast so far, as I said, and just wish I could have stayed till the end...Work calls!

Cheers!

Ross.

Cheers very much for the update Ross, gutted Tom and missed out on this one. Roll on FF8!

ed wrote:Cheers very much for the update Ross, gutted Tom and missed out on this one. Roll on FF8!

Hopefully Mr Gordon isn't completely broken for the three days of trade show we'll be doing when he gets back...

Shug wrote:Hopefully Mr Gordon isn't completely broken for the three days of trade show we'll be doing when he gets back...

Good to see one of you likes to keep the ship afloat Shug, you stick in there, your doing a fine job!!!!

Shug wrote:Hopefully Mr Gordon isn't completely broken for the three days of trade show we'll be doing when he gets back...

I suspect Mr Gordon will be doingmuch the same at your trade show.... Drinking and Schmoozing!

Stolen from seloc : http://111ti.free.fr/2008_10_LoT_Folembray/index.html

Oulton is a very wet very cold very slippy place. I'm in the pug tyre taxi with the heater ramped up.

Jings, I'm impressed you're alive!

Not too much cider available then?

Tut took us to Cheshire's slowest indian last night, which saved me from indulging the cider too much.

Horizontal sleet now, yeah!

OP was excellent fun - I bailed at Lunch when it started snowing heavily and they closed the track, then the power failed too ... however Neil texted me to say that the track re-opened after a long lunch and normal SE service was resumed.

I loved the wet - such fun, even Druids which is slippy at the best of time was brilliant ... didn't want to go too mental because I needed to make sure I drove the car home, but even so I felt I was making good progress and the majority of time I was overtaking rather than being overtaken, which made a nice change from being blasted by super-turbo-nutter machines

I loved Folembray too - Uncle Ron and I had an epic 20+ lap battle swapping places a few times here and there - he can certainly pedal the old mule about. I had my luckiest escape ever too when I decided to overtake at the same time as the car in front had decided to pull back onto the line (totally my fault!) - this happened just before the braking point, so 105mph or so - I had nowhere to go except to take to the grass ... which is about elise-width and no more ... ran down the grass with no brakes or steering possible and just managed to hook the front right wheel into the edge of the gravel trap about 10m before the wall, spun the car into the gravel which kept us out of the wall - close! I think poor old Ross needed new shreddies after that little incident - just goes to show - never, ever, assume the guy in front has seen you - if he isn't indicating, don't pass!

Cheers,
Robin

Sleet/snow in an atom.....mmmmmmm!

I only went down for oulton, but it was epic. Curry last night and a few shandies, was a good laugh. OP today was very wet and very slippy. Had great fun hounding all the honda's out the way, the only 2 cars that were a challenge were the 211 and ali's 240 cup, both making full use of there ABS and mega horespower. Still, the little 135R did me proud. Great fun.

Quite a few crashes unfortunately, but all are repairable, but it goes to show how unforgiving a track like oulton park can be, especially in the wet.

Had an awesome 4 days

Saw the post on Exige.com of snow at Oulton thought the worse for you guys. Glad you were able to get some decent track time.