Today's the day of the
'Bikers' Classic' at Spa Circuit!
I headed off early to
the circuit to try and get photos before it started getting busy. I
had a pleasant ride of about 30 miles (50 km) to the circuit along a
lot of very pleasant country roads. What I noticed was that the
countryside was becoming more hilly and wooded. I passed through the
very pretty town of Spa itself, then it was the short journey to the
circuit.
I bought my ticket (25
Euros for the day, plus 5 Euros parking), and rode to the bike
parking area. This was a large field partly covered in gravel, and I
was early I could find a level spot where the ground was solid enough
to allow the bike to park safely.
I locked my helmet to
the bike, changed my shoes, and locked my boots and jacket in the
empty panniers (luggage was left back at the hotel.)
Even though it was
fairly early, the sun was out and it was very hot. I unzipped the
lowers of my zip-off trousers, then applied lots of Factor 50
sunscreen – I learned that lesson last year at Dijon!
The event is mostly
based around racing bikes of the 70s and 80s, and there was a huge
selection of different males and models of both full race bikes and
road based racers. There was also a 'market' area where stalls sold
all sorts of bike related stuff, many selling parts. I did see lots
of bits for my CL 350, but managed to control myself and my wallet!
After a couple of hours
I met up with the others and we had a good look round and watched
some of the racing. We never managed to find Kawa or Donnie,
but that wasn't surprising when you saw the size of the place.
I stayed until about
16:00 then headed back to Liège,
stopping for fuel on the way as it was Saturday and I didn't know
whether I'd be able to buy fuel on a Sunday. I needn't have worried
as almost all of the fuel stations have card readers, and not only
did the one I used accept my ordinary RBS bank card, it also
automatically changed to English!
When
I was leaving the parking area, I along with all the others bikes
were stopped by security who checked that we had ignition keys in our
bikes. Basically, they were checking that we hadn't stolen the bike
and had 'hot wired' it. I'd never had this before, but it was good
that they were doing something to prevent bike theft.
Although
we had all left the circuit separately, we all arrived back at the
hotel within a couple of minutes of each other – and we had taken
different routes! Spooky!
I
took over 200 photos, here are a few to give you an idea of the bikes
there, and I'll post a link to the others once I've uploaded them to
Flickr. I also shot some video of the racing, but that will have to
wait until I get home to edit it.
We
leave tomorrow for our next stop, Dijon. This is about 300 miles (500
km), and I intend to get up early and ride it all on back roads! Have
a look at tomorrow's post to see how I get on!!
Sounds like it was a good do Norman.
ReplyDeleteI really miss seeing road racing. I think that I'd definitely prefer to see classic 60s-70s machines than present.