Trip to Belgium and France - Day 3

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!!

Song of the Day:

Day 4