EP42: Le Mans Travel Advice; Beer or Moped?

Jon Summers is the Motoring Historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. On his show he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, motoring travel.

• Air – Kelly Watch the Stars
• Camping in a bivvy bag
• J’s rainy night at Arnage
• M’s camping in the grounds of a chateau
• Plan a year in advance, airbnb inside the circuit with friends
• Brompton Road test aside
• Campervans: never again
• William Ross’ pod 
• Brits driving down to Le Mans, like the Bentley and Jaguar works teams used to  
• J, a gendarme, it’s your beer or your moped
• “Allo Allo”; “Good Moaning”
• Glowing Corvette brake discs on Mulsanne
• Arriving at the track – the opening scene from Le Mans 
• The track isn’t close to downtown Le Mans (and the train station)
• The trackside land grab and spectating tactics
• Ashen
• Crowbar
• M recommends listening to the local music radio when you road trip
• The power of googlemaps “Avoid Highways” option
• French Peage Toll road advice
• The empty perfect roads of the south of France and northern Spain
• Un Homme et Une Femme a movie with a Mustang and a GT40

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] John Summers is the motoring historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider hailing from California. He collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and fast and not much reliable. On his show, he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and old cars driving motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.

Jon Summers: Good day. Good morning, good afternoon. It is John Summers the motoring historian with Mark Gamy. And unusually for us, we have a themed episode today, mark, don’t we? You’re nodding. We do. Yeah. We, we do. We put minutes of research in. Say what? We might not stop talking over each other in a moment. We might break.

We, we, we’ve put minutes of research into this. Yeah. Fully. Yeah. You described it as 10 earlier, which, uh, [00:01:00] but the producer was saying to me as we were joking about in the last pod, the Ronnie Corbert and the producer, the producer, Eric was saying to me that they, he prefers us off the cuff. He thinks we’re better off the cuff.

He probably means just ramble less and stay on the point, doesn’t he?

Mark Gammie: Not off the wrist, off the cuff. Yeah.

Jon Summers: No, no, no. At least I think that’s, I I think that’s, uh, what, what he meant. Yeah. I, I hope that’s what he meant. But look, I am really gonna, there’s a serious point here, and that serious point is, is that instead of rattling on about irrelevant stuff like music and things in the episode, which you can do.

We should at least give the listener some of what they came for, which is they came for Lamore. So we, you and I have both been to Lamore. I’m gonna begin, and this is a storytelling podcast, so I’m gonna begin with a Lemore story, or more or less a story, more an anecdote. I went one year and for separate reasons that we may talk about further into the pod, the rest of my group, [00:02:00] the, the other three guys I went with decided they would leave early.

Just to do with some rain and so on. Exactly right. I’m just wussies, right? Just absolute bloody, you know? Now feeding into my decision to do what I did was the fact that I had taken the not great decision to camp in a bivy bag. Which listeners you may not know is like an army thing where it’s like a large canvas bag where you can put your sleeping, where you can put your backpack and your shoes and your clothes and all of your other camping kit at the bottom of it.

And then you can have your sleeping bag inside it, and then you can zip it up above your head and you can sleep anywhere and stay warm. And it’s really a quite a cool thing and, and really a, you know, minimalist cool way of. Traveling, especially for people who can’t be asked or aren’t very good at putting out tents.

So anyway, I was in the bivy bag, it fucking rained and when it rained, it rained, rained and there was like an inch of water in in the campsite. So I was [00:03:00] just like, you know, this is not. Bloody cricket, is it? So, uh, well, it’s not cricket, it’s mo Anyway, whatever. So the others were like, we we’re going, and I was like, man, well, I, I don’t want to do that.

And they were like, well, where you want to go? You know, you know, and I was like, all right, well I’m gonna have to make the most of it whilst I can. So I walked from the campsite, which was inside the Bugatti circuit up past White House. To our March now, this must have been, I went like the three years, like, I don’t know, like 2000, 2001, 2002, something like that.

Or 99, 2002 there that it somewhere in, in that era. And I went I think three times. And they all sort of merged together. In my mind, I’ve just thought of another amusing, uh, anecdote to do with a moped and going and getting beer and a counter with aba. But that took place in our NIJ village and uh, there is a top tip there.

Stay in our Nij village people. It’s conveniently placed and you can walk everywhere and if you’ve got a bike, that is a good place to never done it [00:04:00] myself, but should have done it. Point of this. Early vignette in, in our pod today is I walk down to Iage in the middle of the night in the rain. And uh, when the cars come, they, you can hear the cars coming around Indianapolis and then they, Indianapolis is a righty, isn’t it?

Where you’re break in and then they stop and there’s that little bus stop, lefthander, and then the short, straight, and a right hand. Before they go off, down towards White House and, and, uh, I was stood there, you could see the brake discs glowing. And I stood there for ages, hypnotized, and it was one of the single most enjoyable things that I’ve ever done in Motorsport.

It really was, uh, the fact that it goes on and on and on and on. Is really what sets it apart and sets it apart as visual and ordinary and you know, spectator experience.

Mark Gammie: Yeah, no, that’s fair comment mate. I mean, I enjoyed it when we went, we stayed at a little place [00:05:00] outside that a bunch of my mates who go every year, but there’s aji or a gentleman who has a chateau outside who sort of puts up people camping in his grounds.

So there are. I mean, they were cold by the time we got there, but there were, there were showers and the Ls were quite nice. And you know, you camped there and you could park your car next to your tent and so forth. And he did a little car show after a couple of days where he came, he wandered around and if you had a nice car, he said, oh, we’re gonna tap you on the shoulder.

Would you like to be in the car show? And so forth. Which was good and it was a nice place to stay. Very civilized, but it was too far away. It was too annoying to get there and

Jon Summers: back. Well, can be, my question is how far away was it and where was it in relation to the circuit? Because we’ve jumped, I’ll think of details out, we, we’ve jumped right in here folks into like a travel experience here.

But you gotta understand is Lamar, the start finish is like race circuit, right? But the Moza Strait is a main road between some cities in France. So where you are. In relation to the circuit is important because you can get to the circuit on public rows just about, or at least you could years [00:06:00] ago.

They’re moving the go posts on all of that, aren’t they? The other thing is, is ZA is so much more built up now than it used to be, but your chateau, where was it in relation? I think it was like

Mark Gammie: Southeast, sort of a little bit southeast of the um, or well sorry, west Southwest or West Southwest kind of direction from the circuit.

So it wasn’t too bad to get there. It was like a 10 or 15 minute drive, assuming that you were gonna be doing 30 miles an hour only kind of thing. It wasn’t, you know, yeah, it was no sort of like nudgey bits. Of course, there’s nowhere to park there. So getting there, you know, you would either get one of you to drop you over, or you’d try and get a coach, a bus or mini bus or something over, and there’d be a couple in the morning cup.

So it was doable. But once you’re there, it was a faf to get back there and back. I mean I looked and if you prepare to plan sort of a year plus in advance, you can Airbnb a very nice sleeps 10 people inside the circuit and merely quite a lot of money a night, like 1500 euros, something like that a night, which is a lot of money, but not between 10 of you it isn’t.

So, you know, you are then a hundred yards, walk from the marathon straight. That sort of difference, [00:07:00] you know. So you are gonna be probably blocked off, you aren’t gonna be driving around, but you could get there in advance. And then add your electric scooter or Brompton or whatever to get around the place and you’ve got inside access to the circuit.

I think that’s the way I would like to do it next time. But this chat was nice. It was just a bit of a faff getting in and out.

Jon Summers: It’s editor John interrupting with a brief road test report on the Brompton. John’s selling a Brompton right now. I’ll post a picture of me riding it. I think you’ll agree. I look ridiculous.

Maybe partly to do with the fact that it’s me, mostly to do with the fact that the Brompton is ridiculous. It’s also the same price. It was a proper jigsaw. John and I discussed it and he said, I’m not sure if this is the right thing to say, but I feel like it’s kind of,

and I went, well, it’s for commuting and being in the corner of your flat in London if you’ve got no parking and so on. Then I rode it and I got off it and I said to him, it’s kind of.[00:08:00]

I mean that in an pejorative kind of way. You know, it just, it’s like a kind of a, you know, it’s got a pedal assist, it’s got three gears, you thumb the gears. It’s really quite an interesting, nice piece of kit in Brompton and revolving with the times. But camping inside the circuit is what most people do camping in and around.

The start finish is what most people do and the French loves to camp and it is a bit of a camping themed. Right now after my experiences of camping, we did pivot into a camper van at one point, and I would say fucking never again on that. And the reason for that is that the drive down there is a big part of Lamar.

For your Englishman. Now we’re gonna talk about that separately because there is a heritage of the Bentley and Jaguar teams driving to Lamar. So when you drive like a hooligan cross France and nearly get arrested, which has happened to many Englishmen, not [00:09:00] you or I. No, no. What you or. I’ve never actually been pulled over in France.

I would just say, no, I haven’t. I, I hesitate to say that though, ’cause it’s gonna fucking happen, isn’t it? Mm. But the, the point is that the drive down there was not fun in the camper van. So, however great the camping experience was because it spoiled a major element of the experience just. Fuck on that.

It was like sitting down at a rock show. Now your shadow thing, you

Mark Gammie: get the, you, you forget. Of course, the most important thing is, is when you are leaving, there’s all families on the overpasses, on the triage, waving at the cool cars. Yeah, the little kids and stuff. Waving at the cool cars.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Mark Gammie: You don’t wanna be there like the doers and the camper van.

Not getting no going

Jon Summers: slowly. You definitely don’t. You definitely do not,

Crew Chief Brad: I, I, I gotta

Jon Summers: say Gary, I, I think, I feel like now I’m thinking about it again. I, I’d fly and buy like the cheapest K five jigs of hour I could find in England. That’s how I’d wanna do it. Now, [00:10:00] I think I’d probably fall off riding up the metal ramp of the ferry, wouldn’t I?

Mark Gammie: Right. But again, you, you sort of want someone who’s got a boot. Just riding convoy with someone.

Jon Summers: Let’s, but I’m trying to, I’m trying to imagine our fictitious listener wanting to ’cause, ironically enough, right? The producer Eric, is actually at Lamar as we’re recording this for the Lamore Classic, as is the other motoring podcast network personality.

William Ross, the, uh, Ferrari guy. They’re together. I, I, I’m not, I think he’s doing Goodwood as well, so I’d be interested to know what they, uh, think of it when we get back. We may even do it. Crossover episode. I may even invite you, mark, to do the Cross. Cross. There’s

Mark Gammie: 80 F1 cars, 80 historic F1 cars at the festival of speed this week, this time.

Jon Summers: Yeah. Let’s stay on track. Rarely as I, as I do that with Lamar, right? ’cause the point you made was it’s better to camp inside the circuit in a house. It’s best to be in a house. The Chateau was good, but it was a motherfuck getting to and from correct. ’cause even when the traffic flows, there’s nowhere to park nearby.

And the solution [00:11:00] to that is very French solution, which is the bicy, isn’t it? If, uh, my pronunciation, uh, serves there. Especially these electric ones, which leads me onto that little anecdote of where one of those years I went, one of the guys I went with had rehabilitated like his grandmother’s Honda 50 shopping trolley moped, right?

It was not like your like C 90. This guy had like littler wheels, like, and was a step through like a full on step little white basket at the back. Don’t remember the details, but I do remember drawing the short straw, having to go. Into our NA to buy beer for the four of us at that time. And it was the camper van.

It was the year of the camper van, and I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but I do remember a very large French genre who looked like, do you remember that? You will remember this. Hello? Hello? The, the British TV show, which, which [00:12:00] listeners really an amusing premise. It, it’s a classic English fast, but it’s set where it’s Englishman speaking with fake French accents is a resistance worker who runs a cafe in France.

It’s like Nazi occupied. France. Yeah. His name is Renee, and he’s having an affair with his two waitresses as well as trying to keep his very, this is very misogynistic, actually. Usually. Oh, was xenophobic. Misogynistic like I was, and racist and fully racist against the German and, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was, and, and so it picked a lot of

Mark Gammie: boxes

Jon Summers: and so obviously all young eng, all English people of a certain age la this shit up and all of us understand the cultural reference of Alo Lo.

And why the, how was I talking about the John looked like Rene presumably. No, he looked like the English airmen. They did the, the one that has the terrible accent that is the [00:13:00] policeman. He is an English man. Oh, good moaning. Good moaning. That one. Yeah, exactly like that. Well, anyway, but he wasn’t good moaning.

He was like, ’cause I tried the whole Oh, non, non. Yeah, I, I, I tried that and, and he was having none of that. And tr and uh, and you know, we, we, I can’t remember where he was cross about, I can’t remember what I’d done. I was, I remember the moped was loaded with beer, and I remember that when I resisted the moped or the beer being impounded, that it was like me or the beer.

And I remember that when I got back to camp. I was like amazed that I’d escaped, not arrested, and with the moped, and they were pissed off that there wasn’t beer. All the money had gone. I was like, I bought the beer, but the policemen confiscated and they were letting you were supposed to believe that, like you’ve stolen the money.

And I remember being like, you fucking idiots, which they were. In [00:14:00] fairness, I, that year I went with one guy who was a friend of to you. Seems a bit harsh. Sorry, doubting you seems pretty harsh. Yeah, but this was the same guy that rode away from me when I fell off in Germany on the jigsaw. Oh, that prick. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Him and another guy, the guy who encourages to do the camper van, he worked for a large oil company. I can’t remember your name if you listening, but you’ll remember who you are. And he recently received a job offer. You’ll be able to guess the oil company now, based upon the fact that he’d received a job offer to go and work for a very well known Italian firm in their motor racing team.

And do you know what he’d said? No. He wanted to stay in like Macclesfield or Ham or whatever, horrific northern British town, beginning with M and he didn’t wanna move to Italy and he didn’t wanna, and I was like. Weren’t you interested in working for, you know, that company with the Yellow Shield and the black horse?

You know, weren’t you kind of interested in that? And he went, you know, [00:15:00] no. I was like, oh dear. Oh dear. So, so I remember that show, all that a touch. That was the year of the heat stroke. I walked the circuit and I got all the worst heat stroke I’ve ever gotten. I passed out in the bushes just somewhere on the approach to sza.

I am gonna give you my selmo story. It’s with Nick, the lad that left me in, uh, in Germany, his mate, Ian. Who was a bit like Greek and nice guy, huge, big personality. A little irritating in, in a way that grief isn’t, you know, Greek’s mellow. Ian was a bit like, listen to me, but you know, nice enough guy, Nick knew him through, he was like a distributor.

When Nick like it, distributor, this is how we, we all, uh, we all knew each other, but Ian was a Ford guy, so, you know, I had a [00:16:00] bit of like bonding. He was from Essex, you know, so a bit of bonding with him around that. Ian really appreciated the learning. Really appreciated seeing your IRS 2000 that day at at your house.

Thank you for your time. I hope Nick didn’t treat you the way that he treated me. Unfortunately, I feel like Nick just doesn’t understand how to make friends with people. Nick, if you’re listening. I forgive you ’cause you’re probably a, you were a miserable person then and you’re probably still miserable now.

And I don’t wish any more misery on you by hating on you. I don’t hate on you. You gave me a really, really good story to tell. Had you come back and picked me up and never would’ve won the Suzuki G six R and maybe I never would’ve filled my garage. So your asshole actually helped me out, Nick. But Ian, you were a great guy and I really enjoyed doing them on with you and that suggestion.

Late at night when we were walking back from the Chinese mailer in and air to be like, you know, the cars on Za, they’re just down there. We could just like walk down that person’s driveway and into their back garden and probably see ’em. And I was young enough and foolish enough to be like, [00:17:00] fuck yeah, let’s do it.

So we did. You could lie on the bank. We were lying on the bank looking through the bushes, and I remember watching the Corvettes pass with flames outta the exhausts. The road must have been probably three feet from the hedge, and we were like lying, looking under the pritt hedge. The following year, the guy had like closed his gate and we weren’t able to do that anymore.

And, and looking online now, it seems that all of that land use in that part of the circuit has changed In the what? 25, 20, 25 years Since I did that. That’s my best of my memory to be like lying looking. I feel it’s like a NASCAR driver. Oh, I knew I wanted to be a racing car driver. I climbed up the fence and looked in and saw the cars racing.

It’s almost like that. So, yeah, so the Corvettes particularly a wonderful piece of theater. And in that moment I was, I couldn’t believe how close they were. I couldn’t believe how loud it was. It, it, it was, was a mixture of [00:18:00] high end Formula one bra, haha. And the island man tt and rallying. You know, it’s a little lane and it’s really fast and it’s in your face.

That’s. Fire and breaks and potential death.

Mark Gammie: Yeah. And the callbacks are typically, well, at least traditionally, were the loudest. So, you know, it’s not a surprise that you pick them out. Um, story if you have one. I mean, I dunno, I, I’ve got a specific one really. I mean, I, I will say that, you know, we touched on it briefly.

The drive down for English folks is often a tradition. I know a guy, you know, good mayor of mine. I haven’t spoken to Rages, but I, he’s still great guy. Stu goes down every year with his buddies and he drives his TVR down and various other things, and they’ve got a little crew of them that go, you know, the, the, the whole, they, they deliberately drive quite a long way east so they’re not on the direct route to have more fun on the roads on the way down, so they’re not getting driving through, you know, a speed trap every 15.

We stopped in a really nice little French, one of the classics at a little French town squares with a bistro sort of thing, and, you know, rocked up and had a really quite [00:19:00] nice and cost-effective, you know, sausage baguette with havoc, fruit, and, uh, a beer, and then carried on the dry. It’s, it’s a really delightful drive.

You’re lucky with the weather that year. It can be really nice, pleasant way to get down there.

Jon Summers: This is why the opening sequence of Lamar with McQueen driving there is so important. The drive. To the circuit, the concept, they call it laer. It’s important to understand the context of it. The other thing is it’s important to understand that the town is actually not conveniently placed for you to access the circuit remotely.

There’s no nearby any nearby, any hotels nearby. They’ll all be booked up with the 24 hour bike grand pri. Bike race, like Moto 24. Did that with my family a couple of years ago. I think I mentioned it on a separate pod, but we stayed at an Ibis hotel right by the train station. It took us more than two hours to walk.

Mark Gammie: Yeah, I mean that’s, that’s fine. Unusual. I mean, it’s a big circuit. It’s a really big circuit, and it’s France, not England. So. Things can be spread [00:20:00] out ’cause there’s enough room. So it is more like American distances in between things. So, and you know, if it’s a hot day, it’s hot and dusty and there’s a lot of people there and you know, there’s not a lot of shade.

So you, you do want to be careful of take a hat, you know, have plenty of water. If you’re gonna buy a t-shirt, take out a small mortgage before you go because it’s gonna be 120 quid for whatever the shitty t-shirt is. That is too busy. The Moto ones

Jon Summers: weren’t that expensive, I guess. Motos not LA more, is it?

Mark Gammie: Yeah, and we were, I, I’ve allowed for estimated inflation there, but I remember the t-shirts when I went there, which it must have been 10, 15, 20 years ago. What, 85 quid. So

Jon Summers: before we talk about the drive down, let’s talk about any other like, tips around. So, so we’re saying camping, we’re saying drive something decent down there.

’cause that’s part of it. What else are we saying? We’re saying that pro, if you don’t like camping, it’s fine. Just plan ahead and doing it. B or something like that. If you’re a pedal cyclist, that’s good. If you’re a [00:21:00] lazy mf, get an e-bike and, and that’s probably gonna help you. Yeah. The only challenge for any of those things is where do you leave them if you want to leave them.

Do you

Mark Gammie: even do that? Do you just like sit with it like on the bank somewhere? Yeah, you can do, but again, and that would be probably a pretty way, pretty good way to do it. But I mean, it’s all the bits around the circuit are several deep around every fence. You’ve gotta mooch out a ways around or be later, much later in the evening or the following morning in order to be able to get to the fence unless you get there early, early and have your chair and stake out your, uh, square footage.

Yeah. Fuck that. I’m not German, you know, I’m not doing that.

Jon Summers: This is the thing with it. Some people like to have the chair and sit in one place. I like to be a walkie all around. Yeah. I mean, it’s a long time, you know. It is a long time. It is. And you are also doing yourself a grave disservice if you don’t walk.

All around the pits in practice and you don’t do the fun fare at night and you don’t walk the whole circuit. You [00:22:00] know there’s a lot to do in that 24 hours, isn’t there?

Mark Gammie: It’s like

Jon Summers: rock shows and stuff around the start. There’s a firework display in the night. I should mention this French band called As.

Who myself, Ollie and Dana watched some of, and Ollie cites them as being the worst band he’s ever seen live. He’s like, we’re Ash and worse than crowbar. And I’m like, dude, I don’t like to be negative. You know, there may be Ash and uh, I don’t like to be negative, but possibly they even were. I mean mean crowbar worth shit though.

I should just say listeners, that both your hosts have seen crowbar at least four times together and probably, and I’ve seen crowbar six times I think altogether and, and I wish never having gone to see Crowbar, never having gone to see Crowbar and never having enjoyed them. The fact that they’re still, just to be clear here, they were always the support.

We only ever saw them supporting somebody else. What I don’t like, crowbar not knocking the car [00:23:00]

Mark Gammie: don’t like us. If you’re even, I mean, I’m sure they probably don’t like us and fair play to them. I would back them in their right to do that. But yeah, I mean that is a dedication to providing pretty poor rock.

Jon Summers: Over a lot of time. Don’t they call it metal core now? Isn’t it like a style of metal that you and I never got into? What shit? Moving on. Moving on. Um, music. What music should we do in this episode?

Mark Gammie: Tradition would suggest we should do that sort of weird French pop that is being played at 14-year-old discos, which has often got English lyrics in it that are deeply oversexualized for the age group that they’re being played to.

That would be a traditional thing to do. I can’t pretend to know that genre well enough, if I’m honest. Yeah, we, we’ll have to make do with that air sexy boy track, won’t we? We just have to do, yeah. I mean, that is a good track there. There’s a lot of that sort of thing, uh, I played in France and, um, fair play to them.

Uh, and look, I mean, I, I always say this about [00:24:00] any travel, have the radio on. Conflict through radios is if you’re traveling through countries in a car especially, gives you a real flavor of the country. You’re going through it. It adds value to the reason why you’re not flying over that country. You’re driving through it.

You get a real, you have to get out and fill up the car. You have to, you know, you stop and get food, you know, you get a flavor of the country. Anyway, the same thing with the radio.

Jon Summers: To that end, and this ties completely to Lamar. It’s an important thing to understand if you’ve not been to France before, if you don’t know France, is that they have toll roads and non toll roads.

And toll roads are like American highways. They’re perfectly maintained and so on. And you always see a lot of cars on fire in France for some reason. You notice that always a lot of cars on. Whatever. Maybe they just, I don’t know what, why the call, what the call, so they don’t drive that fast, do they? And, and they do like police crazily.

But isn’t it like 130 Ks? Isn’t that the, the limit on the, yeah. Anyway, the, the shtick I’m talking about is that thing in your Google Maps app where you can be like, avoid highways. Because if [00:25:00] you avoid highways as I’ve been doing, I’ve been doing this in England recently, my word driving England on the A roads, it’s slow.

In every town it’s like a huge bottleneck. But in between the towns, it’s the green and pleasant land. How it’s road about and Americans and other people from around the world travel to sea. You know, it’s really there. Like the cots worlds is really, if you. Ignore all the traffic and the new ugly houses on the edge of town.

Cotswolds are exactly as you would imagine them to be if you were like a reader of Yeah. Yeah. If you watch Miss Marple Mysteries made in I, if you ride a

Mark Gammie: motorbike, the traffic

Jon Summers: isn’t

Mark Gammie: even

Jon Summers: that

Mark Gammie: bad.

Jon Summers: If you ride a motorbike, the traffic isn’t even that bad. I fully agree. The point is that France is the same, right?

That if you stay off those main roads and if you go through the small towns and villages, oh my word, it is a rewarding travel experience and uh, yeah, I encourage visitors doing them

Mark Gammie: off, do it that way. The flip side of that is if you need to make quick progress. And if you are doing a fly in and out, it can be very [00:26:00] useful depending on where you’re coming in and out of.

I’ll give you the example. If you fly into, um, burgundy, sorry. No, the, uh, yeah. Um, what’s the, uh, place at the bottom? Bordeaux? Yeah, Bordeaux. If you plan to Bordeaux, rent a car, and then you’re flying and you’re driving down to the Pyrenees. That section of Poage there, it’s just about the least used section of Poage.

But if you just want to thrash down to the mountains, I think I saw four cars on it, and we arrived at sort of eight 15 guy in the car, in the rental car blasted down to um PO for the PO GP. And it took about an hour and 15 minutes, about 95 miles, something like that. Hardly any other cars, no speed cameras.

And when I spoke to the host about it and he said, yeah, the French don’t sort of resented the money it got spent to build it. So they don’t use it and they don’t want to pay. They’d rather just drive. And I am, and I can, you know, respect that. Yeah. Doesn’t mean you can really blast down there

Jon Summers: in northern Spain.

I did a trip to Northern Spain with Dana years ago when at that time the. EU had recently paid for loads of like payout [00:27:00] of highway toll roads to be built, but the trucks didn’t wanna pay the tolls, so they stayed on the a. On what? On what In England would be like the A roads, you know, driving through the tows and you’d, you’d see, you’d be on the toll road and you’d see the trucks driving slowly on the, a roads between the towns, like running parallels.

So I don’t know why this, what the situation was there, why they didn’t want to use. The main roads didn’t wanna pay, didn’t wanna, because the motorway services there were absolutely deserted. You’d like stop at motorway services in the middle of the day. And if it was like one in England, it’d be like rammed with people.

They’d be like hundreds of cars there and there’d be like three cars there and you’d go in the dining area and they’d be like all the staff there, but nobody actually eaten any food. It was really peculiar. I mean that was, this was what, 20 years ago now? So it’s maybe, uh, maybe different now. The point is that you can really.

Cover some ground. I mean, I set the, we had a BMW, like an F 93 2 8 BMW is the rental car, which is our new car then, so it shows how long [00:28:00] ago it was, and I remember setting the crews at a speed that began in miles an hour with a one and a two. I mean, that is our, like I also being asked by a Passat turbo diesel with German number plates on it, and I was like, oh, that’ll be the sales rep, won’t it?

That’ll be a sales rep on the way to meet somebody in the south of the country kind of thing. You gotta make

Mark Gammie: progress. I, I will say in the summer, be real careful because the, the, the end roads are fine. But the poage

Jon Summers: does

Mark Gammie: get jammed. This is,

Jon Summers: isn’t it? We’re now stepping away from my experiences in Northern

Mark Gammie: Spain and stepping, yeah, this is back in France, but in the pay is, you know, France is the most visited country in the world.

It’s a big country. It’s got a pretty good road network and it’s well maintained and it’s a decent speed of throughput. But you will get traffic, you know, you will get, and as the further south you go, the worse the traffic will get. So, be clever, set off early, or don’t mind driving in the night, you know, and you can make [00:29:00] some really good progress.

But that’s the way to do it because that’s the way that you’ll, you can use the road effectively and cover some serious miles and you know, if you’ve got a family, plug ’em in in the back and let ’em sleep. You know, if, if you drive, drive it on on a bank holiday or a weekend, you know it’s gonna be heaving and you’re gonna spend ages and ages and traffic.

Jon Summers: There’s a movie, isn’t there? I can’t remember the name of it, with a Mustang. He’s got a Mustang and a GT 40 and it set in France and there’s a scene where he has to drive elo, wins the Monte Carlo rally or something. He has to drive through the night from the south of France up to Paris. I vaguely remember.

It’s black and white. I can’t remember the name of it. It’s not very good for the pod, is it? My God. Not all the detail we give, isn’t it? It’s all the detail we give. I know, I know. But the beauty with it is, is I am gonna be able to edit myself in. And it sounds unnatural because I always take up the time to set up the microphone again.

I don’t just hit record on the pc, so when I interrupt myself, it goes like, and it sounds like completely different. So it’s gonna, [00:30:00] it’ll be fine. It’ll be just perfect,

Mark Gammie: smooth.

Jon Summers: The movie is a norm at un, A Man and a Woman. It’s 1966. It’s slow, but it’s worth watching for the cast. Alright here, endeth part one.

Of this series on Lamar, and this is the end of our thoughts on accommodations, logistics, and, and practical stuff. The future episodes are around history more. If I can be coherent.

Crew Chief Eric: This episode has been brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports as part of our Motoring Podcast network. For more episodes like this, tune in each week for more exciting and educational content from organizations like The Exotic Car [00:31:00] Marketplace, the Motoring Historian, break Fix, and many others. If you’d like to support Grand Touring Motorsports and the Motoring Podcast Network, sign up for one of our many sponsorship tiers at www.patreon.com/gt Motorsports.

Please note that the content, opinions and materials presented and expressed in this episode are those of its creator, and this episode has been published with their consent. If you have any inquiries about this program, please contact the creators of this episode via email or social media as mentioned in the episode.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 A Themed Episode Begins
• 01:25 Le Mans Stories and Anecdotes
• 04:02 Camping and Accommodation Tips
• 08:44 Driving to Le Mans
• 23:22 Music and Entertainment at Le Mans
• 24:02 Travel Tips and Road Experiences
• 30:16 Conclusion and Future Episodes