Aysedasi's Le Mans

When making the booking with M.R.I. I had purchased tickets for both of us for the coach excursion to both Arnage and Mulsanne corners.  I hadn’t bothered to check the time of our trip (which would depart from outside the circuit, back at the garage bleu, not far from where our coach was parked), as I was sure in my mind that it was 7.50 p.m.  So Peter and I carried on snapping away at the Esses until about 6.30 pm, when we thought we had better make tracks back to the departure point, as it would take a good half an hour to get there.

We didn’t exactly hurry as we thought we had plenty of time in hand, and I even stopped to buy some t-shirts, very similar to the black ones I bought last year (from the very same stall in fact), on the way back through the Village to the underpass under the start/finish straight.  We got back to the coach at 7.25 pm, and I took the opportunity to change my socks and t-shirt, before deciding it would be a good idea to check the tickets for the excursion.

I was somewhat taken aback when I saw the departure time on our tickets was 7.20 p.m. and not 7.50 p.m.!  I couldn’t understand how I'd managed to get the time wrong.  Peter and I raced back to the M.R.I. marquee, where the staff were really unhelpful, saying that we had missed the boat.  Neither Peter or I were prepared to accept that, so we made our way anyway to the departure point for the coaches and explained our dilemma to the M.R.I. representative who was waiting to load up the next coach. 

The coaches were local hired buses booked by M.R.I.   Again, the rep was neither interested nor particularly helpful, but we were eventually able to persuade him that we might take up a couple of seats on the strict understanding that if the coach was full and there were two people with tickets for the correct time wishing to board it, we would have to give up our seats.

We had a wait of about 10 minutes or so until 8.00 p.m., when the coach finally left the garage bleu, luckily with us on it.  It meant of course that although we were very relieved at managing to get on our excursion, we would have a lot less time than we had originally expected at Arnage, before we would have to leave to catch up with our correct coach for the trip to Mulsanne.  We arrived at Arnage at about 8.20 pm, still in brilliant sunshine, determined to make the best use of the half an hour or so which we still had left to us there.

I took the best part of two reels of film of cars heading around the Arnage corner, watching out in particular for the Ferrari 333SP’s, which flamed out beautifully as they dropped down through the gearbox in preparation for the corner.  I was determined to make sure we caught the next coach, so I dragged Peter away after about 25 minutes, to join the queue for the coach to Mulsanne.