JULY 2006
Author: Kelvin
Mmm, well the first night in Lourdes started with Burt
(Bristol bloke that lives in Holland with his Dutch girlfriend - Julie) who
appeared at his balcony in Jule's G-string - remember this is Lourdes and a
family hotel with other paying guests...
I saved a drunk French bloke (dfb) from getting lynched. He staggered over to
the cars, as drunk blokes do, and unfortunately (for him) took a shine to
Walshy's car. Walshy was being restrained from lamping him while a few others
proceeded to tell the DFB to fark off. However, his approach never works with
drunk blokes of any nationality so I intervened as I can normally talk my way
out of any situation. To be fair to the DFB he was genuinely interested in the
cars, how fast, how much power etc I should add at this point that he spoke no
English and was completely hammered so it was incoherent French and I don't
speak any French anyway. I figured out his questions from the international brum
brum noises and steering wheel action. Eventually I walked him across the road
to the train station.
A 95 year old hooker fell over and cracked her head on the ground right outside
the hotel. Now I say hooker, she may well have been a pilgrim but we all agreed
that she was a hooker. A crowd had gathered (of mainly English Lotus drivers)
pointing and asking ARE YOU ALRIGHT DARLIN...Figuring that she must have weighed
less than two 48 shod Victory alloys I went and phoned for an ambulance who
promptly turned up and pronounced her to be a bit mad (using the international
sign for madness) and sent her on her way.
The hotel in Lourdes was supposed to have a pool, what it had was a big hole in
the ground and even that wasn't quite finished. The ever resourceful LoT crew
were unphased by this and bought one of those self rising pools which took the
entire evening to fill and of course several folk got chucked in.
We went to a funfair in Lourdes on our last night there. A
few of us walked and a few got a taxi (an Espace - this has some relevance) The
walkers set off first and were duly caught up by the Espace which stopped with
Paul Golding and Jez Braker hanging out of it. We all sprinted over to it and
climbed in...so there were about 10/11 of us in this Espace and the driver set
off to complete the journey...all 10 feet of it as he drove across the road and
said 'you're here' We are literally 2 minutes into the funfair and we spot a
shooting gallery. In the UK shooting galleries use air rifles but here in France
we had a choice of 2 handguns, a machine gun and two pump action shot guns. Paul
bought the machine gun and the two shotguns and I went first...you had to simply
shoot 3 spinning clays to win a prize, I got the first two and missed the last
but it's a funfair and the clays are < 10 feet away so clearly the last shell is
a blank. Walshy goes next, hits the first clay, misses the second (his blank)
and turns to me and says so you reckon the last shell is a blank and before I
can answer he aims at a bottle of champagne (one of the prizes) and blows the
top off it! All hell breaks out, the guy that runs the stall leaps over the
counter and grabs the gun with Walshy protesting he's a bad shot, meanwhile two
large blokes appear behind us so we all scarper into the funfair. The next thing
we see is one of the those funhouses so we all pile in there. What a laugh it
is. Paul and I figure it's safer to get in and out while the rest of them fight
with each other in the funhouse. There are two large bags of plastic balls that
'somehow' get opened and start spilling everywhere, bloke that runs it is going
mental and a big crowd is gathering to watch 12 men fall about on their arses
trying to get out of this funhouse. We also went on this really mental ride
where you are spun around at 70 mph an hour on the end of a 40 metre long metal
girder and it was actually quite scary.
This takes us up to day 4 although I've only covered 3 of those days as I
arrived late on the first night. Part two tomorrow that will cover theft,
fireworks, Bastille day lightshows, more Walshy fighting with me intervening,
the LoT traffic calming scheme among others...
Part Deux
Before we finaly leave Lourdes, there's one incident I forgot to mention. One of
the cars wouldn't start at Pau and it was diagnosed as an immobiliser problem so
it was brought back on the trailer. The AA were called and they eventually sent
out a local mechanic (this is pretty late at night) However, before the mechanic
turned up Steve Williams (of South West Lotus) fixed it as it was really just a
flat battery. The mechanic turns up and has a quick look, turns round and picks
up a jug of water and pours it over the battery then the car is started up. He
turns to all of us says it's a miracle! You had to be there but given we were in
Lourdes it was really quite funny.
So we've left Lourdes and are now on our way to Clermont Farrand via the Millau
Viaduct and the Charade racing circuit for some parade laps which I covered in
the first post. That done, we head down to the Holiday Inn in Clermont. This is
a big hotel with some 90 rooms and underground parking so the cars will be fine.
However, this is a big hotel with a big underground car park that only has 26
spaces allocated to it, many of which were already full. All of the other spaces
are allocated to companies but given that it's after 7pm we figured it's fine to
dump the cars where we like, a fact confirmed by the bloke behind the reception
desk (we'll come back to this later). We have dinner then head out into town.
The others have found an Irish pub a few hundred yards away from the hotel, in
fact there are two Irish pubs a street apart. However, the second Irish pub has
the advantage of having a kebab shop across the street which is where we find
Paul and Jez. We all agreed that they were the best kebabs we'd ever had (Cordon
bleu kebabs) so much so they all had another one later on the evening although
unfortunately for 4mill he never kept the second one for long (-: So we are sat
outside this bar under some massive Beamish brolly's enjoying a few beers and a
laugh. Paul has taken a shine to one of the brolly's figuring it would look
quite good in his garden and is trying to convince someone to have it away.
Eventually someone agrees, and they do indeed have it away. However, the rest of
us are still sat there and are starting to come up with a range of stories for
when the bar staff notice that one of their brolly's is missing. My suggestion
is to say nothing and play dumb if asked. I figure that the bar staff are so
harassed by the fact that we won't leave, that they simply won't notice that the
brolly is missing because they'll think that someone else has taken it in. In
fact, I doubt they noticed it was missing until they took in the second brolly.
They are also trying to shut up the bar for the night while the people that live
nearby are threatening to phone the police because of the noise. Anyway, we
quietly leave and aren't chased down the street by some upset bar staff asking
for their brolly back.
Like many French towns, Clermont is in the process of being upgraded and
modernised. As a result, there were lots of large plastic red and white bollards
all over the place. These join up to provide a makeshift wall that can be used
to block roads and re-route traffic. As it turned out a standard French Frolic
game is to re-re-route the traffic. In this case the new route was off the main
road and straight down into an underground car park..hold that thought we'll be
back in a minute. While the new route was being built two French blokes
appeared, one loud and very drunk and his more sober pal, who had that 'bollocks
here we go again' look on his face as his drunk pal proceeded to hurl abuse and
chase us down the street; maybe he was a road worker and took offence at our
handiwork. Anyway, Walshy being Walshy was a bit peeved at being shouted at by
another DFB so squared up to him. There's a Police station 100 yards to our
right (I know we're re-arranging street furniture in front of a Police station)
and I figure that I don't really want to spend the night in the cells so jumped
in between them both. The DFB's sober mate has the same idea...so picture the
scene we have to our left a DWB (Drunk welsh bloke) being walked backwards by me
telling him that it's best we walk away and to our right a DFB being walked
backwards by his mate presumably saying much the same thing...so back to LoT
re-re-route. As we are in France the French are simply driving up onto the
pavement and going around the roadblock. Well at least they all do this except
for a cop car who drives straight down into the car park. Now I don't know what
happened after that as we all made a hasty retreat.
You'll remember at the start, I said that the bloke behind the reception desk
said it would be ok to park anywhere. Right, so we are back at the hotel and
there has been a shift change. The new bloke behind the reception desk is pretty
adamant that it's not ok that we are parked everywhere telling us that in the
morning the workers will not be pleased that we are in their spaces and may even
damage the cars particularly as some of the signs above the spaces appeared to
be missing! Anyway, it's nearly 2am and most people are drunk and myself and
Nipper (another one of the LoT crew) negotiate with the hotel that we will come
back at 07:15 when the manager arrives and sort it out then. I go back to my
room, waking Robin up in the process and tell him the problem. 07:15 arrives too
soon and Robin has gone off downstairs to sort it out. I sleepily follow and
poor Nipper already there looking slightly harassed as the French workers are
starting to turn up. Robin takes charge and the plan is to get a list of all the
English sounding names and go wake them up to tell them that if they are part of
our group they need to move their car. Eventually this old battleaxe hotel
manager appears who takes over and basically just she starts talking and doesn't
stop until we've all moved.
Now we are off to Le Mans and the Novotel on the outskirts of the town. It has a
pool that isn't a hole in the ground and the manager assures us it has plenty of
beer (the other hotels ran out of beer and glasses) He also makes all sorts of
promises about food and where we can eat that isn't exactly accurate and I
notice a pattern forming. It seems that, in France, whenever you ask a hotel
staffer a question, the answer is invariably yes regardless of whether they can
meet your request or not. I guess they figure they'll be a shift change and it
won't be their problem to sort out. Anyway, we have dinner and there's general
mayhem with seats being 'doctored' and the chucking of bread rolls. I'm
absolutely knackered and start nodding off at the table so decide to head off to
bed for an earlish night so not sure what happened after that.
Day two at the Le Mans Novotel and we decide to head off into town for dinner.
It's also Bastille Day and the manager tells us that the town will be very busy
(it wasn't) Most of the bigger eating places are also shut (it being Bastille
Day) so we descend on a bar and Paul negotiates with the bar that we'll stay
there all night (20 of us) as long as we can order Pizza. 30 minutes later 21
Pizza's turn up. While they are being dished out, Skeggsy (another LoT crew
member) jumps on one of the Pizza bikes and does a circuit of the square.
The Golding challenge for the evening is to climb the front of the hotel next
door and steal the flags that are flying. Only Skeggsy manages it and comes back
with the Union Flag. Paul also manages to obtain some firecrackers from some
kids which he sets off among us all.
Beside us there's a huge cathedral and on one side of it they have a lightshow,
which was actually quite impressive. It's also animated with angels flying about
and other animated religious scenes. I suspect this is quite a big deal in Le
Mans judging by the number of people crowded round watching it but I also
suspect that they weren't so impressed when the Breetish burst into Rule
Britannia!
And that was pretty much it. All in all a fairly mad week.
I don't know what the collective speeding fine tally was but a few folk got
done. There was also some interesting overtaking manoeuvres using the cycle
lanes.
Au revoir