No wonder I’m smiling, with the ear defenders on I can’t hear a word Steve says!
This little chap is a gift for my niece … He’s enjoying his trip around the track at Modena
Sunday October 26: Sorry for the delay in keeping up with my blog! Honestly, the pace of the navigational rally has been relentless with starts most days at 8.30am, which means we have to be in the car ready to line up shortly after 8am and not getting back to the hotel until 6ish most evenings, with dinner at 8pm… it’s exhausting, but we’re holding up well. No arguments so far, although that could be because we can’t actually talk to each other while we’re driving as Peach is soooo loud! Hand signals are coming in handy, and so far we’ve managed to keep it all very civilised, as you’d expect.
Today we drove 118 miles to the city of Modena and the autodrome, which involved quite a lot of motorway to get there… my ears were ringing by the time we arrived on a beautiful, hot, sunny Sunday afternoon. We took part in some special stages trials in the paddock… mainly slaloming between traffic cones in 30 seconds (not as easy as it looked, as it happens) then we enjoyed a delicious buffet lunch before the Italian Job Minis were directed on to the track by the marshalls for a parade. The pace was too slow for Steve to really enjoy it but the Minis were well received and we enjoyed our five minutes of fame!
Afterwards we were off the clock and free to explore the area. We chose, along with a few friends, to visit Casa Ferrari, the home of Enzo Ferrari, which is now an impressive motor museum. If we were hoping to see Ferraris we were to be disappointed, they had an exhibition of Maseratis to celebrate the marque’s centenary. Some of the cars were absolutely gorgeous, though, particularly those of the late 1950s – they had real class and evoked an era when motoring was something rather special.
Tonight we’re staying at the Spinetta Marengo in Allessandria, a couple of hours outside of Turin. The hotel has a pool… bliss I can’t wait to dip a toe in the warm(ish) water (mind you, it had a whirlpool thingy and I couldn’t swim against the current. I’d have been going round in circles (there’s a theme emerging, have you spotted it yet?) for ages if Steve hadn’t formed a human dam and literally grabbed my arm and threw me out of the whirlpool into the main pool – it was hilarious! There’s a pizza restaurant adjacent to the hotel so with a couple of our new found friends, Malcolm and Jonathan, a father and son from Scarborough and Cannes respectively, we ate royally, just like kings in fact!