Driving into the lightening sky was pretty cool until we had almost reached Dover, the sun came up and became completely blinding.
Waiting to board the 07:30 ferry,silhouetted by that sun.
Dangerous* ground clearance was actually not found to be a problem, just the tow hitch or trailer jockey wheel making contact on the ramps.
As you can see I had made some suitable modifications to the car. Nice old Lucas yellow headlamp converters which I polished a bit to try and remove some of the lighter scratches.
and an old hard plastic moulded GB plate, found at my mum’s.
It was lovely to see this in my mirror following us out of the port. Dutch registered, I wondered if they’d been over for that recent Citroen fest.
We cruised along with them for a couple of miles, and they seemed to like our combo too.
Unfortunately that level of spotting was not to be maintained over the week away. In fact while stood at the top of the Arc de Triomphe I’d take photos of pretty much anything.
Down the bottom I was gutted to miss capturing the Mk2 Cavalier convertible and only managed these.
Hello Sailor!
Was not expecting to see a Hornet on the Champs Elysee though.
That was the only time we spent in central Paris, much of the time away being to go to Disneyland as a treat for Ickle_Seth.
Some cool looking fake Deco.
One of the parades was ‘Disney Cars and Stars’. I came away hoping that the cars were mostly fake too.
Note I have completely chopped off Mary Poppins’ head here.
Great wobbly panel fit makes me think this is a fibreglass Merc.
Only EVIL people paint flames on their cars.
Hmm, this rat infested Stude may be the real thing though.
Right, enough of that for the moment. The electric hook up stanchions on the campsite light up at night somewhat eerily. Note they combined these with the water supply.
I shall be doing a thread on the blue forum all about the Reims-Geux circuit as I went beyond just the usual ‘pits’ spot. Consider these a sneak preview.
Though obviously I did have to do the usual. Fabulous to finally explore this place as I have seen it in photographs for so many years.
Reims itself is a pretty town/city, apparently much damaged in the first world way a lot was rebuilt in the ‘20s/’30s and so took on the Art Deco style then prevalent.
This old garage was in the shadow of the Cathedral.
They have more recently managed to seamlessly* incorporate modern architecture.
I might have been the only tourist to take a photo of this city centre car park though.
Franco-Hirst Cabs.
Can you tell I was a bit desperate for spots?
This battered/gaffer taped Golf was good though.
Another reason for going to Reims was this place, that Bryn (of R-R/journo fame) told us about, located within walking distance of the centre.
But you’re going to have to wait for more photos as that will take me a while to sort on its own. It was simply amazing though. Here’s the car park for now.
Back to Disney the next day.
Corsa-a-like best for mid bike engine RWD pretend film making doughnuts.
I’d love to know if this was a genuine old Ice Cream truck as it certainly had that look about it but almost everything is fake, and in the film studios bit is even pretending to be fake.
Say NO to disco dancing.
Anyone want to run the plates?
Final spot in this batch (theres a few on Mrs_Seth spot/phone-cam) was British.
Time to head home, pausing to pick up une baguette for lunch from the village boulangerie.
Only thing of ‘worth’ on the motorway was this old 406D chugging along, though I saw a DS Safari heading the opposite way. Other cars seen but not photographed included a #72 ish (lardy spec) Mustang and an Ami 8 Break which was probably best spot of the holiday.
This was taken shortly after the only time I had to jack the car up. On the way back from Reims I noticed we’d lost air pressure in the rear shocks and discovered that the connector on the drivers side shock had loosened. Tightening it up did the trick. But on the way in to the ferry port there was some serious ‘slow down’ ripples in the road and the pipe got knocked or blew out all together as I saw them too late and went a bit quick over them. So the car was sat on the stops as we pulled up. Just had to jack it up and re-fit the pipe/connector which fortunately were all still present though I did have spares in case. Total mileage for the break, including the UK stretches, was just about 900 miles.
The only other issue with the car was the flasher unit that has a bit of a loose connection, is normally fine but played up a bit at one point. Cleaning the connectors and a bit of wiggling got it working perfectly for the rest of the holiday. The fresh engine performed well and coped much better than it would have done before the hi-po tuning on some of the hills.
Back to England with the expected weather welcome.
Museum contents to follow another day.
