With my last post finishing with the end of our Sim Racing Expo visit, a lot has happened in these 2 days since. So much of it, that I needed a day to kind of gather my strength back, get enough sleep and rest to be able to function properly. On Sunday, which was 2 days ago, at the time of writing this, we spend roughly 18 hours on the road, getting from Dortmund, all the way to England. It was not just the driving that took that long, we’ve done and seen some incredible things on the way, but it was still exhausting.
My day began early in the morning, checking out of the hotel I was staying in. I know I haven’t said much about the hotels yet, but I am thinking about dedicating a special post, just to that in the future. Meeting up with friends that I was going to travel back to England with, and we sat in the cars and left Dortmund relatively early, not knowing what an exhausting day was ahead of us.
Our first stop on that journey was the Motor World near Cologne in Germany. It You can enter the establishment free of charge, and it displays some of the most amazing cars I have ever seen, let it be road cars, or even some race cars. But the most interesting thing (for me at least), was on the upper floor, with Michael Schumacher’s collection of F1 cars on display, his suits, helmets and gloves all being on show right there as well. Being a Ferrari fan myself, and seeing that many Ferrari F1 cars all in one place was just incredible!
The journey continued to one of the biggest highlights of this trip yet! It took us just over an hour being on the road again, getting to one of the most (in)famous tracks in the world, the Nürburgring Nordschleife. With having driven around the track in different racing games as much as we have, getting there in person, was an experience we will never forget. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t really want to cooperate with us, at least not at the arrival. It started raining, and seeing as how we were just about to get ready to drive on the track, the conditions weren’t really ideal. But we ended up waiting for a little bit, and the weather cleared so we set off to do a lap of the Nordschleife. And what an experience that was!
That lap had mixed conditions, with rain starting to fall heavily again just about halfway through our lap, but even despite that, being on the track, seeing what it’s like in person and how it feels to be driving on it, even just as a passenger, it really was insane! No words can really describe the feelings, but after that first lap, we all decided we would do another one right after. I spent that first lap mostly taking photos and videos, so I said I won’t take my phone out of my pocket for the second lap, and just enjoy and take it all in as best as I can. Driving around the track in a game doesn’t really do it justice, I have to say. Yes, they can try and make it as close as possible, but you don’t feel all the elevation changes as you do on the real track, which is completely understandable, and that was one thing that surprised me the most. Just how it feels do go over all the crests and compressions of the track and the feeling of all the forces working against your body.
After that, we ended up buying another ticket for one final lap of the track, where all of us sat in one car and had a go all together. Eventually, it was time to leave that track, and head off to our next stop, which was in Belgium. The drive to that place was amazing as well, with the views from the road like you can see on the cover photo of this post.
We were headed for Spa-Francorchamps race track, but when we got there, unfortunately, we weren’t really able to see much of the track itself. Took a few photos of the entry sign, with a small part of the track in the background, but sadly, that was it.
And from that point on, it was time to head through the rest of Belgium and into France, to get to the Eurotunnel channel crossing to get to England. We knew it was going to be quite tight on time, but we managed to get to the tunnel with quite some time left to spare so it was all good in the end!
The whole day was super exciting and full of new experiences, like driving on a real race track, but after we got “home”, it was time to just relax and get some rest. We have been on the road for about 18 hours in total, which took its toll on all of us. Which is why, we didn’t really do all that much the next day, meaning Monday, but today’s day (Tuesday) was something completely different. Another pretty tiring day, but full of incredible things, so stay tuned for more coming soon!
Blogging with Jure 