Today's school for the kids was a field trip!
At our last accommodation, they particularly enjoyed a go-kart amongst the kids bikes to play on. This led to yesterday's school being a go-kart designing session. Just by chance, a trip to the Nurburgring Nordschleife today was the natural progression to see some of yesterday's engineering principles clearly on display.
The racetrack is the longest in the world, and dates back almost a hundred years. It is unusual in that the Nordschleife section is classified as a public toll road, and has driving rules to clarify this and ensure the safety of the public using it. Unfortunately though most insurers will specifically exclude it from your policy!
Unable to afford the insurance for the Espace, or the price of a Ring Taxi, we settled for spectating at the nearest corner of the track to our accommodation. It turned out to be a great introduction to Nurburgring, as we parked next to another English essie with a front row view of the track!
As it turned out, we would have been unable to drive a lap today, as the track was reserved for manufacturer testing, but this made for an ideal opportunity for Felix to get some shots on his camera through the camera slot in the safety fencing. There were several cars in camouflage, including SUV's, being driven extremely hard by the factory drivers. These are cars that are close to production, but not yet released, so we had fun trying to identify them.
There were some more familiar cars on track, with some VW Golfs under testing, and some Ring Taxi trainees putting laps in all day long. Somewhat similar to London cabbies doing 'the knowledge' I imagine, with intimate knowledge of over 70 corners around nearly 13 miles being a prerequisite to taking any passengers around.
The highlight was a pair of Ford GT cars in testing, a blue one and a yellow one, both driving to the cars limit, really showing how hard the other cars were trying, as these two made it look effortless.
We had a walk along the track (outside the fence!) to the next corner, and this emphasised how challenging the track is. It was a steep climb on foot, and you could see the cars lifting as they came up and over the crest of the hill, which was on a bend, before the next corner and bottoming out before the next hill. The total rise is over 1000 feet for a full lap.
We went back to the accommodation for lunch, and picked Emily up to go to the Nurburgring visitor centre. There were some sports cars mooching around the car park, and we walked over to the massive entrance buildings. We sized up the museum and go-karting, and the shops, but at this stage in our travels the budget is too tight, especially at the inflated prices the shop was charging - £25 for a mug? Nope.
Emily was keen by this point to actually see some cars on track, so we went back to the morning's parking spot at Brünnchen to see what was about for Emily to put into today's Navorama instagram post. We saw more of the same cars from the morning - the drivers must be shattered after a day's work here! We had the added bonus of Lowenna foraging for blackberries for us, but hunger eventually took us pizza shopping at the supermarket. Then it was back to the flat, to go through our 100's of pictures and work out when I can afford to come back and have a proper drive!
Published on Tuesday 14 August 2018
Comments
You still forgot the deer! :D
Posted by Your wife on Tuesday 14 August 2018