Club Arnage

what about the other sites ??

empty is the way I would describe it....either the french only used it on Saturday night, or the agencies didn't sell their allocations...whatever happened, there were a number of empty pitches, which as you can imagine went down like a fart in a lift with those who walked 2 miles from HA to get to MB, when we could have all pitched in MB if the ACO sorted themselves out.....

eeerrr ??? ::)

• Bleu Nord looked pretty crowed and well organised. I never got the evening atmosphere, but it looked friendly, crowded and Bleu-ish as usual (dusty and holes in the ground).
• Thirstday Party at the Brethren show us a Houx Annex that seemed 10 times livelier then Maison Blanche was this year, a happy mess (then again, it was dark and I got drunk there pretty fast - so cannot remember it all ;))
• Maison Blanche was ridiculously well organised, and still had empty gaps on Sunday morning! My guess is we had the only party going there, the rest was very, very quiet (except for JPC & crew having enough to tell after arrival).

I thought we had a great pitch on MB. Excellent viewing spot and quiet during the race as we were on a throttle-loose spot. Maybe a bit too wide for the Friday party, unless we invite 1000 people next year (how many barrels will we need then, Max? ;))

Loved the pitch we had on HAN, except for the uphill walk to the village, 20 minutes, and the distance to the DfH party, 50 minutes.
My knees still ache.
5 minutes to the Tetra Rouge banking was great to watch the Group C race on Saturday morning then back for breakfast.

Went there on wednesday and it looked very different to the last few years.
The DfH boys had a great spot -deservedly- but the lack of trees and abundance of asphalt and gravel were a put-off.

However there is not much of an alternative, we enjoyed HA-S but that will be gone next year.
Don't know about Houx but that looks like a good and only option apart from MB.

I heard rumours about the ACO buying several fields to compensate for the camping spots lost from by local friends, but I wouldn't know where that might be.

If you donot _have_ to be trackside, which MB doesn't guarantee, than Houx or what might be left of HA could be an alternative.

Quiet and very much more civilized than previous years! ;)  :'(  Also  very empty, many pitches still not occupied by Saturday.  There just was not the 'cameraderie' of previous years - and you had to walk a lot further for your next beer!  The JPC'ers were probably a bit more subdued than normal after the stress of the journey down, luckily we were still close to our good friends  DfH.  Their pitch was excellent - now if CA could just book up that entire corner of  MB..............................

HAN was the nuts as far as I'm concerned, it had a great ambiance and feel about it. I also agree with Barry, the trek from HAN to MB for the DfH hootenanny was crucifying. I could have quite easily dug myself a grave and happily laid down on the way home. Queen Vic also took a dive thanks to the Riskmeisters offroading course, thankfully she only suffered surface damage.
HAN for me next year, ACO allowing of course.

Rusty

My first time on BN this year (usually on KN) and generally I thought it was good.

Marked pitches worked fine. Made a nice change to be able to go out in the car and not come back and find the space gone with someone else's tent.

I think the marked pitches meant some of the atmosphere was missing, but maybe that was becuase our group was small and we kept to ourselves.

All our neighbours were friendly enough, so no real complaint.

BN is handy for getting out to Arnage and is a sensible walk to porsche curves. It does however feel a longer walk into the circuit, even though the nearest gate is MB.

And you do feel isolated from the track action when you are back on camp. The beauty of KN is that you can sit in your tent and feel the cars go past, with BN it is a faint rumble in the distance.

I will probably opt for BN next year, as there are noticable positives, and the fact KN looked absolute chaos this year.

But it is in the hands of the ACO of course.......

Did anybody see anyone using the Peugeot hospitality that had reduced HA??
There was so much wasted space there!

Still, HA Sud was a blast!!

Surely we must be close to getting a CA campsite??? (other than on BSJ)
We need someone to ask the ACO if we can have all of Petite Houx (I can't speak enough French!)

MB was quit this year.

Even on friday a couple arrived asking where the pitches are with electricity.
Lot of newbie's who got 1 or 2 tickets from an office for only the weekend.

Still the fencing en security ( up until monday morning ) and trackside make it worthwile.

Still we ( I ) missed the other bigger groups on MB.



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We were on BN again this year, which was pretty full and fine.  Unlike last year, we were unaffected by pikie thieving this year.  The marked pitches worked well and meant that the space to park your car was preserved, although this meant fewer people overall and the site as a a whole seemed quieter.  The bog/shower block complex near us had been halved by the Just Tickets enclosure surrounded by Heras fencing, which neatly carved the complex blocks into two - one lot for them and the others for everyone else, so only half the amount there was actually available for general consumption.  Not sure how that was achieved, other than a back-hander to the site "controle", but thought this was rather an offside move and will probably drop a snotty note to Just Tickets and the ACO.  Our immediate neighbours were a nice international blend from UK, Denmark, France and Germany.  The Frenchies had trundled up from the Haute Savoie - an old bloke, his son and missus, and 3 grandchildren - got chatting to the old bloke, who was born and raised in Le Mans.  Real interest value as he was at Le Mans in '55, aged 8, standing trackside a hundred yards or so yards towards MB from the finish line, when Levegh's car ploughed into the crowd.  His recollections of it all were both colourful and moving.

As to the other sites we saw/visited:

MB - Astonishingly quiet (except for the DfH party) and under-populated, but I suspect that the ACO were over-cautious in their release of tickets, given the chaos and tight timescales of the earlier works.  Amazing that you could go to the Rotunda on saturday and buy a MB ticket - I wonder if that has ever happended before....

KN - seemed as busy as ever with the massive Danish contingent still occupying nearly half of it.  Probably be half empty if Kristensen ever stops racing....

HAN - Marvellous - brought back memories of Houx and Houx Annexe from the early to late 90's.  A thoroughly noisy, dusty free-for-all, with a non-pikie, slightly Wild West lawless atmosphere about it....
   
MG Mark

As said MB was very empty and very quiet.   The only night we got disturbed by loud music was Sunday night which I think was Audi's bash in their shiny hospitality unit by KN and I guess they deserved to party hard  ;D

The Danes in the coach opposite us turned up on either Thursday or Friday (can't remember!) and bought their tickets at the Rotunda.   The French next to us said that they already have their allocation for next year.

There was so much empty space, it was amazing. As Mark says, I think the ACO were cautious and were concerned that the site might not be usable so that there might be a need to relocate people. 

The pitches seemed OK (once folk had worked out that the trackside pitches were only trackside to the MB circuit  ;D ), I'd been worried about the state  of the ground, especially if we had rain like last year.  Where we were the grass was all very new and not well rooted but the ground was very sandy so I imagine that they had put down loads of sand to help with the drainage.  We had a couple of storm drains in our block of four pitches, this wasn't an issue for us, Simon & Rach parked the camper over one and we pitched up to the other - this might have been a problem if you had one pitch with a drain in it or if you were only pitching tents.   The area in the middle section had a very noticable V shape to it and the weeds were over 2 feet tall - very much a job for Lawnmower man!

The atmosphere on MB was totally ruined if you ask me. Nobody to be seen untill wednesday and even not filling up completely for race weekend, a disgrace for such a vibrant site!!! We have evidence to support that it was not as lively as other years, it is the first year that we actually had to take back full barrels of beer to Holland :o :o :o :o

This has never happened in the previous editions. HAS and HAN looked packed with parties, maybe we should relocate to that site for 2009, if it will still be there!

All in all we quite liked Bleu and had good neighbours - one bunch of French and one English the other side - all having a good drunken time whilst being pretty considerate and very friendly and chatty.  The sound of Ade and/or his Dad snoring drowned out most of their conversation during the couple of hours I was in the tent on Saturday night!

The downside was the distance from the track and I missed the sound of the cars in my lugholes even though it only took five minutes to get into the circuit.  We weren't affected by any thefts - although I was asked if I could spare anything and when I said no, they just moved on.  I think it was probably worse for those who were nearer the entrance/exit.  I'm just writing a snotty letter to the ACO - I can see that having somebody to take the unwanted junk away is good, but not until Monday after everybody has left.  We pay for the campsite, so it's reasonable to expect it to be secure for as long as we're entitled to be there.  Hard to stop people hopping over the concrete fence, but easy as pie to prevent vehicles without tickets from coming in.

It was just a great pity that we were all so spread out and had to trek to see anybody thus I missed anyone who didn't make DFH or the 'poo bar.  I for one will be joining the DFH mass agency booking if it manifests itself for next year - worth paying a few extra euros to be in a group again, imo.

I think MB as a site was pretty good. I think the marked out pitches worked well. The view of the Porsche Curves etc were fantastic so no need to wander too far for your racing fix!

What it was lacking was people!!  I really missed not being able to easily wander around to see the different groups, and having them call by us too. Obviously we still had our good friends DfH near us, but even then, we were enough of a distance away that we didn't like to all go there at once as it left our site unprotected.

HAN seemed pretty good when we visited on Thursday night (albeit briefly) which I think was primarily because of the number of people there who were camped together. However, it's a bit of a treck to get a good trackside view.

Whether the preference is MB or HAN (if HAN exists next year of ocurse!!), I'd be happy with either as long as we can get everyone together!

Tertre Rouge was just about the same compared to previous years.
However we did lose the water supply for about 5 hours on Saturday afternoon which put the toilet and shower blocks out of action.
We managed to rope off a large pitch when we arrived on Wednesday Afternoon (We did have another Seven people coming down), Although if we'd been later then the team would have been dotted arond the campsite.
Security was good as usual, both from the French and from other campers, as the nutter in the Rover 2000 found out when he thought it would be a good idea to go for a drunken hoon up the campsite at 2am on Friday nigfht.

KN was actually quite well organised with ACO bods on bikes taking people to their pitches. There were some stupidly marked ones (with a tree, stump or lake in the middle of them) and a few people we saw complained and got re-allocated, but in general it was quieter than normal, two of the pitches next to us were vacant (so we expanded into them on Sat am) and half the trackside pitches remained unoccupied all week/end (doh!). The only issue overall I would say was getting out at the end, but that's always terrible from there and the Police etc. did their best to get it moving. However, as far as atmosphere goes, forget it. It was the quietest and most subdued that I have ever seen it .....

Hmmmm, reading all this I am now torn about what to do for next year.

Never tried MB or TR, so that is an option. Maybe KN is not as bad as it looked, so a return might be possible. Or stay with BN as this year was not a bad experience.

We didn't have any problems on BN, except for a minor one one arrival where out 2 adjacent pitches were actually on opposite sides of the gravel track! at a diagonal as well, however we luckily sorted this as the ACO had done exactly the same with the english family next to us so we just swapped.

Our pitch was therefore just south of the toilet block beside the 1st-for-tickets enclosure (Blue MG ZT and clio williams parked up). About 20M from the 6 foot beer pyramid

So just watched the toilet and shower queues ebb and flow.  Note for anyone arriving early next year in this area (R 14 place 76) water and electricity are available if you are quick.

I'd still rather be on MB but for me BN is a good second.

Can't really judge HA as it was my first time there, but compared to last years BSJ it was really unexpected.
Last year on BSJ we were guided to our pitch at wednesday 3am (not numbered, but they wanted to enforce the 7x5m)

This year, we arrived at around 3am again on wednesday, missing the road at first and without any signs we asked the Houx security were HA is. "A droite"

Without any checks whether we have Nord or Sud, whether we pitch up 7x5 or 10x10m and without anyone controlling the setups it was great fun like BSJ '06 or Spa-Francorchamps.
Seen many Nord tickets on the Sud part, btw, so there was no organisation at all, no pitches marked at all, nothing.

And the atmosphere was stunning

BSJ was quite this year with loads of empty pitches and was pretty slow to fill, unlike previous years. We got there midday Monday because we wanted to get a good spot, but you could still have got a good spot on Thursday or even Friday!
Some of the site looked pretty unusable due to the boggy nature of the ground and very deep tractor ruts (but that's never stopped the ACO trying to make people use it in previous years!).

'Security' was distinctly more pleasant than last year with a sense of humour and a desire to be helpful, which was a welcome improvement on last years 'Gestapo', but they did bugger off Sunday and leave us at the mercy of the Pikeys.

The lower shower block apparently didn't have any water for the early part of the week, the middle showers were locked on Monday & only had COLD water until midday THURSDAY! The toilets & showers in the middle block never seemed particularly dirty, but I suspect that is down to the lack of people using them as much as efficient cleaning!

Has to be said, the 'Corporate' take-over of the best bits of BSJ with the Danes claiming the very best bit of the site AGAIN, has left the rest of us pitching on an area that is very vulnerable to the weather, it can be very boggy at the best of times in the lower fields. There also generally seemed to be a lot more deep ruts that I remember from previous years.

I reckon the ACO posting all the camp sites as 'Fully Booked' way back in Jan. probably accounts for the empty spaces, not everyone has either the knowledge OR desire to go hunting for camping space via the agencies (AND paying a premium for no good reason!)

Were the KN pitches numbered this year or just marked out on the ground?

How did the ACO staff allocate the pitches?

HA (Sud) was as good as ever, just a bit smaller. Though could have done without the F1-Express techno/schmooze hybrid music! 

They were both. They were marked out on the ground and each had a yellow numbering steak in the corner (A1, A2 ...... Z99 etc.) As for how they allocated them, I guess they put them in a pot, threw it all up in the air then picked the scattered tickets at ramdom and sent them out. However, once at the gate the ACO 'helper bods' were personally directing people to their pitches (which got a bit tiresome by the third time I had come back from the shops/pub etc.) To be a little serious for a moment, we got ours from Just Tickets so they allocated us adjacent pitches (as best they could). As for next year, who knows?