was Mb good, bad or no different ?

[Robbo SPS]

what about the other sites ??

[Brad Zarse]

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.....

[Paddy_NL]

was Mb good, bad or no different ?

what about the other sites ??

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? )

[Barry]

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.

[Bas]

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.

[Pastis_JPC]

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..............................

[Rusty]

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

[Christopher]

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.......

[Robbo]

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!)

[Maximum]

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.



.

[mgmark]

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

[Piglet]

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 

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  ), 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!

[knetter]

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

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!

[termietermite]

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.

[jpchenet]

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!