My Pilgrimage to Spa

G-Money

It has to be said, 3.45am is not the time a gentleman should be rising from his bed. If anything, it should be when he caresses its sheets to begin the night’s slumber. However this is Spa, so the rules are out the window. It is indeed 3.45am and the alarm on my Nokia phone is telling me it’s time to get out of bed. My flight to Brussels is due to leave Dublin at 6.50am and to be honest, I’m probably already a little behind schedule.

I’m usually very thorough when it comes to planning things and I often like to have most things mapped out in advance. I like to plan and I like to try and have most things arranged so I don’t get caught by any nasty surprises at the last minute. However this time I’m probably miscalculated things slightly.

I spent Wednesday evening packing, after having spent Wednesday day at work, and wondering whether I will actually go to Spa. I was reasonably sure I would go. I had a decent feeling about it and I was somewhat looking forward to it. However after my episode with Wrestlemania where the night before I decided not to go, even though I’d booked and paid for almost everything, I did wonder whether I might pull a repeat stunt.

I packed my rucksack on Wednesday night and even though I was only going to be away for 4 nights, the rucksack ended up almost completely full. I had packed 2 pairs of jeans, 3 if you included the pair I was wearing, along with several motor racing t-shirts and tops, as well as two pairs of footwear. Spa’s weather is notoriously fickle and unpredictable and it seems that it rains almost every year at Spa at some point during the weekend. So with this all in mind, I didn’t want to get caught out with a lack of dry clothes or footwear.

I went to bed about 10.30pm in the hope I’d get a decent nights sleep, although I rarely sleep well the night before a flight. I wanted to get to the airport before 5am which would have meant I was there 2 hours before my flight was due to depart. However between one thing and another, I ended up leaving late and I think it was somewhere around 4.45am when I pulled out of the underground car park and headed towards the M50 and the airport.

I had pre-booked a space at the long term car park at the airport as the alternative was to book a taxi which would have been about the same price, if not more, and that would only have been a one way journey. The other option was to take the Aircoach and that would have required a 15 minute walk at least with a heavy backpack and I wasn’t really keen on that option either.
I must have got to the airport car park about 5.20am and I guess you could say I was running late at that point. I drove into the car park and thought I seen loads of spaces and it was only when I stopped for a second that I realised I had actually pulled into the bus park. I drove out and thought I had found some more good spaces but they turned out to be spaces for disabled people. I drove a little bit and found some spaces, parked the car, grabbed my rucksack and headed for the shuttle bus to the airport terminal, making a note on my phone of where I had parked.

I didn’t have to queue for too long and I got checked in without any issue. The queue at security was quite long although it did move very quickly but it still took about 10-15 minutes to get through security and towards the gate. There was a woman standing in front of me who didn’t seem to be paying attention to the queue moving in front of her. It would move on and she’d still be standing there. It wasn’t really a big deal as there were still quite a few people ahead of her, but it’s one of those small things that I find frustrating.

I got to the security scanner, emptied my pockets and whipped off my belt Full Monty style and made it through without a hitch. I headed towards the gate, making a quick pit stop in the little boys room, as well as grabbing a banana and a bottle of water, which seems to be my pre-flight ritual these days.

The began to process us through at the gate and one guy had got himself terribly mixed up. He was queuing to get onto the Aer Lingus flight to Brussels but somehow he had got confused as he was flying with Ryanair. The lady at the desk explained this to him in quite an unnecessarily loud voice and the whole crowd went silent as they all listened to this passenger’s faux pas. I’m not quite sure why the woman felt the need to speak so loudly and make it so obvious, I’m sure the guy felt embarrassed enough himself once he realised his mistake. However some people love nothing more than to point out the mistakes of others and be the person who lets them know. I guess we are all guilty of that from time to time, although I’d like to think I’d use a bit more tact and finesse that this lady used. It reminded me of those documentary shows that are based in various airports. It never fails to surprise me how customer service reps on those shows always patronise passengers who are late for their flight by saying “Well it’s not our fault you were late, you should have been here earlier.” I’d say that is more than obvious to the passenger and riling them up like that seems to make little or no sense.

I proceeded through the boarding area and out towards the plane which we had to access by walking out of the terminal, on the ground and up the temporary stairs rather than via a jetway. To be honest I was almost heading for the wrong plane and it was only when I noticed it had no stairs for passengers to board through that I realised it was a different plane we were flying with.
The flight was reasonably smooth, although a little bumpy as we were coming into land, although I’d say overall it still wasn’t too bad. I got off the plane and headed towards the immigration area, briefly making another pit stop in the little boys room and switching on my phone to text my mother to let her know that I had arrived safely.

I got to the baggage carousel and was waiting for my bag when a friendly Canadian woman approached me and started to chat. I only know she was Canadian as she told me, it wasn’t a case that I was using some sort of spider-sense to differentiate her accent from an American accent. I chatted to her and her boyfriend/husband/male travelling partner for a while and luckily enough my rucksack was one of the first bags onto the belt. Although both her, and some random guy both thought my rucksack belonged to them. The random guy actually had his hand on the bag and I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt in that he was just checking to see if it was his, rather than him trying to steal it. He didn’t look like the type to steal it and to be honest, there would have been very little of interest to him in the rucksack anyway.

I grabbed my rucksack and headed for the train station that is beneath Brussels airport. I’d found a good website that allows people to plan out their itineraries and it gives clear and useful instructions about how to get from point A to point B. Rather than saying, take a train to your stop. It will say, go and take the train at 10.34 hours to Leuven and get off the train at Leuven and take the train at 11.37 to Eupen and get off the train at Verviers Central. I found the instructions very useful as while we can often know which station to get off the train at, you don’t always know which trains stop there so it was very useful that it gave that information.

To get to the circuit and my hotel from Brussels, I had to take a train from the airport to a place called Leuven/Louvain, then change and take a train to Verviers, and then take a bus to the village of Francorchamps. The itinerary was perfect and everything showed up when it was supposed to and went where it was meant to go. I did skip the first train from the airport as I knew I had to wait for about 30 minutes as it was at Leuven, so I thought waiting around at Brussels airport would have broken the time up a bit better.

I arrived at Leuven and waited and took the train to Verviers. I was in the 2nd class carriage but it was quite empty and the seats were very comfortable so it was pretty much the perfect journey. I got into Verviers about 12.30pm local time and proceeded out to the bus area to catch the 294 to the village of Francorchamps. This was the bit of the journey I was a little hesitant about as I thought the driver might not understand me when I ask for my ticket, which is what happened, although he caught on quite quickly I think. I had my whole itinerary printed out, as well as flight and hotel details as well as train tickets, and all sorted in the order I’d need them. I told you I liked to plan.

I was also a bit hesitant about taking the bus as I had a big rucksack and manoeuvring them onto a bus is often not very easy, especially if the bus is full. As it turned out I was getting on the bus at the first stop so I was able to get a decent seat and found a place to ditch my rucksack that wouldn’t impede other passengers and where I could keep my hand on it to make sure it didn’t disappear.

I’d checked out the bus route online and was fairly sure I knew where the hotel would be, but my task became a little easier when a few other F1 fans got onto the bus too and seeing my hotel was a short walk from the circuit, I knew that if the worst came to the worst, I could just jump off the bus when they do and I’d have a 5 minute walk to my hotel.

The bus took about 30 minutes to get into Francorchamps and I spotted my hotel easy enough and pressed the button to hop off and head towards the hotel. I had booked this hotel months in advance, actually I think I had booked it about 6-7 months in advance as it only has a small number of rooms and it fills up quite quickly. I’d seen a few pictures of the rooms on the hotel website and to be honest, it didn’t look fantastic however I put that to one side as it was really just the location that I was after. The price for 4 nights was very expensive but camping wasn’t an option for me and I hadn’t really considered going via some sort of tour operator who would have bussed me in every day.

I’d paid half of the money when I booked the room back in January and I was due to pay the other half when I left. I arrived and checked in and was greeted by a friendly girl who I believe I’d been in touch with all the time when booking. She took a copy of my ID, gave me my key and the relevant info about the hotel and stuff and I went to my room to drop off my stuff.
To be honest, the room was not particularly nice. It was a small room with a single bed and a shower and sink but no toilet. It took me a few minutes to realise this when I walked into the room. It reminded me of a room from one of those old war films made back in the 60’s. The Great Escape was going to turn out to be a theme for me later that first night as well.
I got changed and freshened up and decided to head towards the circuit for the pit-lane walk. It was still a few hours until it was due to start but I thought they perhaps would have let us access the circuit before then. That turned out not to be the case so I ended up standing around for quite a while doing nothing.

I started to feel a bit tired and then I realised I hadn’t ate anything since that banana at Dublin airport about 6.30am so I noticed a few people eating what looked like some very tasty tray’s of chips. I found they were being sold from this fast food trailer just at the other side of the roundabout so I scooted over and got some which helped keep the wolf from the door for quite a while. I wandered around a bit more and just ended up queuing for ages before they finally let us into the circuit about 4pm. I proceeded into the pit-lane and set up camp outside the McLaren garage.

I was positioned off to the left of the garage so while I didn’t have a straight ahead view of the cars or anything, there were a few less people around so I was actually 2nd from the barrier. A while later I realised that’s where the drivers would be coming out to sign items so I hoped I was in a good position to get something signed. I had thought about buying an official programme but I don’t think they were on sale at that stage but thankfully I’d brought my Lewis Hamilton 09 cap with me and I figured that was probably the best thing I had on me to get signed.

After standing around for a long time and after most of the other drivers had come out, Lewis and Jenson arrived out about 5.45pm and both went to opposite sides of the line of fans, Lewis to my left and Jenson to my right. Lewis began moving towards me so I reached over the guy in front of me as much as I could without getting in his way and held out my cap as far as I could. I was trying to take pictures too but with the throngs of people and all the pushing and shoving and only having one hand free to hold the camera, it made it difficult to get photos the nearer he got. I was also trying to keep track of how many things he was signing and whether he was missing any stuff that people had held out, but I really wasn’t sure what was going to happen.
So I just waited and waited and as he got to me he took my cap and signed it and handed it back. It was a great feeling of satisfaction. He then moved down along the line signing more stuff and Jenson had now moved to where Lewis started and was also moving in my direction. However at this stage I felt like I’d done what I had set out to do. I got Lewis’ autograph and while I’d have loved Jenson’s autograph too, I felt I would have been greedy trying to get both, so I tried to get out of the way as fast as I could to let someone else get in and get something signed.

I was really chuffed to get the cap signed and I immediately put it into my backpack to try and avoid it getting wet from the rain. Last thing I wanted was for the ink to run. I also then realised I’d need to buy a new cap for the rest of the weekend and it was convenient enough as I wanted the new cap but I couldn’t really justify buying it as I already had a perfectly good 09 cap.
I waited around the pit lane for a while as it was a big crowd and people were jumping out through a slot in the pit wall. I’m not the most flexible of people at the best of times and I didn’t really feel like trying to get out the same way so I just waited around and after a few minutes, the pit lane had cleared out a bit and I was able to walk back up the pit lane as far as some security guards who then directed me back out onto the track.

I took some more pictures and decided to head back towards the hotel as it was heading for about 7pm at this stage. I stopped by another van and bought a bottle of water and while I was waiting to buy it, this tattooed English guy started to talk to me. He was quite friendly but obviously had a few drinks in him at this stage, although I can’t really criticise him for doing that. He was saying how much he loved Ireland and stuff and told me how he had been seeing a girl from Cork at one point. He had ordered about 8 beers for him and his friends so as he was collecting the last of them to bring to his friends, he lifted one and gave it to me and said “this is for you”. It was one of those moments where refusing would have been horribly offensive so I politely accepted and said thank you and drank it.

I finally got my bottle of water, finished my beer and then headed back to the hotel. I wasn’t sure if I was somehow supposed to hang around with this guy and his friends for a while now but seeing I hadn’t asked for a drink or anything, I felt I didn’t need to stay around after saying thanks and saying goodbye and wishing them well.

I headed back to the hotel and tried to work out how on earth I was going to get some dinner. Some of the hotel staff didn’t have great English and I had assumed I could just order whatever food they served and I’d pay for it. However I didn’t really know where I could sit or how to do that. I eventually got talking to one of the waitresses who brought me into the restaurant area and with some help of a fellow guest who spoke English and French, it turned out that because I was staying there, I was supposed to eat at the buffet they were laying on. I was a bit early so I ordered a beer and messed around on my iPhone texting people to say I’d got Lewis Hamilton’s autograph and the like.

Eventually the buffet was ready so I grabbed what I hope were going to be very tame foods. When I’m travelling or if I have to go somewhere or do something and I don’t want to be worrying about needing the toilet, I tend to stick to very plain food, stuff I know and hope won’t affect my stomach. I grabbed a chicken breast and some bread and some other plain meats and veg and ate that. I finished my beer (which was the only part of the dinner I had to pay for) and decided to head up to my room.

The hotel had free WiFi and it was still working at this stage so I spent a while in my room using that, and doing a bit of reading. I was fairly exhausted so about 10 or 10.30pm I decided to turn in for the night and try to get some sleep.

However this was when the problems started.

I’m not sure if I actually got to sleep at the start or whether I had been sleeping and got woken up, but either way there ended up being a loud group of German or Danish men staying on my floor and they were completely doing my head in. It didn’t help that my room was in a small off-shoot of the main corridor beside the toilet and it seemed that everyone was mistaking my room for a 2nd toilet. In fairness it would be a very easy mistake to make as it was very badly lit and where all the other guest rooms had the room numbers in big brass lettering on the doors. My room number was printed in one of the smallest fonts possible on the back of some white sticky labelling. It was so small that earlier in the day I had walked right past it as I thought it was just some sort of storage place.

A couple of times early in the evening people had opened the door to my room thinking it was the toilet and because these were old fashioned doors, the only way to stop that from happening was for me to lock the door with the key once I got inside. This still didn’t stop people from trying to open the door in the middle of the night, although I think it only happened maybe twice during that first night and it got better as the weekend went on.

But these guys were being so loud it was unbearable. That coupled with the loud music and fireworks from the campsite nearby and with people trying to get into my room, it had me at my wits end. Earlier in the day I had noticed a new hotel that was open even closer to the circuit. It looked brand new so I actually called them at about 5 minutes to midnight on the Thursday night asking if they had rooms free for the weekend and how much they would cost. They said they still had rooms available and it would cost €1400 for 3 nights! I was in shock.

Had they said it would cost €300 or €400 I’d have checked out of there the next morning, even if it had meant paying for a room in two different hotels for the same nights. That’s how desperate I was to leave the hotel. However €1400 for 3 nights was simply far too much money so I started to think about other options, such as coming home early. I started to check the Aer Lingus website and logged in to check out how much it would cost to change the return leg of my flight and come home a few days early.

There were flights available and it would have cost me about €150 extra to change them but I was so fed up with the hotel, I really wanted to get out of there. I was doing all sorts of mental justifications for my actions. I’d say stuff to myself like “well once you’ve seen the F1 cars during practice, the race will probably just be more of the same thing, so it won’t matter too much if you go home early”. I was also trying to work out how I could explain to people why I came home early and save face at the same time.

However realising I was out of options for the time being, I decided to try and stick it out that night. I could hear the hotel staff telling the guys they needed to be quiet. I just wish they’d done it sooner.

Eventually the guys did quieten down and go to bed and while it seemed to go on forever, I think this had all finished by about 12.30am so in hindsight, it wasn’t too late. I guess it just felt like it had went on until about 2 or 3am.

I got up the next morning surprised by the fact that I had actually slept and I got changed and ready to head to the track. I went downstairs to get breakfast and heard the same guys already there having food. One of their voices was stuck in my head so I took a good look at him as I had pictured him to be a complete a****le for keeping me awake. They all turned out to be quite old, mid to late forties. I was still gunning for the main guy who’s voice I couldn’t get out of my head.
In fairness they seemed harmless enough and just seemed to be having a good time but they were being so loud it was incredibly annoying. I went back to my room after getting breakfast, got my stuff for the day and headed to the track to see the first practice session.

It was at this point I started to perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to try and convince myself that the trip was rapidly finishing and before I knew it, it would be over. I was sitting there on the Friday thinking “Ok, tomorrow is Saturday and when it comes around, you’ll be able to say to yourself that you need to pack the following night to head home.” This is exactly the kind of thing I was doing to try and make the trip seem shorter than it was.

On the Thursday night I’d begrudgingly accepted that I might have to stay in the hotel for the 4 nights and by the Friday I’d accepted the idea a bit more.

I really was very unhappy with the hotel at this point and to be honest, I felt like it was ruining what was supposed to be a really good weekend. I’d been kind of looking forward to going to Spa for a while but I guess I was apprehensive too. I’d set my expectations for the hotel sort of medium to low-ish. I knew it wasn’t going to be a very fancy or modern place. However when I thought about how I’d agreed to pay a total of €600 for 4 nights and when I thought about what I was getting in return, I was quite frankly embarrassed that I’d agreed to it.

It was hard to know exactly what the hotel was going to be like beforehand, there wasn’t much information on TripAdvisor but to be honest, there is no way the room and facilities could justify the €600 price tag.

Let me write a list of issues with the room:
• It was beside a toilet and was very badly labelled and the area was badly lit so people frequently and understandably mistook it to be a 2nd toilet.
• The door handle was atrocious and the door was kind of wedged shut when it was closed fully. When you went to open it, the door handle would slide out of the whole towards you by about an inch at least as you had to yank the thing to get the door to open. It seemed like the handle was going to fall out. The same thing happened when you went to close the door from the inside, the handle would slide out of the socket by about an inch but you had to pull the handle hard in order to get the door to shut.
• There was no toilet in the room, just a shower and a sink. Not great for a room that cost €600 for 4 nights.
• The TV was tiny and had no remote control.
• There was a light above the sink but where was no obvious way to turn it on. No switch or cord were visible anywhere.
• In the shower, the taps were labelled incorrectly. When you turned on the tap with the red mark, you got cold water and when you turned on the tap with the blue marker you got hot water. I thought there was something wrong with the shower when I had what I expected to be the hot water tap running for several minutes and the water was still ice cold.
• The shower tray drainage was very bad and desperately needs to be cleaned out. The reason being that when you had a shower, the tray filled with water very quickly and within 5 minutes it would almost be over flowing. So to avoid it spilling out onto the floor of the room you had to shower very quickly and keep an eye on the water level to make sure it didn’t overflow.
• There was no obvious way to open the window in the room. I tried several methods but it seemed to be bolted shut.
• As the door was old fashioned, it had to be locked with a key from the inside to stop people from being able to open it and walk in. Which occasionally happened.

I really was very unhappy with the hotel. The good thing about the hotel was its location which was a 5 minute walk from the circuit entrance and also that the fee covered your breakfast and dinner.

On Friday morning I headed down to the circuit to see the first official F1 action of the weekend. For those of you who’ve never been to a Grand Prix event, they have several support races on when the F1 cars are not on track. It’s a good thing they do that as it would be very boring to sit around for hours between F1 sessions. The first Formula 1 practice session was at 10am so I left the hotel to head to the circuit, just after 9am. I wanted to see where my seat was too and get a feel for it.

As I was walking around the F1 village I decided to make a stop at the McLaren merchandise stand and I bought a new Lewis Hamilton cap along with a lanyard to hold my tickets. They kept scanning the tickets as you went in and out of the circuit and the main area where your ticket was for, so you always had to keep it handy and with the amount of rain, I didn’t want the ticket to fall to pieces which it seemed like it would.

My seat was for the Gold 3 grandstand which is the covered grandstand on Eau Rouge. I deliberately purchased a ticket for this grandstand as I felt it would offer a great view and would be covered as well should it end up raining which it frequently does at Spa. The view was acceptable but not great. I had booked my ticket about 10 months in advance yet I somehow ended up with a seat on the 3rd row from the back of the stand. The view from La Source all the way down to Eau Rouge was great, however as the cars entered Eau Rouge, the view became obstructed by fans, the spectator fencing and the general angle the stand was sitting at, compared to the track. It was somewhat frustrating but it was too late to change tickets at this point.

I had considered renting a Kangaroo TV for the weekend but decided not to however after being there a day or so, I was wishing that I had rented one, especially as I walked past the Kangaroo TV stand every day. There was audio commentary at the track in three languages; Dutch, French and English, however the English commentator would say approximately 2 sentences and the next 5-10 minutes would be filled by Dutch and French commentary. It definitely was not an equal split between the three languages which I found frustrating. There was a large screen directly in front of us at the bottom of Eau Rouge which helped us track what was going on at other parts of the track. However the text on the screen was very small from where we were so it was hard to read any position information or details from race control.

I spent most of the day at the track but left after the final practice session. I wanted to stay for the support races but it was unbearably cold and I simply couldn’t sit there any longer. When you were walking around in the F1 village the temperatures were fine. However on the covered grandstand at Eau Rouge, there was a wind blowing too and by race day, everyone was wrapped up like it was the middle of winter. I ended up wearing 5 layers to the track on race day – a t-shirt, polo-shirt, sweatshirt, fleece and finally a rain jacket and I was so cold at one point my teeth were chattering.

Saturday was qualifying so it was the first serious action of the weekend. I stood in the F1 village for a while to get some footage of the cars going through Eau Rouge, and I then proceeded to my seat in the grandstand. I was surprised that the row I was sitting on was almost completely full at this point so I’m sure I got dirty looks from others at the thought of me turning up so late.
Qualifying was good but I think the fans were as frustrated as the drivers were that Vitaly Petrov spun on his out lap which ended up causing a red flag with the rain fast approaching. Qualifying was good and I suspected that Hamilton would have pipped Webber for pole except for the light rain shower that seemed to appear at the end of the session.

I left after the session was over, then walked around a bit and went back to the hotel. The weather at Spa wasn’t really conducive to spending large amounts of time walking around exploring the village.

If you ever go to Belgium, I recommend you try Belgian Waffles, they are quite nice and I scoffed a couple when I was there to give me sustenance during the day.

At this stage the weekend seemed to be speeding up and before I knew it, it was Sunday and race day and my last day at Spa and my last night in the hotel of horrors. I went to the track quite early, and got there about 9.15am even though the race didn’t start until 2pm. I spent some time hanging around the F1 village and got roped into taking some pictures for a group of 5 English girls.

I decided to make my way up to the grandstand in good time and I watched the support races that were on; GP2, GP3 and the Porsche Supercup. About 12.30pm they held the drivers parade where the drivers were taken around the circuit in open top classic cars. It was nice to get to see them and get some photo’s although again the view from Eau Rouge was limited somewhat.
After the drivers parade finished it was about 1hr and 20 minutes until the race started but the time went quite fast. At 1.30pm the pit-lane opened so the cars started making their way onto the circuit for their out-laps to the grid or to do a few laps of the circuit to judge the conditions.
The race started at 2pm and it seemed like no time until we had our first incident with Vettel crashing into Button. From my viewpoint I could see the start of the last corner so I could see Vettel and Button arriving with white smoke everywhere and then looked on the big screen to see Vettel take Button out of the race.

The race went on quite smoothly until it started to rain at which point the cheers from the crowd filled the grandstands. It was hard to know what was going on at times and then I seen Hamilton go off and I thought his race was over. However he managed to keep the car trundling along and he made it out of the gravel trap in one piece.

With about 12 laps to go I was thinking about getting out of the grandstand and avoiding the queue of people trying to get out and down that steep pedestrian hill from Eau Rouge. From hearing from other people, I was fairly sure they’d let people onto the track after the race was over so I made my way down the pathways until I was about half way down Eau Rouge where there was a big gate onto the track. I watched the last 10 or so laps from there as there as I could now see the big screen a lot better and could track a bit more easily what was going on.
Seeing the cars fly past at this point on the circuit was amazing, they were simply just a blur.
So with my fingers and toes crossed, I watched while Hamilton managed to keep it together and win the race. Within a few minutes the security guard opened the gate and let us all onto the track. There were about 20-30 people waiting at that point to get onto the circuit but once I got onto the track and looked up at Eau Rouge, there were about 2 or 3 people there. I guess the others started to head back up the track towards La Source.

I seen an Asian couple taking photo’s so I asked one of them to take a picture of me and it was just what I had wanted – a picture of myself standing on Eau Rouge.

I started to walk around and take more photos, walking up to the top of Eau Rouge, then back down, all the way to La Source then back down the start/finish straight to the last corner where I took some pics of the pit-lane entry and the exit of the Blanchimont corner.

I eventually headed back to the hotel to pay the other half of my bill for the room. They had a strange system whereby you had to pay for your room on the last night of your stay rather than the morning you checked out. I didn’t mind so much as I often like to get these things paid and out of the way. The hotel was pretty busy when I got back and I couldn’t pay the bill straight away as there didn’t seem to be anyone around to handle that aspect. I went back up to my room to change and tried again and managed to get talking to the girl who checked me in, in the first place. I paid the remainder of my bill even though in my head I really felt like they didn’t deserve what they were charging. The staff were lovely, but the facilities were not good enough.
I paid the bill and decided to go get a tray of chips which is something I’d been doing most days. I went outside to the nearest fast-food van and got a tray of chips there. They sold all sorts of hamburgers and hot dogs and to be honest, they looked and smelled very good. However when I’m at an event or if I have a long journey ahead of me, I try to stick to fairly tame food to hopefully avoid any unexpected or emergency trips to the toilet. So with that in mind, there was no big foot-long sausages or “bickyburgers” for me.

I went back to the hotel and the girl at the reception had told me dinner would be served at 6.30pm. At this point it was about 5.45pm and the dinner room looked packed full. When I went to get back into the hotel the security guard asked me if I was going to the hotel or for the dinner as he said the dinner room wasn’t accepting any more people. By this stage I’d sort of made my mind up to skip the dinner altogether as I didn’t fancy sitting in a crowded room eating so I just went up to my room, read a bit, tried to use the WiFi and then began to pack.

I tried to get to sleep about 10 or 10.30pm but again the loud explosions and fireworks were going off from the campsite nearby. I’m almost certain I could hear the staff shouting at each other too which kind of lent an air of amateurism to the experience too. I think I finally drifted off to sleep after midnight and woke up about 5.40am and what did I hear? You guessed it, the annoying voice of the main ringleader of the annoying German/Danish guys. I really don’t know why he had to talk so loud.

I think they were checking out as I got up a few hours later and there was no sign of them at breakfast and I noticed a few of the rooms were now empty.

I got my 5 minute shower before the tub over-ran with water and got the last of my gear packed and decided to leave. My flight from Brussels wasn’t until 9.10pm but I was sitting in the hotel with nothing to do so I figured I might as well make a move seeing it was going to take at least 2 ½ hours to get to Brussels airport.

I tried to leave my key back but the main door into the hotel was locked, so I walked outside and to the front door and it was locked too. A few seconds later one of the members of staff seen me and let me in and I returned the key and proceeded to the bus stop.

The bus arrived more or less on time and wasn’t too busy so I didn’t have to heave my big huge rucksack past a load of people. The driver seemed to speak some English but just in-case he didn’t, I had the name of the bus station printed on a piece of paper so I could show him where I wanted to go. I got my ticket and it was a nice pleasant 30 minute journey to Verviers Gare Central. At one point the bus stopped and a load of people got off and I wondered if I had missed the stop for the train station but it turned out I hadn’t and the train station was the last stop so it was all good.

The train showed up on time and I had already booked my tickets in advance and had decided to go for a 1st class ticket on the return leg of the trip. I figured it would be nice to splash out and in hindsight, I think it was the least I deserved after the accommodation I had. The trains were nice and comfortable and the carriages un-crowded and the journey seemed even quicker that it was on the Thursday. Before I knew it, I was back in Leuven/Louvain waiting on the train to the airport.

I got into Brussels airport about 11.30am so I had about a 9 hour wait until my plane left. I tried to make it seem shorter by thinking that while the plane left at 9.10pm, I still had to check-in and that would be about 7pm. I bought a few books with me and I have to admit the first hour went quite slowly. However before I knew it, it was 4pm. I’d found an area in Brussels airport with a load of seats and it looked like a new wing in the building so I sat there for most of the time.

At the start I had free Wi-Fi but this seemed to stop after a while, I think the company in question only gave you so long for free, after which you had to pay. I was rapidly eating up the battery in my iPhone so I tried to not use it.

I did several laps of the terminal during the day, just to stretch my legs and check the Departures board to see where I had to go check-in. The details of my flight didn’t appear on the board until about 4pm which showed how early I was, seeing I had already been there about 4 or 5 hours at that stage.

There was a children’s play area near to where I was sitting and a group of about 4 children were playing on it making a lot of noise and looking like they were going to hurt themselves. As in all these situations, there seemed to be no parents or anyone minding them so I decided to leave and go back to the check-in area and wait there until check-in opened as by this stage it was about 6pm.

I saw a few other Irish people at the check-in area so I used them as my queue for when to go line up to check-in as it was hard to see the display boards above the check-in desks. Over the weekend I’d decided to book my seat on the plane for the return leg and booked a window seat by the emergency exit. Again it was another one of those “I’ve not had a great weekend, I think this is the least I deserve” things.

The plane was late getting into Brussels but we got on board anyway, but not until we had to wait for several slow people who’d hold up the entire queue of passengers trying to get to their seats while they took coats and items off. Even though the cabin crew were asking them to stand in from the aisle to let others past.

We took off about 40 minutes late at just before 9.50pm local time. It was surprising as they said the flight back would be 1hr 15 minutes even though the flight over was 1hr 30 minutes. I’m not sure how that was possible as I thought it was always faster to fly East than fly West, so in theory it should have been longer. I wasn’t complaining though, I just wanted to get back to Dublin.

About 30 minutes into the flight I could feel my left knee getting quite cold, as if some air was hitting it. I was sitting right beside the emergency exit so I assumed the air was somehow coming in through it. I also noticed the light on the wingtip was barely functioning and I was wondering if I should say something to the cabin crew about the feeling of air hitting me on the leg beside the door.

In the end I decided to wait and said I would contact Aer Lingus and tell them and ask them to pass the information on to their maintenance people. I know very little about planes so what I noticed may have not been a problem at all and could have been perfectly normal. But that’s not for me to know really, so I wrote them a letter today and posted it to their head office giving them details of which flight I was on and where I was sitting, along with the issues I thought I’d noticed and asked them to pass it along to their maintenance people.

Anyway we got back into Dublin about 10pm and the airport was very quiet, with no queue at all at immigration. The bags arrived out quickly enough although at one stage I thought someone else had went off with my rucksack as I had managed to stand at the end of the baggage carousel rather than near the start of it. It turned out to be someone else’s rucksack that was just a similar colour and within a few minutes of the bags appearing, mine showed up. I grabbed it and headed for the shuttle back to the car park where I collected my car and drove back to my apartment, arriving in the door about 11.15pm.

Overall it was a good trip to Spa and I don’t regret going, even though the accommodation was far from ideal. I think it really tainted my trip and my experience of Spa and while I didn’t necessarily want a 5 star hotel, I’d have liked something a little more modern, with a proper en-suite bathroom and somewhere that I could actually sleep. When I went to Milan last year for the Italian Grand Prix, I stayed in a hotel that was more like a Bed and Breakfast, only without the Breakfast. However while it wasn’t flashy, it was clean, quiet and well maintained and it ultimately did the job.

While I was at Spa I was thinking to myself that I perhaps wouldn’t go back to it again, however now that I’ve been back a few days, I’m already thinking that I would like to go back again. If I do go back, there would be a few things I would change. First of all, I’d definitely stay in different accommodation. Either somewhere else closeby that I knew would be nice, or I’d perhaps go with a tour operator who will arrange a hotel and coach transfers and you don’t have to worry about that aspect at all.

I’d also get tickets for a different grandstand next time. I was somewhat disappointed with being 3 rows from the back of the grandstand and it seems a strange ticketing system that allowed me to get allocated a seat so far back, even though I booked the ticket about 10 months in advance and the stand was only sold out about a month or two before the actual race.

I’d make sure I brought windproof and waterproof clothes as the temperatures were wintry in their coldness, especially at the Gold 3 grandstand at Eau Rouge.

I’d also rent a Kangaroo TV as the rental and pick-up point was right in the F1 village and it wouldn’t have required going out of my way to collect it or leave it back as I had to walk past the stand twice a day at least to get to and from my seat.

So overall Spa was a decent trip. It’s hard to complain too much when you’ve been to one of your favourite circuits and one of the best circuits in the world. The organisers are talking about alternating Spa and the Nurburgring on the calendar from 2012 onwards which would mean that Spa would only be on the calendar every 2nd year. This was the reason I went this year and why I may go again in 2011. They were handing out leaflets with ticket information although at the moment the website doesn’t seem to have the tickets for 2011 available to buy yet, contrary to what the leaflets were advertising.

If you want to go to Spa, I’d suggest you definitely go for it. But make sure you have some good accommodation sorted and accommodation that you know for a fact is what you want and expect. Make sure you have enough warm clothes to account for the inevitable rain that will most likely appear at some point over the weekend.

Lewis Hamilton won the race and it turned a cold Spa into something that was rocket red. Having got his autograph a few days earlier, it made the victory even better.

lord lucan

Where's the pics?:D

Fair play,you gave an exhaustive account of the weekend. Pity about the hotel but hopefully the only memories that'll remain of Spa will be of the circuit and the racing with time.

amacachi

What brand was the banana?

losthorizon

Nice recap

We met two guys from Oregon on the Friday free practice and then happened to bump into them again the next day in Verviers train station. Whats the chance of that considering the crowd?
Also, there seemed to be a massive amount of people in the bronze sections. I wonder what the attendance was?

What was even more funny was we were talking to two old Canadian guys from the west coast and suddenly one of them said to another guy waiting at the bus stop "didnt I see you at the Canadian Grand Prix last year" and the fellow who (turned out to be english) replied "yes, you did" and then ignored the canadian gentlemen. The next day (the Sunday) we then bumped into the english fellow and said hello to him but he ignored us or had forgotten about us.

Magown3

Ear plugs cost about 5 cent.

Also sounds like you should've gone to spec-savers

PJTierney

There was a woman standing in front of me who didn’t seem to be paying attention to the queue moving in front of her. It would move on and she’d still be standing there. It wasn’t really a big deal as there were still quite a few people ahead of her, but it’s one of those small things that I find frustrating.

"grandmaster is faster than you. Do you understand that message."

kaizersoze

Pics or STFU.:p

G-Money

Here you go.

Big Nasty

What colour socks were you wearing!?! :eek:

vincenzolorenzo

8,500 words. Jebus :eek: