Friday 14 September 2012

To Angouleme by Alvis 12/50 - Day 3

Tiffauges to Angoulême, 150 miles

Very early on Friday morning I reset the tappets to 6 thou cold rather than 3 thou hot and that made a big difference particularly when I put the hood down as I could barely hear the spitting and f***ing through the carb.

However there was a new distraction. The French equivalent of the Department of Transport came up with more deviations than the Marquis de Sade could have dreamt of; where the British would use traffic lights, the French used deviations which I'm sure were designed to show off their country to us.

The hotels in the centre of Angoulême had been mostly fully booked for months so we finally arrived at our Relais de Silence (which I had booked in April) just south of Angoulême (we had a bit of a shock in store for some of the auto-phobe guests seeking silence); on arrival there were already a couple of vintage Alvises, two Triumph Stags, a Porsche and a Rolls-Royce.

You’ll probably recognise the Alvises as belonging to Adrian Bell (who had given me a lot of advice before we booked) and Tony Leech who had been doing a meander through the Loire valley.

We ate at the hotel from a rather expensive menu but fortunately Jon's brother-in-law is from Paris...it's true what they say about Parisians...and we had impeccable service from then on!

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