Day 1: The Long Road to La Roche Racan

There is something almost meditative about setting off at 9am for a destination that involves forty-eight hours of sleep deprivation, petrol fumes, and grown men arguing about lap times at three in the morning. We left Carcassonne in good order — which is to say, on time — a minor miracle that deserves to be noted for the historical record.

The motorway swallowed us whole. Toulouse slipped past, then we veered northwest towards Bordeaux, the landscape doing that thing it does in France where it slowly forgets it was ever Mediterranean and starts looking sensibly northern. With no traffic worth complaining about — and believe me, we were ready to complain — we pushed on to our pre-researched lunch stop in Mirambeau, just off the motorway. The establishment in question rejoiced in the name O717, which sounds more like a classified satellite than a roadside restaurant but delivered exactly what road-weary travellers require: simple, honest food, no architectural foam, no microgreens arranged with tweezers. Full marks.

Back in the car for the final 220 kilometres to our lodgings: La Maison Blanche, a gîte of modest but perfectly adequate charms, nestled in the grounds of the Château Racan in the village of La Roche Racan — a village so tiny it could lose itself in a large hedge.

Settling sixty kilometres from Le Mans is, as I have previously explained, a strategy rather than a compromise. Distance from the circuit equals distance from the chaos. One sleeps better when one’s neighbours are owls rather than Porsche engineers.

We arrived as planned, shortly after 5pm. After a cursory inspection of the premises — kitchen functional, beds horizontal, French windows French — priorities were rapidly established: fill the car, fill a shopping trolley with provisions, and, critically, deal with the thirst that had been accumulating since somewhere around Périgueux. A bar had been spotted on the way into the nearest town. It was warm enough to sit outside. The beer arrived. Reader, it went down very, very well.

We introduced ourselves to the staff with the cheerful transparency of people who fully intend to return at regular intervals over the next few days. They seemed to take this in their stride, which speaks well of them.

Back at the gîte, I volunteered for kitchen duty with the enthusiasm of someone who has not yet been humbled by a weekend of French racing hospitality. Dinner was produced. We ate outside, as the night settled in around us, conversations wandering wherever they wished — Le Mans strategy, life, the usual suspects. At some point a couple of owls began making their opinions known from somewhere in the château grounds. The bats emerged and executed their nightly aerobatic display above our heads with the quiet professionalism of a support act that has nothing to prove.

By 11pm, beds had won the argument. Day 2 would not be gentle. We retired accordingly.

More to come when time allows it