All booked – 8 members, 2 cars, 4 tents, 76 rashers of bacon and bad navigation all you ever wanted for a Tabler trip!!

It all started on a beautiful mid June morning, after a couple of Mohitos generously supplied by Craig we headed for the motorway and remembered that the trip to Dover takes the longest time.

Once across the water we headed down from Calais to Abberville and on to Rouen where we experienced a huge down pour making hotel location near impossible, steak and frits later all seemed good.

Friday morning and on to Le Mans for supplies, beer beer and beer, plus 8 baguettes (to be used as sponges to dry the tents) and a tub of cheese. Claimed our tent spot next to some Germans, Dutch and Leicester boys with their old route master bus and an array of mini motor bikes to keep the noise level engine music all weekend.

Wow what a place, 250,000 motor heads partying and watching motor racing, as we wandered the huge 13 mile site that first night we came across not only villages of Danes, Brits and Germans but also a thing they call “Mad Friday” this consists of water pistols spraying very expensive cars whilst wheel spinning down the road, not for the faint hearted!!

Saturday morning we started slowly, with egg and bacon butties, cups of coffee and recalling the night before (Harri), the rain had made us feel like at home during the night, whilst Dav’s and Richard’s tent leaked, hence the use of baguettes as sponges. Around mid day the event really starts to build with vintage Le Mans racing, girls dancing and exhibitions showing a huge selection of mad motoring machines.
We  made our way to the Dunlop curves to get the best view possible for the start and watched the madness as 41 teams start the race at 3pm to race the next 24 hours non stop.

The fun and access to the racing is just amazing and the Table 57, Swansea clan bonded as a well oiled machine should, including a football game played against our much younger Leicester friends on Sunday afternoon after walking the track back from the start / finish after the race, we were only just beaten 8 goals to 7.

By the way Audi won and we witnessed an amazing event – think a biannual event could be set for the foreseeable future – start your engines for 2012