The planning for next years Grand Tour has started. We are, once again, going south. A week in the Alps in September (plus transfer). Timing is due to traffic in the Summer plus passes not being open in May.
More information to come. Right now there are approx 10 other Lotus owners that has showed interest. Hopefully there will be a bunch of us.
| Item | SEK | EUR | GBP | Note |
| Fuel cost | 6 185 | 575 | 516 | |
| Öresund bridge | 458 | 42 | 38 | t/r |
| Rødby-Puttgarden ferry | 2 279 | 212 | 190 | t/r |
| Hoek van Holland-Harwich ferry | 4 020 | 374 | 336 | t/r |
| Portmeirion Hotel | 3 223 | 300 | 269 | 1 night |
| De Vere Horwood Hotel | 2 851 | 265 | 238 | 2 nights |
| Maenan Abbey Hotel | 4 312 | 401 | 360 | 3 nights |
| Fletcher Family Hotel Paterwolde | 2 343 | 218 | 195 | 2 nights |
| Lotus Cup Europe, Assen TT Circuit | 1 612 | 150 | 135 | weekend ticket |
| Silverstone Classic | 1 041 | 97 | 87 | 1 day club package |
| Snetterton Circuit | 287 | 27 | 24 | 1 day ticket |
| Slate mountain | 719 | 67 | 60 | |
| Bodnant Garden | 335 | 31 | 28 | |
| Caernarfon tourist boat | 192 | 18 | 16 | |
| Shuttleworth Collection | 503 | 47 | 42 | |
| Anglesey Transport Museum | 156 | 14 | 13 | |
| Grand total | 30 520 | 2 839 | 2 547 |
Time to summarize this years grand tour. In all, we drove some 3 317 km (2 061 miles) during 11 days. The costs above where in different currencies, but gives fair view. This was for two adults and one car. What isn’t included above is food and drinks since this is very much up to everyones taste and preferences.
Lotus Cup Europe at Assen was good. Although the start grid could have done with some more cars. The weather is difficult to do something about. Also, the Fletcher Family Hotel Paterwolde can be recommended. Very friendly staff and more than ok to stay at for a couple of nights. The Maenan Abbey Hotel was very much what we expected from a hotel on the country side. You either like it or don’t. But we absolutely love this kind of places. Plus very friendly staff and good food in the restaurant. Slate mountain was very good in the end, although the initial impression wasn’t good. See blog post for the details. Well worth a visit if you are into industrial history. Bodnant Garden was as good as any other garden. We are certainly not garden enthusiasts, but we do appreciate the grandeur of them. The tourist boat in Caernarfon was worth the money and the 40 minutes it took. Finally, Silverstone Classic. Again, the weather isn’t much to do anything about. The event as such was well organized and it was easy to access the whole area. Well worth a visit, but one day is probably enough.
If you’ve already been to Duxford and/or RAF Hendon. Then you can skip Shuttleworth Collection. It’s a decent collection, but nothing that stands out. plus the restaurant was definitely sub-standard. Same goes for Anglesey Transport Museum. If you are interested in cars, go somewhere else. A cramped collection of cars, motorbikes and tractors. Plus some random military vehicles in poor condition. The two worst things with this tour was the Portmeirion Hotel and De Vere Horwood Hotel respectively. The price and lack of service at Portmeirion Hotel and the overall experience at De Vere Horwood Hotel. See blog posts for more details. Portmeirion could be worth a visit as such, just because it’s so quirky. But don’t stay there overnight.
Final day of the grand tour. 953 km from Hoek van Holland to Helsingborg. Utterly boring, but no major issues with ‘stay’. Despite driving past both Bremen and Hamburg.
The next blog post will summarize the tour in terms of milage, cost and impressions of events and hotels. Check back in a couple of days time!
After yet another disappointing breakfast at De Vere Horwood Estate (how hard could it be to get some staff for the breakfast???), we drove up to Snetterton Circuit. The objective was to watch MSVR Elise Trophy (https://www.msvracing.com/cars/race-series/msvr-elise-trophy/). The weather was still a bit wet, but more drizzle than actual rain. There were also other clases racing during the weekend. Among them GT Cup Championship. That turned out to be quite entertaining. There was one Evora competing among the GT cars. unfortunately it didn’t finished the race due to some mechanical failure.
There were 15 cars competing in the MSVR Elise Trophy, three in the Forced Induction class. The rest in the natural aspiration class. the track was somewhat slippery and some cars ended up visiting the grassy bits. Luckily there was only one crash into the barriers. The driver walked away but the car would need some tender, love and care by the mechanics. Entry list available here: https://www.msvracing.com/media/4039/snetterton-27-28-july-entry-lists.pdf. So far we haven’t found any results online at the MSVR site.
The Snetterton track seemed to be in a good nick. The lunch restaurant was ok, for being on a track. While reading about the track on the internet we learned that Lotus F1 (the real one, not the rebadged Renault team) used Snetterton as test track back in the days. Apart from the Lotus on track, we saw a couple more in the paddock and one Exige V6 on the parking area.
After watching the races, we drove off towards Harwich. We met up with the other three cars, or rather the drivers and co-pilot, in the bar onboard the ferry. They had been on different other events during the day.
The day started with a rather frustrating experience at the breakfast at De Vere Horwood Estate. Hardly any staff in the restaurant. Normally you would expect that you are shown to the table. Followed by a question if you’d like some tea or coffee. This wasn’t the case here. You did eventually got shown to a table. But then someone else where supposed take your order for tea/coffee etc. We got to finish most of our breakfast before that someone bothered showing up. That’s certainly not ok.
Well then, off to Silverstone. About 20 minutes drive from the hotel. The reception at the track was very efficient. Tickets were swiftly scanned and we got directed to the area where we would find Club Lotus. Compared to last years experience at Hockenheim, this was miles ahead in organization and efficiency. In short, well done Silverstone Classic team! One we arrived to the designated area, we were asked to join the club exhibition together with a couple of other Evora and Esprit.
There were just short distances between the club exhibition areas, the stands and the sales area. Due to the weather, there were a lot less cars than expected. According to one of the Club Lotus officials, there were about 70 cars in their area. Compared to the 100+ expected. on the positive side, there were a lot of older models. primary Elan and Elan +2. but also Europa, Elite and Esprit. This is something we lack in Sweden. Despite having quite a few of these cars, we rarely get to see them on any events.
On another spot, we found Lotus Drivers Club. by the look of it, they had managed to get more of their members to join in the rain. In between the rain showers, we walked around to look at TVR, Aston Martin and other clubs.
Among the sales stands, we found a company that sold carpet sets. The company is called Autostyle (http://www.autostyle.co.uk). Since our car has covered close to 90,000 km the foot carpets has seen better days. So we took the opportunity to buy a set. Looking forward to get them in a couple of weeks time. Apart from this, we also bought ourself some mugs, t-shirts and a couple of die-cast models.
Due to the weather, the racing varied between the different classes. When the track dried up, there were some really good racing. But during the rain showers, the cars were merely cruising around the track. Most entertaining was, as always, the Mini race. Close to 60 Minis were on the track. in many case three or for in parallell – amazing and entertaining. The results from the weekend can be found here: https://www.tsl-timing.com/event/193056
The dreadful hotel experience continued in the evening. On the Saturday evening, the wedding party occupied the bar as well. It was almost impossible to talk to the person sitting beside you due to the noice level. Plus of course the loud noice from the corridor when we got to our room. Which, as mentioned earlier, didn’t had any WiFi connection.
Friday 26th was another transfer day. Some great roads and scenery during the first part. There we drove through Snowdonia once more. The rest was mainly highways and road work. We tried to avoid Birmingham by going via Kidderminster. We had lunch at a service station along the way.
We’d picked a hotel near Silverstone that had good reviews on TripAdvisor. De Vere Horwood Estate (https://www.phcompany.com/de-vere/horwood-estate/). It turned out to be a mistake. We got a room far away from the reception, restaurant and bar. So far away that the WiFi wasn’t working in the room even. We had to go to the bar to connect to the rest of the world. During the check-in, we found out that there was a wedding party going on as well. We’d booked the hotel mainly to have somewhere to sleep near Silverstone. This turned out to be very hard. The room was very poorly isolated from the corridor. Which ment that we got woken up several times during the night by people in the corridor.
On the seventh day of the tour, we first set off to the so called EVO triangle. This is a set of roads commonly featured in the car magazine EVO. These days, there are numerous speed cameras. So, the driving experience is less exciting. Nevertheless, there are some great views. There were also a couple of trainer jets, Hawk T2, from the nearby RAF Valley.
But before we arrived to Pentrefoelas, we got to drive some really great roads. We had to refuel after checking out from Maenan Abbey Hotel. Then we followed B5381/A458/B5384/B5113. Stunning views of Snowdonia and only a few mobile homes blocking the way.
We stopped for some ice cream in Pentrefoelas before continuing toward Portmeirion. Some great roads there as well, although the traffic was a bit to intense for any inspired driving while keeping the little group together.
Portmeirion was as quirky as we expected it to be. Very interesting history, a summary is available on the web site https://portmeirion.wales/visit. Since we’d booked a night at the hotel, admission was included. Otherwise you have to pay a few to visit the village. Checking in at the hotel was smooth and the hotel room was ok. However, the doors were not very well isolated and you could clearly hear people walking in the corridor outside. Having lunch at one of the restaurants proved that this place is all about tourist. We got a sad excuse of a Ceasar sallad. Gordon Ramsey would have been pretty upset by the look and taste. This turned out to be an early warning of what to come. We did book a dinner at the Hotel Portmeirion in the evening. Even though the restaurant wasn’t nearly full, we had to wait outside. We even had to order food and drinks in the bar before we finally where showed to our table. After a long wait for drinks and food, the staff had missed out on some of the drinking orders and started to blame each other instead of just resolving the issue. Trying to get their attention to order more drinks or deserts where very difficult.
To summarize the day, neither Evora triangle nor Portmeirion is worth the effort. If you anyhow decide to visit Portmeirion, only do so for the day and spend you night and money elsewhere.
After we’d browsed through the tourist brochures at the hotel, we made up the plans for the day. First we decided to visit a nearby garden, Bodnant Garden (https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/bodnant-garden). It turned out to be a very typical British garden. Or Welsh in this case. Impressive garden, with ponds and a small creek with water falls. Parts of the garden looked a bit wild, but that was clearly deliberate. We had a cup of tea at one of the cafes before we left. If you are interested in gardens, this is definitely worth visiting. The manor house looked impressive, but it was not open to the public. The plant names above are based on what we got back from PlantSnap app. So, no guarantee that it is correct.
The next stop was the Slate mountain (https://llechwedd.co.uk) near Llechwedd. Nice road, A470, on the way. Once there, we decided to take both the Quarry Explorer tour as well as the Deep Mine tour. Before that, we had a rather dull lunch in the restaurant. We’d strongly recommend that you eat elsewhere. After this, we had to wait for a long time until our tour finally begun. It turned out that our guide got ill. But they didn’t bother informing us waiting outside. Instead, another tour guide had to finish his tour. Then take a break, and finally take us on our tour. Not the best start, and the whole group were quite grumpy to begin with.
The Quarry Explorer tour took us on an ex-military truck up through the old quarry. It turned out that our guide was quite good, both as a driver as well as being a guide. He had previously been working in the quarry himself, so he knew it inside out. Some stunning views and interesting stories about the Slate mountain. On the top, we got a chance to get out of the truck and walk around. The ride is bumpy, no doubt about it. It’s also not well suited for those who has issues with heights.
After the tour in the quarry, we got back down to where we started. After a warm cup of chocolate, we moved on. A brief safety instruction and getting hard hats, we got into the train. This took us down into the mine itself. The level where we got to walk is situated at 150 m (500 ft) below ground. There are further levels, but they are water filled now. The guide, plus some movies along the way, gave a chilling insight into the life in the mine. After all, well worth the wait if you are interested in industrial history.
On our first day in Snowdonia, we decided to have a go at the train to the Mt Snowden summit (https://snowdonrailway.co.uk). So, after breakfast we set of to Llanberis. This took us via some great roads in the Snowdonia park. Once we reached the train station, it turned out that the train was fully booked. When we looked online to see if we could book for the next day, it turned out that the first available time was the week after. So, if you intend to go there and take the train. Make sure to book well in advance! At least in the Summer time.
Instead we pushed on to Caernarfon to have some lunch. Once there, we stumbled upon a sightseeing boat that were about to depart. Quick decision and we went on a 40 minute bout tour. Quite interesting to see the tidal water coming in. After the boat tour, we went for a lunch at a seaside pub. Quite ok, apart from the wasps. We then went for a stroll around the castle.
We then set off to visit Anglesey Circuit. It’s very close to Caernarfon. So, would be a shame not to go there. Despite no activities going on this particular day. We managed to lose one car in the traffic out of Caernarfon. Their GPS couldn’t find the track either. So, they went back to the hotel. The rest of us made it to the track. Great location and seemingly in a good nick. New tarmac in the paddock and nice garages. We spoke to some workers at the site that came out to look at our cars. They suggested that we should go and visit a local car museum on the island. Since we didn’t had anything else planned, we went there. The museum is called Tacla Taid or the Anglesey Transport Museum (http://angleseytransportmuseum.co.uk). It was a nice little collection of cars, motorbikes and tractors. But nothing compared to the larger car museums.
The final destination for the day was the train station of “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch”. Which is a tourist gimmick dating back to 1860. At least according to Wikipedia. Then we drove back to the hotel and a cold beer.
After arriving early to Harwich, we started the day with breakfast at Costa and a quick refill of the cars at a nearby petrol station. We’d decided to visit the Shuttleworth Collection on the way to Wales. Further more, we decided to take a more northern route in order to avoid the Birmingham traffic. In total the distance would be some 474 km.
Shuttleworth was in the plan already in 2016, during the 40th Anniversary Tour of the Swedish Lotus Car club. But then we got enough of planes at Duxford. This time however, it was a good time to get a leg stretch and some lunch. Lots of planes and some cars and busses as well. All in a very good condition. So, well worth a visit if you are into planes. The restaurant wasn’t impressing though. You are better off somewhere else.
We pressed on towards Wales and the traffic got heavier and heavier. Outside Stoke we got stuck for a couple of hours due to an accident. Further on towards Chester we got caught up in another queue. We finally arrived at the hotel around 8 pm. Too late to get any food, so we went to the bar instead for a cold beer. Two of the other cars had better sat-nav equipment, and took some back-roads instead. They arrived a couple of hours ahead of us. The hotel was as quirky as we expected. We found it via the TV series ‘Car SOS’. In one episode, they handed back a Jaguar Mk iI at this very hotel. You can tell a petrol head from normal people by the way they pick their hotels…
Europe by car 