You are not logged in

The Trip

by Pete Giles

Sunday April 3^rd 1983

Woke up to rain we decided just to throw the tent in the back and press on, this was to be a 12 hour day. Eventually the sun came out and we stopped to dry out the tent as the springs where banging the chassis. As we journeyed on it started to snow and we had to stop several times to clear it from the from of the car and the windscreen as the wipers could not cope, this turned to rain and then to sunshine so we pulled into a small museum in Briar to finish drying the tent and get some coffee. The museum was closed but we parked at the gates and took some nice photos, we decided to call in on the way back On the road to Auxerre there is a lovely straight road almost at the end at Pourain les Verne is (was) a small museum of the war, the owner let us look around the workshops and his car sales site, he only had one Bugatti a type 35. During our conversation he told us that it was still 400 miles to Mulhouse we nearly went home but decided to press on.

Museum at Brier

Langres was the next stop for a drink and to find a phone to contact the wife, we found a bar and a local chap took me to the hotel it was here I discovered that we had to leave the 0 of the phone number that’s what the recorded message had said, on my return to the bar I find my friend half way through a bottle of wine he had been given to cheer up the “mad Englishman”, after we had finished the wine we went I search of a camp site this was found on the road toVesoul a place called Lake d’ill, again empty but beside a beautiful lake. It was a cold night so I decided to drain the water, as I had no anti freeze in.

Lake d'ill

Monday April 4^th 1983

We woke to find that it had been below freezing in the night and the only tap on the site was frozen solid, as we wanted to get on we decided to use the drinking water to fill the rad, the camp site was looking great as the sun came out over the lake it must be a nice place in the summer.

The last leg to Mulhouse went by without a problem passing through some nice villages on the way, In one a postman not believing what he could see drove his push bike into a lamp post watching us as we went by, how we laughed as his letters went all over the place.

We arrive at the museum at midday as soon as we stopped people gathered around wanting to know how far we had come and WHY we must have looked a sight, as we had not washed for 2 days.

From the car park we crossed over a bridge to a scruffy warehouse type of building with a dirty river running by, it was not difficult to understand why this collection had gone unnoticed.

The entrance to the museum was up some steps between some columns then down again to the foyer where the first site of this collection takes your breath away 400+ assorted pre war cars and 120 Bugatti’s stretching as far as you could see between ornate columns holding the roof up.

More soon ...

If you wish to make contact with Pete regarding this article then visit the contact us page and we will forward your messages on.

Fancy seeing you and your classic on these pages? Get in touch via the contact us page and we will let you know how you can provide your own article.