We've driven just over three hours today and have arrived in the beautiful town of Amboise in the Loire Valley. One of the highlights of this drive for me was listening on the radio to the late and great Jacqueline du Pres and her husband Daniel Barenboim play Cesar Franck's Cello Sonata in A Major while the burgeoning cornfields of France rolled by and MoneyPenny purred down the motorway. Life doesn't get much better than that!
Rouen was a good stopover last night and the Hotel de Bourgtheroulde was great. It was very central - a short walk to the Jeanne D'Arc Memorial and the Grand Horlage and Cathedral Notre Dame. Importantly for the classic car traveller they had valet parking. The room was lovely, very quiet and the bed was super comfortable. I highly recommend this hotel for a stopover with a classic car. The town is rather quiet and probably doesn't warrant more than a one night stay, although we didn't get to the Musee Beaux Arts which is apparently very good.
Unfortunately on our route today, we passed by Le Mans and had to detour to visit the Musee des 24h AGAIN. It was exactly the same as it was when we were there less than four years ago! What can I say? See my post under 'Museums' for more detail on this museum.
At this point I need to issue a Nerd Alert to my non-classic car readers. Please feel free to skip over this section. I mentioned in my last post that we have had some work done on MoneyPenny over the past 12 months. We purchased some new refurbished wheels and had new tyres fitted. Sadly, it appears that they are out of balance as we get bad vibrations between 130-150kms per hour. So it's either 'normal speed' or 'super-fast' - depending on the road. Of course, our day started with Mr F crawling around on the ground in his clean clothes looking under the wheel. What can I say?? Following our overheating problem last year, the exhaust manifolds were cracked, so we fitted a high-performance exhaust extractor system (see photo). Also we now have working air-conditioning after replacing a sensor. Hooray!! That should be handy as we will be heading into 30-40 degree temperatures over the next week.
The sun has broken through and we are in the beautiful town of Amboise staying at a lovely hotel (with free parking on-site). We have a booking for dinner at a restaurant next door and have been for a wander around the town this afternoon. We're here for three nights so I'll share more on this part of the world over the coming days!
Your balancing could be flat spotting on the tyres if the car has been stored a while? If doing so with mine I pump them up to 50psi beforehand.