Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy

Le Mans ? Laon ? Talk about it here
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Fizzer
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Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:21 am

Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy

Postby Fizzer » Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:27 pm

Me, my wife and a couple of friends of ours are doing a trip round north east France next may/june - We're thinking about taking 2 weeks, mostly sticking to the vosges mountains area and exploring Strassbourg, Dijon, Reimes etc.

We've found some great places to stay on sawdays website (used them before) but wondered if anyone had any local knowledge of
A) good wine tasting routes/areas
B) any 'must see' towns, castles, vinyards or villages in the region
C) Nice roads or (dare I even wish) a race track in the area

Having said that, the entire vosges mountains looks positively infested with twisties...
Live Axle Fisher Fury: 2lt Blacktop Zetec, Newman cams, Tiger shallow sump, lightened flywheel, grumbly webers, willwood calipers + disk kit.

The Knobs
Posts: 141
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 6:11 pm
Name: Tim Price

Re: Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy

Postby The Knobs » Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:58 pm

We are in France on the next frolic in June, four trackdays in 7 days including the great Pau almost on the spanish border. I will check dates and the other circuits but I think they are all south of Le Mans. God I love France .

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Fizzer
Posts: 81
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:21 am

Re: Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy

Postby Fizzer » Fri Jan 15, 2010 4:43 pm

It looks like this all firmed up now - we've cut it down to just Alsace now due to cost and time. We're starting at the bottom and working our way up, staying in two different places int he mountains and then Strasbourg. If we make it that far we're coming back via a couple of days the 'ring - I hope to gwet a couple of laps in.

Can anyone suggest any good places to see on the way? Any advice for the 'ring?

A
Live Axle Fisher Fury: 2lt Blacktop Zetec, Newman cams, Tiger shallow sump, lightened flywheel, grumbly webers, willwood calipers + disk kit.

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PaulW7
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Name: Paul Willetts

Re: Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy

Postby PaulW7 » Wed Feb 03, 2010 1:11 am

Take a day in Mulhouse and go to see the Schlumpf collection www.collection-schlumpf.com/fr/schlumpf .

The roads around the Ballon d'alsace are great, check out the D16 between chateau-lambert and plancher-les-mines , marked as a white road on my old michelin tourest map, it goes past the ballon de Selvance. keep your eyes open though a couple of the hairpins have just air on the outside. In fact from memory the D486 just north of there from Gerardmer to Le Thillot is a good run .

All the best
Paul.

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Fizzer
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Re: Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy

Postby Fizzer » Thu Jan 06, 2011 4:35 pm

A very late update on this.

we ended up splitting the trip into 4 areas:

Cote de Beaune (amazing Burgundy - yum)
Southern vosges (amazing roads - good fun)
Strasbourg (city break)
Champagne (for the fiz!)

It was nearly perfect in the end; two couples in a caterham and a fury, wine, twisties, good food, scenery and historic towns - oh, and a spa and a car museum.

The weather was a bit grey and drab almost all the time, it didn't seem to matter though. The wettest we got was driving into the low cloud at the top of the grand ballon (the highest bit of the vosge). We weren't even sure that the cafe we stopped at was really at the top as you could only see about 20 meters or so.

We drove straight down to burgunday from Calais, drank loads of wine and sent some 'keepers' home (still got em, tempting though it is) then a 4 hour drive up to the vosges mountains, and found a countache pootling round the hairpins and vallys (OK, we got lost...) good fun though, it sounded awesome at full chat. Anyway, it didn't get past so I count that as a win! :)

Accomodation was v friendly everywhere we went, Alistair Sawday places for all four stops. spent a few days in the mountains, took the girls to a spa across the border in germany then popped down to Mulhouse (pronounced 'mulloose') to the schlumpf museum. an amazing collection of cars, they had a veyron!

we made a day of travelling up the vosges mountains to the northern end, stopping at a monastary on a cliff overlooking the plain to the east, which eventually led to Strasbourg. we spent 3 nights there with the cars in an underground carpark. It was nicce to be able to drink, walk and enjoy ourselves a bit.

Next stop, champagne, to a lovely farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. we only had a couple of nights there but it was beautiful and relaxing with nice hosts and their very sweet daughter. (she straight up to the blue fury and hugged it) Apparently it's now called Sally??? Her mum had a nice old bright yellow Citreon so we lined them all up and had an impromptu photoshoot. Good fun!

Popped into 'Moet & Chandon' for a celler tour by a robot woman (seriously, so made up I swear she was 100% polymer). The whole place is full of pomp and ceremony and v impressive (huge) cellars. It tased nice too, I'm not really a champagne person though...

Two hours away from Calais on the trip home the Caterham blew an oil cooler pipe (unusual failure) and covered us in oil and then siezed in a sulk. We did our best to bodge the remaining oil pipe back to bypass the cooler and managed to get that sorted. Tried to start but it was locked solid. even 'aggressive bumping' wouldn't shift it. so the old crossflow died - (seized mains it turned out)

We made it though, a bit sad to not be with our mates till the end (they got home at 4am - fair play to the insurance company)

To sum up, I can heartily recommend north eastern france. burgundy is the only decent red wine area but blow me is it good! Lots of white wine in alsace though if that's your thing. Roads were ace, people were v pleasent and there's buckets of old stuff to see, nice restaurants too. Strasbourg was great; boat trips, bars, art galleries, cathedral - we saw loads. We even went clubbing till the wee small hours!
Live Axle Fisher Fury: 2lt Blacktop Zetec, Newman cams, Tiger shallow sump, lightened flywheel, grumbly webers, willwood calipers + disk kit.

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petercoll
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Name: Peter Collingridge
Location: Shropshire

Re: Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy

Postby petercoll » Thu Jan 06, 2011 7:30 pm

Sounds fantastic - got any pics ?

Pete

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Fizzer
Posts: 81
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:21 am

Re: Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy

Postby Fizzer » Fri Jan 07, 2011 11:27 am

yeah, will try to post some this weekend! :)

In the meantime, here's the lambo we found (whilst looking for our B&B)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP-LIoooJe8
A
Live Axle Fisher Fury: 2lt Blacktop Zetec, Newman cams, Tiger shallow sump, lightened flywheel, grumbly webers, willwood calipers + disk kit.

micha
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Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 6:41 pm
Name: Micha mertens

Re: Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy

Postby micha » Sun Oct 23, 2011 10:07 am

if you are visiting strasbourg, dont use the (rather expensive) hotels there. cross the border to germany (5km) and book you a room here:

very nice rooms, well priced and the food is the best in the area.....

http://www.rebstock-kehl.de/

for booking you can email them in english, french or german..or even phone them.


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