"We're going to the Nurburgring. Happy Birthday"

These words from my girlfriend brought a smile to my face. Especially as my birthday was over 2 weeks away.

"We're leaving in 12 hours and you have to be up at 5am".

I felt slightly less excitable.

We drove the few hundred miles from Shropshire to Dover in record time thanks to the girlfriend's lack of care for speed limits, and we arrived at Dover with 30 minutes to spare. Norfolk Line check in had practically no queues, and we drove straight on to the ferry. This conveniently put us at the front of the boat, so once in Dunquerque, we were one of the first off the boat.

The satnav was already set with the Ringhaus as the destination, still set as a favourite from our last trip 2 years earlier. Unfortunately 3 year old maps in the satnav didn't match the roads in the port, so we just followed the signs for Toutes Directions, and carried on until the satnav realised where we were. Then it was a straightforward drive into Belgium, until we got to Aachen, where we hit the evening rush hour. A quick stop for a bite to eat and a fillup with diesel, and were were on our way again, reaching the Ringhaus at 8:30pm.

Once at the Ringhaus, we realised that the room we'd been given wasn't the room that had been booked. It seems that some people were shuffled round between rooms, and that somewhere along the way, the fact that we'd reserved a specific room was lost. Incidentally, of all the rooms we've seen (5 so far!) Hatzenbach is the nicest so far, with the most space, and a window facing away from the road.

Pfeffersteak sounded appealing from the menu, and it turned out to be delicious - nice and pink in the middle.

During the daytime on the Saturday there was an event of some sort on, so we drove down to Adenau to watch, and to get something to eat. We wandered up the path from the road towards Wehrseifen. There were quite a wide variety of cars on track, ranging from a Fiat Cinquecento to an AC Cobra (or a Cobra replica). The girlfriend used this time to get some practice in with her camera. As we were walking back down the steps, we saw a Citroen AX hit the barrier at Breidscheid. Luckily driver and passenger were OK, but the car didn't come off too well.
We pottered about for ages, then headed to the car park about 10 minutes before the Touristenfahrten was supposed to start. The car park swiftly filled up, with people parked at random. The visitors included a group of British bikers, with a girl who wore little beneath her leathers. This make biking suddenly looked rather appealing.

Nothing happened for ages, except for cars being recovered off track. At 6pm there was an announcement in German. With my limited German I picked up "10 minutes" from the announcement, but plenty of others (mainly Brits) obviously thought this meant get ready to go, as there was a scramble for the barriers. This was swiftly followed by another announcement - the equivalent of "aaargh! get back!" in German.

At 18:10 the barriers opened and cars started streaming on track. Because of the delay and people's impatience it was really busy, so i thought we'd hang on for 10 minutes. We went through the barrier at 18:22 (according the the webcam), and set off. After about 5 seconds we got passed. This was pretty much the story for the rest of the lap. 70 bhp does not make for a fast car.

We'd last visited the Ring 2 years earlier, in a Fiat Coupe with about 200 more horsepower. However I'd never driven the Ring before, either in real life or in a game, so I had no idea which way the corners went, and as for the vast majority of them you can't see the exit of a corner when you enter, it made for hesitant laps. Add to that the fact that the brakes on the Coupe started fading badly after 14km and it only made the situation worse. Since that visit I'd done a lot of laps on Gran Turismo 4, and had a far better idea of how fast to take each corner, as well as the right line to take. The only problem was that I had to keep letting faster people past. The lack of pawer also showed as the climb up Ex Mehule could only be done at 40 mph, and on the long run betweek Bergwerk(?) and Karussel, the car would manage 75mph in fourth gear, but if I changed to fifth, the speed started dropping off.
While we were about a third of the way round, the group of bikers we'd seen in the car park were pulled over, and one of their bikes was on the grass, with the front end very smashed up. The rider was sitting up on the kerb, but we later learned that he'd broken his leg.

This made biking seem somewhat less appealing.

As a result of the track closure that followed, there was a queue to get off track, so while we waited I checked round the car to make sure everything was in order, and found that Continental EcoContacts will go sticky when they're hot! By the time we got off track, we figured that if the track reopened it would be hectic, so we called it a day and went for tea.

When Sunday came, we could hear the traffic on the Ring while we lay in bed. After a leisurely breakfast we headed down to the track. The Sunday was a day with lots of traffic, and plenty of track closures. It seemed like every time we felt like doing a lap, the trck closed. In the end we had to resort to joining the queue and getting a lap in when the track reopened, which meant the trck was very busy.

On the first lap of the day we got passed by a bike just before the corner before Breidscheid. He passed us cleanly, and didn't look like he was on the ragged edge. As we rounded the corner he was about 10 metres in front, and just starting to straighten up. As he did so the bike slid from underneath him, and he and his bike hit the tarmac with quite a loud bang right in front of us. We pulled over to help, but luckily his mate was with him, and pulled over. Once we'd ascertained that the biker was able to get up, and wasn't seriously injured, and as my German is not good enough to be any real help in this situation we carried on.
By the time we got off the track, I was hungry, so we headed down to Adenau for a spot of lunch. We stopped at a place where you could see up Ex Muehle, and I watched to see if anyone else could manage more than 40 mph up there. I suspected that they could.

While I was enjoying my Waffeln mit heissen Kirchen und Sahne, there was a metallic bang followed by a  metallic scraping, and I looked up to see a riderless bike sliding up Ex Muehle with sparks showering off it. Standing up to get a slightly better view, I could see the rider lying face down, motionless in the track. This was right next to the second entrance to the track, and there were people there in seconds, and an ambulance within a couple of minutes. It was quite some time before the rider was placed in the ambulance. During this time two fire engines arrived, and went on track to a different incident. The track was closed for quite some time, so we managed to get lunch in.

The rest of the day was spent driving around viewing the countryside, and attempting to get on track. We managed two further laps that day,  both of which were relatively trouble free. On one lap I actually passed a biker, though something tells me he was just touring along. You certainly don't see many people trying hard who have panniers on their bike.

On the last lap of the day, I came across an old German VW Golf. It was an old, beige GL. This looked like it might be something the Panda could overtake! We gradually caught it up, and then managed to pass it, until a faster car approached, and as I moved over to let it through, the Golf sneaked through after it. The same lap saw us come across a Subaru Impreza with a poorly engine (which was quite audible). We managed to pass him on the straight, but he caught us up again in the twisty bits.

We came home on Monday.