Waterloo, Huy and Spa Francorchamps
We awoke to glorious sunshine. Our prayers had been answered. The hotel even had bacon, sausage and tea at breakfast, so I ate as much as I possibly could before nipping down to the garage to take some pictures of the cars.
The original plan had been to head into the city centre, but due to nanny-state restrictions on pollution, we figured taking a V8 and Straight 6 might terrify the locals and cause and international incident. Instead, we headed to Waterloo – yes, the song by Abba.
On arriving at Waterloo’s underground museum, John asked if he could get a discount as he did on Mersey ferries. The staff took the request in their stride and I think, charged him more than everyone else. I headed into the museum, which I managed to do in record time and headed to the second-best thing about our visit to Waterloo – the cafe. As I got there just before lunch, I bagged a fantastic table and watched as groups of other tourists were turned away while listening to Pink Floyd.

The best thing about Waterloo was in the car park. Richie’s Ruby Mica Red Chimaera shone like a jewel, twinkling in the sun. He invited me over to have a look.

We’d see soon enough what the car could do on the Autobahn, watching it outpace £130,000 911s.
This was no ordinary Chimaera; it harboured a couple of little secrets: a 4.6-litre engine and a supercharger he’d fitted from SC-Power. Looking under the bonnet, there was a lot of engine crammed in there, and the braided pipes looked like coiled snakes ready to strike.
It resembled the innards of a Terminator that Skynet deemed too powerful to finish building.
Waving goodbye to Waterloo, our next stop was the Spa Francorchamps circuit. Richie joined us on this trip, putting the car into Warp 9 down the roads.

We stopped off to get some fuel, threw some of it over the tarmac and checked where we were going to go for lunch. This turned out to be Huy, Belgium. A picturesque little town on the River Meuse.

Finding a quiet place to park, we wandered into the Grand Place square, found a restaurant (O’Malley Pub) and ordered some food.

Even in England, I hate ordering burgers, as there’s a tendency not to cook them through for some unimaginable reason. Luckily in Huy, they got the memo, and my burger and chips were fantastic. We had a good chat with Richie and Rob, sunk some coffee and then headed back to the cars. The schedule was tight, and we had some miles to cover.

We arrived at the deserted circuit a little bit too late, and had a wander about – but at least I’d got to see it. It’s probably the most played track I had on Forza 7, so it was good see the familiar yellow and red track edging in the flesh and smell the petrol fumes mixed in with fresh air. A few motorbikes were braving the sodden tarmac while we had a look around; we watched them for a bit before heading back to the cars and the fairly lengthy trip to the next stop over.

We found the Best Western hotel which also had an underground car park, and after negotiating the world’s tightest turn found a couple of parking spaces and switched off the thundering engines.
It looked like Richie’s car had had an issue, and it turned out the power steering had failed after a fluid leak. This was luckily all patched up now and we headed upstairs to check-in.

The hotel itself was very modern, with a light and airy bar area by the reception. After cleaning up, we headed out to find some food. Unfortunately, Trier isn’t New York, and after wandering about for 30 minutes, we settled on the only place which looked open, a little Chinese eatery called Chopsticks. To be fair to them, the food was fine, the service friendly and the value was good.

Having filled our boots we wandered back to the hotel in mild drizzle, and while the boys had some drinks, I headed upstairs to make a start on the accounts before hitting the sack. Rock and roll.

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