Gréoux-les-Bains 7th - 14th of June
Day 5 ... Friday - Les Trésors du Haut-Var
After the long journey of the day before the Friday was a little bit
quieter. On small country roads towards south-east the tour led to
the Chateau de Berne in Lorgues. The five star Chateau Hotel with
winery and splendid gardens was a superb choice to spend the
lunch time in a great surrounding. This was certainly the best set
up for the cars of the entire week and offered countless variations
of taking pictures. Without any modern cars (apart from the
ongoing renovation work of this huge areal) the cars just looked
natural at this setting and according to the participants the food
certainly matched the venue. Even the driveway with lovely flowers
and trimmed trees and bushes left a very neat impression and
one could imagine spending some days in the hotel.
After a short excursion to the nearby Abbaye du Thoronet with
guided tour through the old walls the route led towards the dinner
at the Chateau de la Prégentière about 50km from the hotel. If
some still thought that the past days would have been possible
even with a larger touring cars some passages through the
following villages made the choice of the organizers to restrict the
rally for the smaller cars very obvious. With about 2 meter
clearance between the old houses the passage was difficult but
very exciting. Just when arriving at the restaurant the usual
evening shower set in and although the rain became stronger by
minute a few were clever enough to just drive straight back to the
hotel. Although they might have missed the dinner it was still the
far better choice as unlike the days before the rain never stopped
and when the cars arrived later on in Gréoux-les-Bains even some
roads leading from Gréoux centre to the hotels suffered serious
flooding. Apparently some owners had to remove the floor boards
to get the water out of the car for the final day.
Report & images … Peter Singhof
www.ClassicCarPhotography.de
Chassis numbers compiled with the help of the Bugatti Register
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