I lived about six miles from Plymouth and was doing agency work during my summerbreak from university. I knew I had a full week’s pay. All I had to do was fill a rucksack, get my pay, pootle to the ferry terminal and be off and running.

Oh dear...

So, I went into Plymouth (on foot, lacking the bus fare) carrying only a rucksack (badly packed, containing little I needed and plenty that I didn’t), a blanket, one change of clothes and a day’s food. Yes, no sleeping bag, tent, race ticket, camping permit or clue as to what I was actually doing.

With a small house on my back I staggered to the ferryport. I arrived looking like I was about to die, feeling like I might and smelling like I just had (I’d made a six mile march, in June, with a full pack after all.). Arriving at the port with only an hour until boarding, fifteen minutes before check-in closed, I spent  almost a third of my entire (woefully inadequate) budget on a return from Plymouth to Roscoff. It was as close to sensible planning as I got.

The ferry was uneventful. I arrived in Roscoff at about 9pm French time. I blagged a lift to Le Mans from the ferry terminal. Rather unwisely, I admit, with a stag party in their van. I thought I had anyway. Unfortunately for me, I hadn’t.

Being a stag party, it’s traditional that the groom is left in some wild, out of the way place to make his own way back as best he can. For some reason my traveling partners thought that doing this to me  would be far funnier. I found myself left on my own in the city of Nantes. At 1am. My erstwhile compadres having reversed over my rucksack as they departed, laughing, into the night.

I spent about half an hour trying to get my bearings before walking into an overnight car park and spotting a taxi. I toddled over, cursing my broken rucksack, and knocked on the window. The driver hurriedly dropped his rather explicit ‘gentleman’s literature’ and grumpily asked me where I was headed. To the station, obviously. That cost another third of my total budget although, to be fair, I’d never have found the station by myself.

Arriving in Nantes station at 3am, I got a single ticket on the overnight train to Le Mans and stumbled to the track on foot. It was a typically French June day (boiling hot), the track is several miles from the station and I didn’t actually know where it was. Two hours later, feeling even worse than when I arrived at Plymouth ferry terminal, I finally found it and another small technical hitch beckoned. I didn’t have enough cash for a ticket. A passing Brit noticed me thumbing through my money, obligingly relieving me of my remaining cash (bar a few coins) in return for his spare ticket. Now I finally got into the track proper.

Without a camping permit or a tent (both of which are actually quite useful when you’re supposed to be camping), I slept rough in the grandstands along the pit straight. I spent a distinctly cold night opposite the BMW pit, trying to sleep amid the pre-dawn Anvil Chorus from the pits opposite. But I was there. I’d dreamt of coming to Le Mans since I was a small boy and here I was, exactly where I’d always wanted to be. Granted, with no camping kit, no food, no money to buy food and no money to get back to the station, let alonereturn to Morlaix. But at Le Mans, nonetheless.

Race day dawned. I learnt the value of a pocket radio (I couldn’t follow French commentary), sunblock (I resembled a pillar box), a folding chair (I spent the entire race sitting on the ground in by the main grandstand) and of actually bringing camping gear on a camping trip. I also heard tell of that mythical document called a ‘camping permit’ and overheard myself described by fellow race-goers in various terms, most relating to my sanity (or rather obvious lack thereof). But I was there and that was what mattered. Toyota battled furiously to wrest the lead from BMW and everyone else pursued as best they could, my first pit walk, my first live motor race. It was an experience I still remember clearly fifteen years later.

Now I was faced with the small matter of returning home. So, I staggered back to the station (by now smelling like a cross between the Bog Monster and the Creature From The Black Latrine). Having slept for maybe twelve hours in the previous four days, I fell asleep on a bench and awoke at about midnight. Sneaking aboard an overnight train stopping at Morlaix I fell asleep again, finally reviving as the train reached its final destination. Brest, out on the Atlantic coast. I begged, in schoolboy French, to board a train for Morlaix and finally got there at about 7:30am. More begging secured a seat on the local bus running daily to Roscoff. Another thirty-minute march with broken rucksack, in blistering heat, got me into the ferry terminal. Only the ferry had already left.

Time for more bilingual begging, obviously. I have to say that the staff at Roscoff (considering I smelt like a corpse, looked like a caveman and could barely make myself understood) were kindness itself. There was another sailing for Plymouth that night and they put me on it. I had to wait until 11pm, but I could hardly be difficult seeing as they put themselves out by letting me on board in the first place. I was incredibly grateful to them for saving my skin.

And so, almost home. Another stagger to the main bus station, telling a bus driver that I’d been robbed and one brief crawl home and all was finally over.

That was my first visit in 1999. 2015 will be my eleventh.