Scottish Region Nurburgring Trip: 26th - 30th June 2008

I should explain what happened. For insurance reasons this trip is organised through ringweekends, which have all the necessary liability insurance etc - you can understand the reasons why.

When Darren from ringweekends got availabilty from P&O for ferries, and got me pricing, I posted it up here at the end of February. The pricing he got was a discount on the normal fares, but these prices are only available on a certain number of cabins. Now for reasons unknown (i.e. my fault) I didn't post up the details of how to book until the beginning of April. Folks like Baz and Gee signed up straight away, but we waited until the end of April to see how many people would go (definition of going = paid deposits to ringweekends).

This wait proved too long - when we went to reserve the cabins all at once there was availability going there, but not enough cabins left at the lower price coming back. Now availabilty changes daily so Darren called them daily to check and try and reserve the cabins, but no joy.

Darren came up with alternatives, including paying the full fare on the way back, and an alternative price travelling back via Dover (as Baz talks about above). We even compared the Rosyth ferry (v. expensive) which taking into account the reduced fuel bills (£130 round trip for a CSL) was still more than the original figures supplied.

It was at this point that most people decided to just take the offered refunded and pull out of the trip, and the remainder decided to pull out because the numbers weren't there anymore.

This is a really difficult one and I'm sure the committee will recognise it because we can't expect ringweekends to reserve a number of cabins in advance without deposits. In hindsight, what we should have done is reserved each cabin as the deposits arrive, and that is what will happen in the future, even though it is extra admin work at the ringweekends end. Also, if my delay of a month hadn't happened (between the end of Feb and beginning of April) then the cabins would have been available, so I accept personal responsibility for it falling through, and I apologise for that.

I will re-arrange this for next year and hopefully those who were coming this year will come along, and those who wanted to come this year but couldn't for various reasons will also be able to make it.

On a brighter note Hamish and Jim Westwood flew over with me, and had a good time - on the evening sessions and during the day on Saturday.

Here is one of these pesky Porsche's getting in the way

http://www.nurburgringphotos.com/details.php?gid=20080628&am p;sgid=&pid=17668

Cheers for Info Steve

It is hard enough orginizing a karting day let alone a trip to the Ring

There is always plenty Ring Trips with the guys on Evotechnik if anyone fancies hooking up with them,Mind you half of them stay in south England so would be easy for them