The nicest Vauxhall Firenza HP Droopsnoot I’ve ever seen

This morning, I was up early and took the tube out to pick up my rental car. This was my first time renting through Turo (“Airbnb for cars”) because I thought it’d be fun to have something a little unique to attend the F1 race. No, I didn’t go for an Aston Martin or a Maserati, but rather an eight year old Alfa Romeo Giulietta. Then I started winding my way out of London, on to my first destination, the Aston Martin Heritage Trust facility.

I made it about an hour into my drive before the Alfa started doing Alfa Things – incessantly chiming about my seatbelt being unbuckled (which it wasn’t). What’s a little bit of high pitched bonging while navigating roundabouts in a right hand drive car though.

I showed up at the Aston Martin Heritage Trust not knowing a lot about what to expect. I picked it because it was on the way between London and the British Motor Museum, and I knew I’d have some time to kill before picking up Dave at the train station. Had I done a bit more research, I’d have known that they only do timed entry at a few points throughout the day. Luckily they snuck me in with a group that had just started.

The Heritage Trust is housed in a small barn and only has a handful of cars on display at any given time. Despite only having a few cars on display, the guides managed to tell stories for upwards of two hours, covering racing history, company lore, and all manner of obsessive nerdy detail. It was fun, but by noon I was ready to get moving. With the Alfa bonging away, I set off for Banbury to meet Dave, then we went to the British Motor Museum.

The British Motor Museum is a gorgeous facility, with an onsite workshop, and an extensive collection of weird and wonderful British cars, from ultra valuable Jaguars to ultra not valuable Cromptons. Genuinely delightful, though I won’t bore the blog with a play-by-play recounting. Check the photo dump for some of my favorites.

We ended our day at our Airbnb for the weekend in Market Harborough. Silverstone weekend means that accommodation is tough to come by – this is about a 40 minute drive from the park-and-ride, which is a further 20 minutes from the track, but anything closer was big money. Our place is … functional. Mostly. Towels would have been nice.

Market Harborough itself is a very cute market town, connected to a canal system and with some gorgeous 16th century buildings. We had a fish-and-chips, stopped in a pub, and then wandered through the alleys. Oddly, by 7pm on a Friday night, most things had closed, even the ice cream shops. I guess ice cream is a daytime food here.

Saturday and Sunday will be spent at the track, keeping our eyes peeled for Roscoe.