Will Maison Blanche go allocated for '06 ??

[Steve Pyro]

As long as all you MB sardines don't decide to decamp to Houx Annexe.  

[Bob U]

I'll second that

[Robspot]

We arrived thursday lunchtime and had to go in the second field but there was plenty of space. The only downer was the lack of power and water. It was full by thursday night though and people arriving friday had no chance.

If those people start complaining to the ACO that's when we'll get problems. If people want to go down early and set up a decent camp what's wrong with that. If you want reserved space go on Houx.

[Lorry]

We only had a long lecture from the size police when we went in, but were forced to pay for the too extra days at the booth.  

This stopped the traffic going in and on tuesday, whilst stuck behind a car buying the extra ticket, some local couldn't be bothered to brake and ran into the car behind me.

MB was as packed as I've ever seen it.  We were next to the road, with our cars parked on the grass, and got double parked.  I suspect the problem is that ther are no roads to the back, as any gaps get filled with tents.

And they used to have marker stones and white lines, but the stones were used as hearths and the lines get mowed out.

With marked pitches we could plan better and would have had room for a pool (we lost our pool space of course), but where do the cars go

[Steve Pyro]

..........but where do the cars go

On here  

[Lawnmower Man]

I met one crew who had Karting Nord  and saw several other cars in BSJ with KN or MB passes and they had to use BSJ as there was no space left in the booked site.

BSJ was full too by Sat morning people being told to use the woods.

t.

[Ballast]

And yes, most of our campsites were too large

Errr, yes  

We did get a little over zealous with our pitch this year and fully admit that our calculations were a little off as to the size of pitch we would require.

We did get a visit from the "space police" who were politley informed that there were a number of cars out-and-about and that the ground we were camping on was "not fit for purpose" at which they hoisted up their petty coats and moved away muttering something about british pork

Here's hoping that the ACO see reason and leave MB as is. Like many have said before me, we will never see the likes of the Liverpool Boys, Beermountain and Drinking for Holland's sites ever again if they dont.

Would it be worth starting a petition?

It's amazing how we can pretend not to understand them the same way they pretend not to understand us. Funny, they didn't like it either!

[Jay (Team Cannonball)]

I believe the porsche curves viewing area was also being used as an overflow. We think the ACO just kept printing BSJ tickets until there was no space left.

However. BSJ was no where near as crowded as Karting Nord last year, and as a result there was a lot less frayed tempers. All disputes were resolved like adults, without the threat of violence.

[Abs]

It's amazing how we can pretend not to understand them the same way they pretend not to understand us. Funny, they didn't like it either!

They didn't understand as you were talking bribble by that point  

[Lawnmower Man]

I think the ACO are on a real looser with this one.

If an individual turns up on a Bike  and  only has a two man tent they pay the same as a team turning up in a minibus with say eight people and two four man tents with a Gazebo or two and a pool.  IMHO that is not really fair.  

Perhaps what they should do is charge a supplement for additional space.

Your advance party turn up in one car and reserve space for say six cars.  So they pay for the five other cars.  When the cars turn up so they get the deposit refunded.

The current good will of only using the space of Xm by Xm is breaking down like many other things around the place.

The Danes seem to manage to cordon off vast areas of KN and BSJ. I wonder how much they pay.  Of course the tents are very tightly packed.  But if they just pay for the Artics and Coaches they can't really complain about private groups doing the same.

t.

[Matt Harper]

Maison Blanche NIMBY's!
I think you'll find that the ACO have a fairly good handle on this - they know how many tickets they've sold and they probably have a pretty good idea about how many cars/vans/tents should fit on the site.
When some folks show up nice and early and set up gargantuan encampments, the whole calculation goes piss-shaped. I never fully got my head around big, roped-off areas that were suddenly out-of bounds. I've also had several unnecessary conversations with people who've all but accused me of trespass on 'thier' property, because I've cut through on the way to the thunder box etc.
With a marked plot, there are no arguments. I've stayed at every site at Le Mans, bar Karting Nord and Beausejour. Houx (being the biggest) is the best organised and the least liable to confrontation.
I would be narked if I'd paid for my space on MB only to find I couldn't get on it because of the mini-metropolis set up by the early arrivals.
One final observation, regarding language. Is it not fair to assume that the officials will be speaking in French? Ridiculing them because they communicate in their own language - in their own country, is probably why they appear so unco-operative at times.

[Robspot]

I think you'll find that this year the only large encampments were JPC and DFH and in my opinion, neither were grossly oversized. DFH, for example, were massive but with only a small footprint, while JPC had over thirty people on site and all of them arrived by wednesday. If the ACO continue to sell tickets based on 1 per vehicle then you can't have any argument if the vehicles carry 5+ people and take up a proportionate amount of room.

I didn't see any other oversized camps yet by thursday night the whole of the second field was full and friday arrivals were either driving around for ages or reduced to double parking. We let a couple of late arrivals onto the edge of our camp but otherwise it was rammed so don't go talking bollocks about the ACO knowing exactly what space they have - as has been previously testified they hardly even checked tickets were stuck on so god knows how many unticketed people got in.

[Snoring Rhino]

I ve been reading this thread a while, I think your spot on Matt, I would have been very pissed off if  I had been turned away from MB on friday, I'm sorry Team JPC, but you maintained too much empty space all weekend, it will not need people to complain, the size police must have taken their defeat in recovering some space under alot of pressure very hard. They came around to SPS and DFH on a mission but soon realised that actually we were very compact for the number passes we had. We all pay the same, if we cant work it out between ourselves fairly, then we open up the excuse for allocated pitches. Shame really, with hindsight, a better strategy would have been to work with them.

[Svend_DFH]

As someone said before, instead of having the one ticket per car-policy it would indeed be much wiser to clearly specify a number of square metres per ticket. It is not that the large groups deliberately cheat with the amount of space they used. When I asked some of the groups what budget they were on.. well.. 4 or 8 or 12 extra campingtickets won't make that much of a financial difference.

I spend around 600 Euro's for a week in Le Mans. That included a rental car + petrol, a general admission ticket and my part of the DFH-happening. A 100 Euro's extra for a campingticket really is not much of a problem in that case. I doubt it would be a problem for anyone on the DFH-site.

A clearer policy would help a lot.

[Robspot]

In his defence, apparently JPC did have space reserved for my team but as he was in his usual coma when I arrived I was unable to verify this and so trundled off to the second field.

Due to the current ACO camping structure it is possible for two minibuses to turn up with two passes and thirty four people and probably take up the equivalent space of at least ten cars. If they continue to charge by the vehicle only and don't regulate passengers then these problems will only get worse.