Classic Car Wife

We arrived in beautiful Girona after the long drive from Saint Tropez. We had visited Girona in 2019 BCCW (Before Classic Car Wife) and really loved it. This is a stunning city with magnificent buildings, art, museums and culture. I had booked us into the Hotel Historic in the old town - a beautiful conversion of on old building and our room was stunning! It's a family owned and run hotel and very friendly. Being an old town there was no parking but we lucked it with a free s

We are about to start an amazing road trip around Spain over the next few weeks. We've already been on the road for a few weeks. I've been to a conference in Lausanne and we've had some time in the south of France relaxing and working remotely. While I was at the conference, Mr F stopped off at Mulhouse to view the Schlumpf Collection. https://www.musee-automobile.fr/en/ . What a shame that I missed out on that (not!). He says the best thing was seeing over 130 Bugattis in th

Sorry readers for the silence. While we were in Ireland, my mother-in-law took ill back in Australia and we had to cut short our journey and head back early. She has recovered well since. We managed to spend a great night in Derry then a couple of castle stops in County Galway which were fantastic. We will just have to return! My Irish heritage beckons!

After leaving Dublin, we took a very comfortable drive up the motorway to Belfast and spent the afternoon at the Titanic Quarter. This was a really great experience and we also stayed at the Titanic Hotel in the refurbished offices of Harland and Wolf. Highly recommended. I wish we had more time on this trip as it would have been good to explore Belfast more. We set out along the Causeway Coastal Route with the aim of getting to Derry by the end of the day. Unfortunately the

PG is taking her first road trip, which is around Ireland. We drove from her homebase near Gatwick for an overnight stop in Manchester. I have never been to Manchester and had a GGG grandmother who worked in the cotton mills and stole some clothes resulting in her being sent to Australia as a convict. Manchester was a bit underwhelming for us. The city is quite grubby but we had a GREAT stay at the Hotel Gotham - complete with valet parking. The rooftop bar and the hotel rest

We have had so much fun in MoneyPenny and have been planning some UK road trips. Mr F sold his business and decided to congratulate...

Since we put MoneyPenny into our garage last August she has had a wheel-balance and some new oil in the supercharger and is back on the road driving beautifully from Amiens to Ypres following the ANZAC Remembrance Trail and the journeys of my great uncles who volunteered in WW1 on the Western Front. This blog will be mainly about Remembrance and not the car. MoneyPenny will make cameo appearances only. I have six great uncles who volunteered in WW1 from Australia - two fought

For those who are interested, these are the stats on our recently completed French road trip. We travelled 2550 miles or 4103 kms. We spent 1082 pounds on fuel (1265 euros) We purchased 128 gallons (582 Litres) of fuel. Our highway consumption was 22 miles per gallon (12.83 litres per 100kms) Overall we did 19 miles per gallon We started our journey on 31st July and finished on 31st August 2023. We estimate that we spent approximately 250 euros on tolls. Parking fees were 30

With our coast-to-coast Odyssey completed, and a week spent relaxing in the sunshine of St Tropez, we needed to get MoneyPenny back to base in the UK. There are a number of routes we could take but this time we decided to return via Dijon and Paris. St Tropez to Dijon looked 'do-able' from the comfort of our kitchen when planning this journey. A bit over six hours was going to be a decent day of driving (mainly on motorways). However, it would be a new destination for us and

We made it to our Mediterranean destination and spent a week based in an AirBnB apartment in the Old Town of St Tropez. MoneyPenny was in very good company with a lot of beautiful prestige cars in town. Mostly these were new Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches driven by young rich dudes but there was much respect and many thumbs up, smiles and nods of approvals for our dear DB7 girl who was unique in town. She was a great match for the glamour of the super-yachts! If you are

We ended up staying four nights in Toulouse - two more than we had planned - and forfeited our two-night stay in Marseilles. After Tuesday's Assumption of Mary public holiday we woke on Wednesday with high hopes that we would find an alternator somewhere in Toulouse. After all, it's the fourth largest city in France and is home to about half a million people. Well it seems that many of the good people of Toulouse have shut up shop and gone on holidays (after all it IS August)

Ah, the joys of holidaying in a classic car. This morning, MoneyPenny's battery started discharging and the warning light came on as we were heading out for the day to see 'not a car museum but an aircraft museum' called Aeroscopia by Airbus. The contents of our car's boot have been emptied onto the ground so many times today to access the battery that I gave up taking photos. See some of the highlights below. The brain cogs of my dear husband have been whirring away in overd

We are just finishing four nights in an apartment called Le Porche de Sarlat in Sarlat-de-Canada. It's been a great base for the region. The apartment is right next door to the cathedral and we have enjoyed the bells and the live music in the square outside our apartment. There is a lovely little courtyard to sit in, we have enjoyed making a coffee in the mornings and fresh croissants from the boulangerie around the corner and sharing a baguette for lunch. The town is very pi

Our Atlantic base was Bordeaux and we drove to Arcachon to swim and partake of the coastal delights. We were there a week before the famous Fete de Mer and as was to be expected in August, the traffic was bad, but the sun was shining and the roof was down...Happy days! We ate delicious seafood, swam on the beach and ventured to the Dune de Pilat (highest sand dune in Europe). Unfortunately we could not find any photo opportunities of MoneyPenny by the Atlantic! They keep the

Our few days in Amboise were unseasonably chilly and windy but we still put the roof down and enjoyed driving the countryside and seeing 'les chateaux'. Unfortunately there were no photo opportunities of MoneyPenny in front of Chambord - they keep the public parking well away from the main attractions. I did however, manage to purchase a very nice Imari-style vase for 20 Euros at a market in Montrichard. MoneyPenny's luggage capacity is going to be stretched by the end of thi

MoneyPenny had a rest day at the hotel today. We have walked to all the sights today! It's just as well because we need to walk off some of the calories we have consumed. Restaurant recommendation: Last night we had an amazing meal at Le Choiseul Amboise at the 36 restaurant https://www.lechoiseulamboise.com/restaurant/ Amazing food and service!!!! The Chateaux Amboise which towers over our hotel, was the home of Francois1 and his establishment of the Knights of the the Orde

We've driven just over three hours today and have arrived in the beautiful town of Amboise in the Loire Valley. One of the highlights of this drive for me was listening on the radio to the late and great Jacqueline du Pres and her husband Daniel Barenboim play Cesar Franck's Cello Sonata in A Major while the burgeoning cornfields of France rolled by and MoneyPenny purred down the motorway. Life doesn't get much better than that! Rouen was a good stopover last night and the Ho

We're back and reunited with our dear MoneyPenny! She's had a number of things done to her while we've been back in Australia, but more on that tomorrow! Today, we put her on Le Shuttle again (more than 2 hours delay!!) and we are on an overnight stop in Rouen. It's good to be back in the car and back in France. Had a great meal and good wine tonight and will be on the road tomorrow....stay tuned for updates! We're back!

It's been a few years since this fantastic (usually annual) car show has been held so it was great to be back at the beautiful Melbourne...

On a sunny Spring Sunday, what better way to spend the day than taking our Spitfire 'Suzy' for a run. We decided to drive to Terrey Hills and turn onto the lovely road that wends its way down through the National Park to Akuna Bay. There's a lovely restaurant overlooking the marina and a couple of great picnic spots along this road if you want to bring your own. We spotted a couple of other classic car owners along the way, including a lovely 1968 Ford Mustang convertible. Yo