Our decision to leave the Isle of Man before the end of the TT race week was made almost a year ago when we booked our accommodation and ferry tickets.    And, while we may have allocated our time differently with more experience, the arrangement worked well and provided the advantage of allowing us to attend a round of the MotoGP at Silverstone on our way back to London.  We had heard that the Silverstone circuit had just had a major overhaul and that the facilities were very good.  It was located on the route back to London so it was too good a chance to miss.

Having made the decision to attend, we just forgot all about it and did nothing about organising tickets.  This sort of tardiness isn't unusual for us.  We could never be accused of overplanning.  MotoGP tickets were brought sharply into focus, however, when we met Greg and Kerrie Lane for coffee one day in Douglas.  They were using some free cafe WiFi to book tickets to the Dutch MotoGP at Assen which was still more than a month away.  It was a timely reminder to do something about Silverstone which was due to kick off in two days!

When we got onto the web that evening there were, of course, no tickets to be had.  The Silverstone and MotoGP sites claimed to be “SOLD OUT” for any class of ticket we might have considered and there seemed to be no other locations for ticket sales.  Eventually, I found a site in the Czech Republic that specialised in hospitality packages for all rounds of the MotoGP, the F1 and other top level motor sport events.  With only one day left before the Friday practice, they agreed to sell me some stand tickets (without the attached and very expensive accommodation and hospitality package).  The tickets, in an uncovered stand, were more expensive than they would have been had we booked them earlier through Silverstone, but at least we had them.

Accommodation was the next problem and we found that everything within an easy distance to Silverstone was already booked.  Jo spent more than an hour with some helpful folk in the Northampton tourist office and eventually found an upmarket B&B close by that had just opened.  It was so new, they explained, that we would be the first guests and would have to pay cash as they didn't have card facilities yet.  We found the place without trouble, checked into a comfortable new room with space to swing several cats, and scurried down to Silverstone to see some Friday practice and get the lay of the land with only a small crowd present.

At this juncture I should say a few words about MotoGP for the non-bikers among our friends.  The bikers will all have their own views which, I add, might not correspond to mine.

MotoGP is currently the elite category for motorcycle racing.  It is similar to F1 in that it is based on prototype machines that do not require any production component.  As a result, and like F1, it is extremely expensive.  A few years ago, MotoGP had healthy grids of 25 bikes and five different  manufacturers lining up to race.  As the Japanese and European economies have suffered so has the amount of money going into prototype development.  The result has been that Kawasaki has pulled out of MotoGP, Suzuki has left only one bike of older design in the competition to meet contractual obligations and keep a place at the table. This leaves only Honda, Yamaha and Ducati (the sole European marque).

Of the three bike brands still racing, Honda and Yamaha are competitive.  Ducati has struggled for several years and has only been able to win races through the exceptional talent of their main rider, Casey Stoner.  Stoner has now moved to Honda and Ducati is struggling.  That makes it basically a two horse race.

There are only 15 or 16 riders fronting the starter for each race.  This is 15 too few to make it a decent competition.  As an indicator of this, points are paid to finishers down to 15th place.  The organisers have realised the problem and have changed the rules for next year to introduce bikes with engines based on production machines.  No one is sure how this will go as the new class seems to encroach on various forms of production bike racing.  In the meantime, the punters (that's us) complain that the racing lacks the drama of other classes.

The other problem with such a small field is Silverstone itself.  The rebuilt circuit is huge, the lap is over five kilometres, and very flat.  The small field just gets lost in the expanse of the place.

Having solved the problem of tickets and accommodation, and found a better than average pub meal on Friday night, we were lulled into a false sense of security by a sunny clear sky on practice Saturday.  When Stoner won pole for the race and we had another fair dinner and a bottle of South African Pinotage we were feeling very relaxed about race day indeed.

We should have known better in England.  Sunday was wet!  Wetter than an otters' cloak room.  We started and ended the day in our rain suits and didn't rush out to the circuit.  We kept out of the weather as long as we could and only made the move to our open stand seats, fully exposed to the rain and wind, at the last minute.  It was only then that we found that things were not quite as they seemed.  We showed our tickets to the usher.

“Not here,” he said.  “Reserved seats.”  We must have looked confused. “Down there,” he said and nodded his head towards the covered stand.

We said nothing, climbed down the stairs and headed for the other stand.  Another usher looked at our tickets and pointed to two covered reserved seats out of the rain and the worst of the wind.  It took us a few minutes to work out what had happened.  The company that provided the tickets sold only packages of tickets, hospitality and accommodation.  The tickets we got were left over from an unclaimed package and were given to us at the price of the cheaper (uncovered) tickets we had asked for.  Still a good profit for the company no doubt, but very good luck for us.

The weather didn't improve and the racing conditions were atrocious.  It got colder and colder as the day went on.  We had a good, but distant, view of some of the better sections of the long circuit and had brought enough food that we didn't need to venture out into the rain too often so we were a lot more comfortable than most of the 72,000 crowd.

Stoner took the lead two laps from the start of the MotoGP and continued to open the gap to the second placed Dovitzioso with each lap.  Stoner was a clear winner and this made a bad day worse for the English fans who don't like him at all.  They were also disappointed when their favourite, Valentino Rossi, performed badly and was easily beaten by the No. 2 Ducati rider Nicky Hayden and the lone, outdated, Suzuki.   This disappointment, however, stopped short of withholding a standing ovation for a lacklustre performance.

The cult of Valentino Rossi was fascinating.  There were six dedicated Valentino Rossi bright yellow tents with “VR 46” (Rossi's racing number is 46) emblazoned on all sides.  VR 46 merchandise was ubiquitous.  People were wearing VR 46 jackets, hats, scarves and, probably, underwear (although it was far too cold to find this out).  There was little or no merchandise for any other rider.  We saw one sign for Jorge Lorenzo gear and one for the UK rider Cal Crutchlow and that was it.  If you wanted a Casey Stoner hat, tough luck.  There weren't any to be had. 

A handful of diehard Spanish, Australian and US fans set up lonely outposts in what was otherwise a Rossi estate.  The only dash of class in the whole sorry lot was a fellow wearing an ageing, but no doubt much loved, Sheene No. 7 shirt in faded Suzuki blue.  At least one true fan had a sense of history.

Our good fortune with the seating and Stoner's classy win might have rescued an otherwise forgettable day but it was not to be.  We packed and prepared ourselves carefully for the 80 mile run back to London in heavy rain before joining the exodus from the bike parking area.  We then spent the next two hours sitting in the pouring rain and inching forward through the most incompetently managed traffic we had encountered anywhere, just to get out of the Silverstone precinct.    The agony would have been longer, but I saw a chance and joined some others to ride across a footpath and cut out a long section of the queue.

We can only hope that the crew responsible for Silverstone has nothing at all to do with the upcoming 2012 London Olympics.  We escaped with nothing more than a sore left wrist from holding the clutch open for a couple for hours and frayed tempers, but considered ourselves lucky.   Interesting to us, however, was the level of acceptance of this incompetence from the locals.  In the US or Australia it would have been a scandal and heads would have rolled.  Here, no one seemed to complain.  On the Motorcycle New Forum there were only two posts complaining about the organisation and I posted one of them.  The posts received few responses and those that bothered just accepted that this is the way things are here.  Hopeless!