A
pparently, the official collective noun for group
of petrolheads is a Clarkson, and, if you’ve
spent any length of time in one, you will know
that to have any social standing amongst
its hierarchy you’re usually expected to have
first-hand knowledge of that most-famous
motoring’ Mecca: the Nürburgring in Germany.
Fact. Right? Well, we three chaps a MotorPunk
HQ would tend to disagree.
While we’re always up for an automotive adventure we don’t see
why we British should have to put up with the 1,000 mile slog to the
Green Hell, and endure French tolls, Belgian radio or German cuisine,
just to gain that particular badge of honour. Especially when one
remembers that there’s a little-used 227 square-mile, English-speaking
island, with toll-free derestricted roads, just a short ferry ride out of
Liverpool.
In fact, the Isle of Man held the first Gordon Bennett and Tourist
Trophy motorcar races in 1905; that’s more than twenty years before
the Kaiser christened the ‘ring, which makes today’s TT course the
world’s oldest motor-cycle racing circuit still in use.
The Snaefell Mountain Course starts in the capital, Douglas, and takes
a wide sweep to the west and north before entering the town of
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