Former race tracks have a ghostly mien, at least those of which there remains any trace long after the engines have gone silent. Many, perhaps most, disappear altogether under acres of concentre for some new shopping centre, others, like Sydney’s Oran Park and Amaroo Park, become bustling suburbs full of houses, schools and traffic.
Some years back, on a riding trip through western Europe with friends from Australia, we stayed for a few days at the city of Reims (usually spelled Rheims in British publications). Although the city itself was almost completely destroyed in WW2, you’d hardly know it, more than seventy years later. The crowning glory is the Cathedral, which took over a century to build, which remarkably escaped serious damage. For us, Reims was handy (around 130km) to…
