Taken by an individual in Sweden (who posted them on Autogespot), while these Porsches waited to board a ferry, these snaps clearly show a Mark 2 997 GT3 RS waiting to take part in some cold-weather-testing. Distinguised by the carbon fibre rear spoiler, the last car (shown in possibly a new colour for Porsche – Porker Pink? ) a version 2 GT3RS also sports the centre locking wheels as shown in the new M2 GT3 brochure.

Setting aside the colour, which is obviously a result of the low-light conditions and a camera-phone, the new 911 GT3 RS looks like it it shaping up to be another desirable and astoundingly competent vehicle.

I am a huge fan of the Morgan Aero 8 – especially since the company fixed the early cars squint in 2006! The new model is just awesome: powerful, beautiful and sounds like thunder when being driven. I haven’t been lucky enough to drive the latest Aero but have had a spin behind the wheel of a 2006 and let me assure you, while these may look like classic cars the technology means it handles, performs and goes like any modern supercar.

I found a great site for Morgan car fans and if you want to read more about the new Morgan Aero 8 4.8 V8, which has 367bhp! and does 0-62mph in 4.2 seconds!) I would recommend you taking the time to look at it; it is an excellent resource and is filled with pictures and information on the Aero 8 and other Morgan cars.

A video of the facelifted 2009 / 2010 Porsche 997 GT3 RS mark 2 testing at the Nurburgring in Germany has become available (see link below).

The 2010 Porsche 911 GT3RS will get the same LED daytime running lights and revised taillights seen on previous test-mules. The car will also sport a cleaner front end with larger intakes in the lower skirt and a new lip spoiler.

The GT3 RS will once again based on the Carrera 4 body and should feature the same widened track, carbon-fiber interior and plastic rear window as the current model. Power levels should receive a slight boost over the current 415hp (302kW) output courtesy of a new direct-injection system. Acceleration times may also be improved if Porsche adds its new Doppelkupplung dual-clutch system, although a conventional six-speed manual is likely to remain the only option.

You can view the video of the new 997 GT3RS version 2 by clicking here

I stumbled across this excellent iPhone theme for Blackberry and, best of all it isfree! Therefore, I thought I’d share it with others who like the look of the iPhone but need the business practicality of the RIM devices. Being the happy little guinea pig that I am, have loaded it onto my Blackberry Curve 8310 and also tried and tested it on the Blackberry Pearl 8100 – it works perfectly on both.  No drama, not issues just a new theme that looks like the Apple iPhone desktop.

To get the free iPhone, or should that be bPhone, theme for Blackberry devices you can follow this link.

As I stated in my other writing, when driving from Calais to Southern Austria or Germany, Metz and Nancy in the Lorraine region of France are a good halfway place to stop and find a hotel. Having suffered at the hands of many a Basil Fawlty-esque hoteliers in my time, I decided to enlist the help of Relais & Chateaux to find a place to stay in the Lorraine area.

Based on my geographical requirements – I wanted a hotel not too far from a motorway (10-15 minute drive from the E23 or E25 motorways was ideal) – the site recommended Chateau d’Adomenil in Luneville France. Based on the photos shown on the web site and a brief read through the text, this hotel – deemed by Relais & Chateaux to be a luxury hotel – seemed ideal.

Now, let me be honest, when you search the Internet for hotel options in Lorraine, very few are offered. Yes you get your smattering of motels (F1) and business hotels (Novotel, Best Western) but few with character, charm and a level of elegance that raises them above the others. From the outset, Chateau d’Adomenil seemed to offer this. Set in the sleepy town of Luneville and boasting a gourmet restaurant with a Michelin star, I had high hopes that I may have finally found the perfect stopping point for my road trips.

My concerns, however, began to grow as I read the reviews for the hotel on Trip Advisor. While the overall ranking for Chateau d’Adomenil are high (4-5 stars out of 5), flaws such as the hotel being hard to find, smells for the local farm and noise from the local train track were expressed by many reviewers. Even so, I decided to book a room for the night.

Arriving mid afternoon, I soon realised that the d’Adomenil’s postcode is not effective for navigation system purposes – as there is no street address this is what I was reliant on - because the navigation took me to, what I later found out was, the entirely wrong side of Luneville and Rehainviller. Thankfully I could fall back to the directions on the hotel web site which I had printed off. After navigating my way through the town and attempting to follow the directions from the web site, I stumbled across a sign for the hotel, which promptly lead to no where as I approached a road junction and the next signpost was missing! Even so, after driving aimlessly around the town of Luneville, I finally managed to find another signpost for the hotel.

The road to Chateau d’Adomenil is a rural single track – what most people would call a farm road. Sure enough, when you reach the end of the road, you are greeted not by the wonderful hotel shown on the web sites but by a working farm (I assumed it was dairy because of the amount of cows and the smell that immediately hit you when exiting the car). If you are not fond of the smell of cow manure and farming, I would question whether you will be entirely satisfied with the aroma present when arriving at the hotel. To be fair, the smell is not taken inside the buildings and the room that I was given was finished to a nice standard and very comfy.

At check-in time I noticed there was only one person who spoke a smattering of English. Now in fairness, this is France and the native language isn’t English; however, this did cause problems when ordering food for dinner (menu was in French, there was no English version available and no one was able to understand what we were asking for or to explain what we were ordering). Even so, with some very poor French, we were able to manage (although this was far from ideal and didn’t make for an easy stay).

Now onto the third concern people mentioned: the noise from the train track. Yes there is a train track very close to the hotel but in fairness, unlike other guests, I wasn’t disturbed by the train during the night or morning. Most of the people who reported this seem to have stayed in the main hotel but I was located in the courtyard complex.

To conclude: the hotel is not easy to find, it is located by a farm with the associated smells and there can be background noise from the local trains. I personally would have benefited from a restaurant menu in English or a member of staff who could speak basic English.

On the positive side – the hotel was clean, service was (for the main) polite and the food in the restaurant was above average (it should be noted you cannot dine until 7:30pm, so those with young children may find this inconvenient; however, this is quite typical across the entirety of France).

Would I stay here again? If I am honest, probably not. The location wasn’t ideal and the limitations of the hotel would probably force me to choose another venue (possibly in Metz) over Chateau d’Adomenil. It is not that it isn’t a fine hotel, I just believe that for 550.00 Euro (1 night, 2 guests including a meal (2-course, 2 glasses of wine) and basic continental breakfast) you could find a better option.

The Weepies have followed up their album, ‘Say I Am You’, with ‘Hideaway’. Their 3rd studio effort doesn’t stray from their indie folk-pop roots on any of the 12 song offering.  Nevertheless, I should state immediately that this desire to remain true to this genre isn’t a bad choice; however, it could lead to their music sounding rather samey. Thankfully, this isn’t the case as The Weepies seem to have added multiple layers of sound on most of the tracks on Hideaway. This decision separates the new CD from their previous work by giving the sound scape a more varied texture and a richness previously missing on their more stripped down work of ‘Say I Am You’ and ‘Happiness’.

I am personally a fan of layer upon layer of sound – instruments added and taken away from pieces of music and thus allowing a song to build and decrease in intensity; therefore, this more complex approach works for me and I appreciate the change. People who have bough previous Weepies CDs because they favour the purity of folk may find Hideaway too busy for their taste but, in my opinion, this would be overlooking their best work to date. The Weepies need to evolve their sound or they risk becoming stale and stagnant – the killer of many good artists.

At the moment my personal favourite track on the CD is ‘Orbiting’ which deserves to be turned into a single in the future and I will be surprised if it isn’t!

Buy The Weepies ’Hideaway’, it is refreshingly different and manages to avoid the pitfalls of so much studio music – it is vibrant pop with a soul. Furthermore, if you are yet to purchase the amazing, ‘Say I am You’, do yourself a favour and buy both albums at once – you will not be disappointed.

Have you ever driven from England to Austria or Southern Germany? I have and as a result have learned a few valuable lessons. So, before I continue on to the point, let me start by imparting them to you (rest assured they are not only simple but obvious!): -

Driving from London to Munich is approximately 679 miles and takes approximately 10 hours and 56 minutes according to ViaMichelin. Trust me when I say it always takes longer – traffic (read caravans, accidents, jams, etc) and double lane motorways which are reduced to no-lane when one slow lorry (truck, rig, juggernaut, artic or whatever you want to call it) decides to pass another and they proceed to ‘race’ each other at 60kph for what seems like 5-10 minutes while the traffic piles up behind them, ensure that 11-hours can become 13-14 hours. Six hundred and seventy nine miles has never seemed so long!

So it takes longer than your navigation system tells you should due to traffic and other tarmac based events which you have no control over. Therefore, while I have done it in one, long, extended, painful drive-athalon, i wouldn’t recommend it. You’ll end up arriving at your destination and will waste 24-hours catching up on sleep and resting your road weary eyes. Again, I speak from experience, I once did a non-stop and due to weather conditions (I do not exaggerate when I say that from Munich to Innsbruck was worse than driving in a blizzard)  it took me 18-hours to drive from England to Southern Austria. So, doing a non-stop just ins’t worth it.

The solution is to break your journey up into 300-400 mile chunks; these are both manageable and mean that you time behind the wheel (if traffic is in your favour) will be limited to 4-5 hours. Now, as with most solutions, while the solution is simple, the implementation is not.

I never count the English side of the journey as miles to drive (it’s a little psychological trick I play on myself to make the journey seem less), so the 300-400 mile point for me is Metz in the Lorraine region of France. Now back to the difficulty in implementing the plan of breaking the trip up into manageable chunks of driving: finding a nice hotel to stop in. I have tried all sorts to find nice places via the net and in the process have stayed in: some average, some flea-ridden and some down right horrible hotels. I have used the theory that Best Westerns should be okay as a place to sleep for the night; you would assume clean, tidy, etc… wrong! You look at web sites like Trip Advisor for help – wow, are these people who write reviews paid to lie by the hoteliers? So every time you book a hotel, it is a lottery! And, that is where I can help – I stay in enough of these places to be able to tell you which ones to avoid and the ones that won’t leave you wanting to run from the building screaming and jumping into the local lake just to wash away the filth!

Read my first hotel review here, it is for the Chateau d’Adoménil in Luneville, near Nancy in the Lorraine region of France.

What is with that title? Hell Freezes?!?

Quite simply, I liked it! It is taken from the idiom: when hell freezes over which means something is impossible or unlikely and while this has no direct meaning, it seems to fit.

What is the purpose of this blog? To vent, pure and simple; to unleash my inner creative (or not so creative instincts) and when and where possible discuss experiences in life. I’m not going to limit the content or the topics therefore it will take on the verbal character of a walk with no map and without destination. Perhaps this is a nice way of saying it will be interesting at times – filled with beauty, wonder and insightful events - and at others dull and uneventful!

I do hope you enjoy it; however, at least you have the benefit of being able to stop reading if you decide you don’t!