Welcome to the "Your First Time at Le Mans" story series.

I decided to break this huge week+ long experience into smaller sized and self-contained stories you can read either in a sequence or in the order you prefer.

I hope you enjoy the stories as much as I did writing them!

Feel free to reply if you have any feedback, or if you had similar experiences and want to share. I read and get back to all replies.

If you really liked the article, it would be amazing for you to share with others who might also enjoy it!

Without further ado, today's story is:

As I mentioned before, I had never camped in my life before going to Le Mans.

Not even as a kid.

Never got the opportunity and also was never really interested in it.

As I jokingly but kind of seriously said to several people before: I consider myself "an apartment prince".

I'm a very organised, clean person who enjoys order, calmness and predictability.

You can already imagine where this is going.

When my friends told me "we're camping the whole week" a bit of me got worried.

I would be "losing control" of things that I usually have very well defined. Sleeping place, sleeping times (and showering times, any kind of pre-defined times), "noise control", comfort, temperature, etc.

Everything would be now on a "best effort" basis, and surprisingly, I was pretty ok with it.

The only thing you can do is to make the best out of the situation.

I prepared as much as I could for it, and let it happen. Whatever I didn't like from the experience, there was always the idea of "I did the best I could" in the front of my mind, that really eased any kind of annoyance in my head. I believe it was the right approach.

I already mentioned the purchases and how that went (pretty good!), so after spending a ton of time "preparing" for this in terms of reviews and purchases, I just rolled with it.

And it was not even half bad!

My mother in law has outdoors experience, so she was of great help. She warned about some specific things/issues you can encounter while doing this, and I'm glad I listened because she was right!

Things about the setup, how to be prepared for changing temperatures, where to put my stuff when sleeping and many more.

All on point, clearly noticed by the times I forgot to follow her advice.

I once again want to thank the guys who opened their camp to me. Without them, I wouldn't have had such a great first camping experience.

The main reason this worked out in the end, was because I prepared for "my own things" (tent and everything inside of it), and they were more than ready for everything else. Especially to spend the rest of the day properly when we were not on the track.

This would've been such a different (and worse) experience if I arranged it on my own.

And speaking of the camp and the track…

When I heard we were "camping at Le Mans" I thought "Oh nice! We're gonna be right in the action, wake up, be next to the track and go!".

Well, yes and no.

Turns out, it used to be more like that many years ago.

But as time went on, the campsites in or close to the track started to get more private and for wealthier people.