Its proximity does not mean pleasure, writes Justin Hynes.
It would be churlish to complain about a job which allows you spend two weeks in Melbourne each year with a side trip to Malaysia on the way home. That gets me to Monaco every late May. That gets me into the race and paddock for free, all the time. But what the hell, I'm going to have a moan.
For this weekend is British Grand Prix weekend and in the next few hundred words or so I'm going to try to convince you not to go.
I hate Silverstone. I loathe it from its inflated sense of self-importance, to its hideous traffic problems, from its rubbish weather to its slapdash facilities and increasingly useless track. It is the one real chore of the Formula One calendar.
It seems like an easy target and it is. You could take aim on the weather problems of 2001, when an Easter-time race date meant that conditions more akin to the Somme than an international sporting event that is supposed to the apogee of glamour were inevitable.
Granted the sight of sundry pop starlets trying to negotiate a paddock awash with mud and the effluvium of every drain in the palace in their impossibly vertiginous heels was faintly amusing, but the whole thing was a monumental shambles.
So much so that on Saturday paying spectators were told over the airwaves, in no uncertain terms, to turn back for home, that they wouldn't be let into the circuit, such were the parking difficulties in field where cars had, the previous day, slipped dinosaur-like into the primeval ooze.
It was little consolation, however, on Sunday as the usual morning mists rolled in and interminable wait had to be endured until it cleared as the medical helicopter could not take off in such conditions.
That dreadful year can be considered something of an aberration, though. A normal race date in July is not likely to be beset with such conditions. But the traffic problems, always Silverstone's worst bugbear, still pertain, despite the construction of the new link road to the circuit.
And the frequent whines of Silverstone's governors, the British Racing Drivers' Club, that other circuits are similarly affected is nonsense. Spa Francorchamp, buried in deeply forested hills and approached by a network of tiny roads never suffered the same chaos, even when it rained - and it always, always rains at Spa.
At its worst I have spent three hours making a five to six-mile trip to Silverstone Circuit, with an hour spent negotiating the 300 yards of road through the village itself .
But for most people these things are peripheral. Irish spectators go to Silverstone because it is the race closest to us, just a skip across the water, a 40-minute flight to Birmingham and a scoot down the motorway.
But the fact escapes many that Silverstone is possibly the most expensive race to attend on the entire Formula One calendar. A quick browse on a couple of ticket websites yesterday offered three days in a grandstand at Copse for the astronomical sum of £470. That's €596.
A general admission pass for three days works out at £270 (€342). Add in to that a flight, mine this week cost €80 with Aer Lingus, car hire at anything up to £200 for the four days and the exorbitant cost of accommodation - a three star hotel in Northampton for four days is likely to sting to the tune of €600-€700, and you've spent anything up to €2,000 before you start eating, drinking, buying Jordan souvenirs.
Contrast that with Indianapolis. A paddock grandstand ticket for Sunday is €104. The previous two days are considerably cheaper. You've saved €500. You can spend that on your flight to New York (where you can have a holiday before or after the race) and Indianapolis.
Continental Airlines flew me to NYC and Indianapolis for less than €900 last year. Cost of flight and race tickets €1,000. Downtown hotels in Indy are expensive but there are motel options available on the fringes of the city for under €100 a night and with the exchange rate healthy the moment, your three or four days in the city won't break the bank.
It is for these reasons I loathe Silverstone. It is over-priced, overly self-assured of its place in motor racing history and its right to stage a Grand Prix and overly troublesome to attend.
It is cheaper and more rewarding to travel halfway around the world than it is to go to middle England to crouch in the rain on tumbledown stands, clutching a soggy burger and sheltering under the plastic poncho you've just paid £10 for.
Proximity does not mean pleasure. Far away fields can sometimes truly be greener. Don't go, save your money and try Budapest or Monza or Indianapolis. You won't regret it.