b3nson
Part of things
Posts: 886
Club RR Member Number: 22
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Up slightly later today due to a dodgy Mcdonalds for dinner last night (it was right under the hotel and we were tired, don’t judge me! We ate locally for the rest of the trip!), we left about 8am. Headed southeast then northeast to Davos. Before I go any further I must say all the roads we took today we’re special. Every single one. From Davos we took the very cold and snowy Fluelapass to Zernes then onto the Ofenpass. The Ofenpass probably takes the award for favourite driving road of the trip. It was so fast, so open and the corners were all perfect. Perfectly cambered, great road surface. It was just amazing. At the top we stopped for a group photo, (to follow shortly) then hammered down the other side towards the Italian border. This is the point the brakes overheated on both cars, it was hilarious fun but also a little scary!! A quick dip into Italy (obvious by the lesser quality road surface) and we were sitting at the bottom of the Stelvio pass. With the sun out we got the roof down and followed the traffic up the pass. So the Stelvio Pass... This is not what I would call a great ‘driving’ road. It’s too tight, there’s too much traffic and cyclists and when we were halfway up it started snowing. It is however an awesome bit of road building and an experience that everyone should have! Plus at the lower parts the hairpins are tight enough that you can boot it out them in first and get a bit of oversteer going. It was probably quite quiet due to the weather but we still got stuck behind a campervan and slower drivers, I’d imagine it’s a nightmare in summer. The view from the top was unreal, especially again in 6 foot deep snow with skiers coming down the hill behind us! Also I would highly recommend getting a sausage from the stall on the right as you first come up the east side of the pass, it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten, and that is no understatement! I’d go back again just for that.
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'99 Fiat Coupe 20V Turbo '08 Panda 100HP
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b3nson
Part of things
Posts: 886
Club RR Member Number: 22
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So after half an hour of getting cold we headed back down towards Bormio (this side is a bit more open, more fun to drive but less spectacular) and across another great little pass to Livigno (fill up with fuel here, it’s a tax haven and I think we saw fuel around the 1 euro mark compared to 1.6 elsewhere!). After Livigno we headed south back towards the Swiss border and along route 29 to St Moritz. This was another road that I had just chosen to get from one place to another but turned out to be one of the most fun, again the combination of great visibility plus wide, fast, sweeping bends really was a winner. Down pass St Moritz and all the way to the Italian border was another great road. For the best part of an hour we were going down and down towards Italy past beautiful lakes and forests. It felt like we were heading to the centre of the earth. The wierd thing is you have these massive lakes probably a few km in length and up to a km in width, you’re driving around them then you drive 500m further along the road and your heading down again, below the water level of the lake. It blew my mind a little bit! Haha! Across the Italian border we actually had our passports checked for the first time since entering the Eurotunnel, and this was only because we were looking at him like he should do something, he probably felt obliged to check them. The temperature change in the last few hours was also notable, from near freezing at the top of the Stelvio we were now up to about 28 degrees, it was a bit of a shock to the system. The next hour to our campsite at Damaso on Lake Como was fairly uninteresting, apart from avoiding death from crazy Italian drivers. I can’t stress enough how different the driving is between 2 countries, and I’m pretty sure we were the only people in the country sticking to the stupidly low speed limits. This was all made up for when we reached our campsite on Lake Como, a lovely little family run campsite called Camping Le Vele. This is another definitely recommend from me, showers and toilet block wasn’t quite as good as in Interlaken, but they were very friendly, offered for us to squeeze onto 1 pitch to save money (we took up the offer) and it had a pool (which would be used over the next 2 days we were staying here for). It was also right on the lake and the main street with some lovely pizza places. We set up camp in the warm heat of the sun, wandered down the street and watched the sunset over the mountains around Como while eating an authentic Italian pizza and sipping a beautiful cold beer. We were pretty much halfway through the week and life couldn’t get much better than this day. The next day's plan was a trip to the Lamborghini and Ferrari factories. After one last night around Como we'd when head south to the coast, Monaco, the south of France, French Alps then home. Some of this happened, some of this didn't, some only happened for half of our little road trip crew. We'd had such a perfect trip so far and it had all gone pretty much to plan, we were going to have our share of bad luck over the next few days, but karma would make sure we ended the trip on a high. That's it for tonight people, I'll leave you with some views from the campsite in Como. Not bad I reckon! I'll add the 3rd and final part of this trip tomorrow.
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Last Edit: Dec 10, 2015 21:59:37 GMT by b3nson
'99 Fiat Coupe 20V Turbo '08 Panda 100HP
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wodge
Part of things
Posts: 455
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I've done 3 long European tours in my motorhome taking in plenty of great roads and automotive museums in Italy, Germany and France if there's an interest in these sorts of write ups I'll dig out some photos.
In the meantime I'll continue to enjoy this! Thanks for posting
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Epic roadtrip so far. Ive driven in Italy twice now (in nothing exciting though) and you are spot on with their driving standards. completely mental and with no notice of any speed limits. Looking forward to the next part of your trip
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Thanks for sharing. As someone who'd love to drive those roads in the future, the warning about Italian drivers is noted. Can't say they are any better over here though. One guy I know thinks he's an F1 driver, and drives like that everywhere. But most Italians over here drive auto, because they talk with their hands and forget to change gear. (I have heaps of Italian friends who freak me out while driving, so this is from experience).
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hak074
Part of things
Posts: 446
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Awesome road trip this! Thanks for taking the time to write it all up. I love seeing the pictures of proper roads and proper mountains. It reminds me of our 2002 (the year, not hte car) trip through Interlaken into Italy as well. We were 4 up in a rental Renault Megane Scenic, so not nearly as much fun as an MX5 and rocket Polo. Looking forward to the rest of this one
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skinnylew
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 5,546
Club RR Member Number: 11
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Nice to see a non summer euro road trip, scenery is just as spectacular when its white!
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ToolsnTrack
Posted a lot
Homebrew Raconteur
Posts: 4,117
Club RR Member Number: 134
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Dec 10, 2015 11:48:10 GMT
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Now this is a roadtrip write up. I did something very similar in 2006, including the Nurburgring to boot. Love the snaps.
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b3nson
Part of things
Posts: 886
Club RR Member Number: 22
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Dec 10, 2015 22:26:56 GMT
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Thanks for the continued response guys, plenty more photos to come!
So we camped in Como and had plenty of plans including a trip down to Modena and surrounding area to do the Ferrari and Lamborghini museums, but to be honest we were knackered! The campsite was so nice we decided to avoid crazy Italian motorways and miss the museums in favour of a lie-in and a relaxing day around the pool. However by about 2pm we were itching for some more driving so planned a round trip through the Splugenpass into Switzerland and then across to the St Bernandino pass and back round to Como. This was a fantastic loop for about 3/4's of it until we came back into Italy through Lugano. Youtube Splugenpass to see what a crazy little road this is, loads of tiny little tunnels built into the rockface, most only 1 car wide with sheer drops off the side. Up until this point we didn't think the Alps had a rush hour, but that must be because all the damn cars are stuck in this town! It took us literally hours to inch our way through, dodging mopeds and sitting in 35 degree heat (the only time I regretted the MX not having A/C). Eventually we fought our way back to the campsite, where well earned Peronis were drunk, more pizza was eaten and cards was played well into the evening. It must be noted that I introduced the game of Cheat to our group at this point (a personal favourite of mine), which l then won almost every time. Everyone on the trip is generally pretty chilled, but there was level of anger during this game that I have never seen before! (I had used all my rage up sitting in traffic earlier that day). We did however get some great photos over the passes, some of my favourites of the trip FYI if you're sick of seeing photo's of mountains, the next set are probably not for you
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Last Edit: Dec 10, 2015 22:27:28 GMT by b3nson
'99 Fiat Coupe 20V Turbo '08 Panda 100HP
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b3nson
Part of things
Posts: 886
Club RR Member Number: 22
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Dec 10, 2015 22:44:37 GMT
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Friday now and it was another early start again, a sad look back at our campsite as we left early again and we set off down towards the Italian coast, the stress of Italian roads still playing on our mind. The first part of the journey was as expected really – being tailgated, cut up, mopeds and bikes everywhere and as we got closer to Milan it got worse. Luckily sticking to the motorways this time didn’t take long to get around Milan and onto the toll roads down the coast where the standard of driving was much better and alot less congested. We reached the coast and southern France by late morning along some more motorways (avoiding the coast road for stress free driving) and were heading into Monaco for lunchtime. I couldn’t quite work out Monaco, it was an impressive place to come into from the cliffs above and was actually easier to drive around than I expected, but couldn’t really see the overall appeal. We parked at the train station in a cool 14 level multistory carpark that went down into the cliff face (cost 7.50 euros for abour 2 hours). A few fancy cars in the car park but nothing really that special. After spending ages working out how to get down to the marina (the place is like a bloody maze! You think your heading down then you get forced to walk back up again) we wandered down a side street past a fairly plain looking dealer. Then it became obvious it was a Ferrari dealer when we spotted the cars parked outside and in the workshop – Enzo, F40, 288 GTO. Insane! After gawping at them for ages like little kids we made our way to the marina, had some lunch and looked at the size of the yachts. Seriously, these people have outrageous amounts of wealth! We walked the Monaco F1 circuit back up the other side of Monaco (grabbed the standard issue hairpin photos) and then more through luck than judgement found our way back to the car park and headed off to our campsite for the night in Antibes. 2015 edit: The following opinion has now changed after our trip this year, we must have picked a poor choice of area last time! Although the coastal towns I would still avoid. Also in hindsight I think we had driven a hell of a way in one day, and were maybe cramming too much in to enjoy it. (This however was not a lesson learnt for the 2015 trip, where endurance driving reached a new level for us)I’m going to throw this out there now. I hated the south coast of France, I can’t find the appeal in it. It’s noisy, dirty, overpopulated and just not that nice! Our campsite didn’t help this either. The staff were nice enough but in general it was just like a curse word, sunny British holiday camp. The camp was huge, the pitches were rammed in there, they had ‘live’ entertainment and a crappy restaurant, and it was just a bit depressing. The toilets were worse, no seats, stank of curse word and no lights at night. Great. We thought we’d go explore to see if we could see any redeeming areas, but it just made things worse. It was slap bang in the middle of a run down industrial area, the local train station was mostly boarded up (but still in use) with graffiti everywhere, the beach was behind a fence and everything just looked so run down. People slag off Spain and the Algarve but from what I saw I’d go to either of those 2 areas every time. Also I would definitely not recommend Camp Du Pylone, unless you like above features in a holiday, which in that case crack on! To make matters worse the Polo’s clutch was apparently getting heavier by the moment. They have a weak pedal box that after abuse can deform putting extra strain on the cable, it had already been replaced before the trip for snapping a clutch cable so this was a big worry. We went to bed early, a bit deflated but knowing that tomorrow we were going to hit the Col de Turini and Col de Bonnette (Europe’s highest road).
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'99 Fiat Coupe 20V Turbo '08 Panda 100HP
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Dec 10, 2015 23:14:25 GMT
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Great stuff. Keep it coming.
Must admit I never saw the attraction of Monaco either. Like you, we drove around it, had a look at the GP stuff, the obligatory lunch by the marina and got the hell out!
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We skipped Monaco when we got to Annecy and headed back up north, decided it wasn't worth the extra days drive to get down there. I will go at somepoint though!
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Every scenery photo is another stunner. Love it.
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Dec 11, 2015 22:33:49 GMT
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Did similar trip with some friends in our minis a proper italian job! [image]http://i.imgur.com/3Xray6m.jpg[/img]
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b3nson
Part of things
Posts: 886
Club RR Member Number: 22
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Will probably finish this off Sunday, as away for festive alcohol consumption for the rest of the weekend.
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'99 Fiat Coupe 20V Turbo '08 Panda 100HP
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Will probably finish this off Sunday, as away for festive alcohol consumption for the rest of the weekend. Nowt wrong with that!
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b3nson
Part of things
Posts: 886
Club RR Member Number: 22
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Dec 15, 2015 21:32:57 GMT
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We’d paid our bill the night before and set off about 6.30am along the coast, then headed inland at Nice and things started to look up. The campsite was well behind us (we’d all had a very good nights sleep incidently!!!) and we were heading up in the mountains when a garbled call came over the walkie talkie. Something about clutch cable. Looking up the Polo had disappeared out of my rear view mirror. Another call on the radio confirmed our fear, the cable had snapped and they’d had to pull over. We turned around and headed back to find the clutch cable already stripped out and being inspected. Before I go any further I need to stress the importance of decent walkie talkies for a trip like this. It would have been impossible to navigate and communicate between both cars without them. Mine we £50 from Amazon and were perfect, I’ll dig out the link if anyones interested. Back to the stricken Polo, stuck on the side of the road in a small French village. The cable hadn’t snapped luckily, but it had pulled itself out of the plastic grommet that connects it to the pedal box. After some head scratching we bodged together a repair with some cable ties holding the cable in the grommet. It seemed to work pretty well. For about 2 miles. This time it was game over, the cable had cut through the cable ties in a few depresses of the clutch and without any proper gear there was nothing we could do at the roadside. We were gutted, the guys in the Polo even more so. Thoughts of them getting towed all the way back home across France, or worse having to wait until Monday for a repair (today was Saturday, Eurotunnel booked for Sunday night). This was our bad luck. But we were about to get lucky again, for both parties, in different ways. RAC were called and sent a very nice French gentlemen (albeit very aromatic in the body odour department) out from Nice to pick up the Polo. He spoke great English, had a sense of humour and was interested in the car. Good start. He loaded the Polo up and headed back to Nice with Taylor and Tilly in his cab. We carried on to the mountains, a bit quiet, missing half of our special little group. We’ll come back to our day in a minute. When the other guys got to Nice they ended up in a little back street garage, a little back street garage with a special interest in rare European cars. They had a Golf G60 Rallye, Porsches and various other cars and were very interested in Taylor’s G40. They carried out a cracking repair to the cable and pedal box within a couple of hours, charged only 60 euros and got them on their way. I have no idea what the garage was called but they saved the trip from ending in disaster. The other guys were too far behind now to hit the mountains so had to slog up the motorway from Nice to the services for the last nights stay, but at least we could have a beer and some dinner together, and head home together on Sunday night. Meanwhile about 5 minutes after we left the Polo being loaded onto the back of a truck we came across the kind of roads we were looking, stuff that looked like it was straight out of the Monte Carlo Rally. Little bridges, sheer cliff faces, lovely little villages, this was the south of France I was looking for. We couldn’t quite stretch to the Col De Turini as we were behind time due to the events of the morning so we cracked straight on the Col De Bonnette. The canyons on the way were amazing. We didn't take many photos unfortunately, as we were tight on time and only had the 1 car, but I did manage to get this one. So we were hacking along some more great wide roads, dipping in and out of valleys, along rivers, when a couple of classic 911’s came flying past heading the other way. Another couple headed past as we started to climb the Col De Bonnette. Then a couple of E-Types. Then some more 911’s. Soon we realised by pure luck, and mainly due to waiting for 3 hours with a broken Polo that morning, we were climbing the Col De Bonnette, the highest road in Europe, as exactly the same time a classic car rally was coming down it. Soon the only noises we were making were gasps and grumbles as all kinds of amazing vehicles came past us, at full chat, down these mountain roads. Now there was plenty of awesome 911’s but soon we had a Lancia Stratos. Ferrari Dino’s. Ferrari 275’s. Shelby Cobra’s. Another Stratos. Old Alfas all over the place. Renault 5 Turbo 2. About 20 Porsche Speedsters. And about 5 Merc 300SLs, coupes, convertibles and a stripped out rally-spec on steel wheels. We rounded a corner and it was sitting there, on the outside of bend, no-one around it. Many photos were taken. It was truly mind blowing and just the kind of luck that turned this trip from a great trip to a once-in-a-lifetime trip. As we carried on up to the top we passed more and more, they nodded and waved at us, we nodded and waved back. I think about 600 photos were taken in just this climb. Truly petrolhead heaven. Oh and I did I mention the pass was as good as anything Switzerland had to offer? After coming back down the other side we spent the rest of the day trundling onto our trusty Ibis on the French motorway, stunned at how a curse word start to a day can evolve into one of the most memorable days of our lives. It goes without saying the guys in the Polo were gutted, but if it wasn’t for them breaking down we may not have seen what we had seen. Another massive steak that night at the services, a few beers and lots of time running through the photos of the day and we went to bed exhausted from the day’s events. Nice lie in on the last day, and a boring trundle up the motorway to Calais. It was a nice time to reflect on the week and all the crazy stuff we saw and did. We were running way early, so could have stopped either at Calais and just hung around for 3 hours or split up the time to waste and stop at some services on the way for an hour or so. We chose the latter option and I’m glad we did. After stopping at the last services for a couple of hours we headed onwards for the last 150miles to Calais, and again by pure luck we were on the motorway at exactly the same time as a local VW show was kicking out. There were Golfs, Beetles and Audis of all types everywhere. There was alot of familiar cars from the UK scene and loads of from all over Europe, it seems pretty much the cream of the crop of UK/European VW’s were on the same motorway as us, at the same time. They filled the next petrol station we stopped at and passed us regularly on the motorway. We had a VW car show en route to the Eurotunnel and then in the car park of the Eurotunnel itself. Just our luck. The rest of it is all a bit of blur to be honest, got the 9.20 Eurotunnel, back in UK an hour later. We grabbed a Mcdonalds at Clacket Lane services, exactly where we’d started 9 days ago, where we already started discussing our plans for the next trip. Bring on 2015, 2 weeks in Europe, maybe Nurburgring and Germany thrown in this time as well! And we actually managed to follow through on that, which I think is pretty impressive in itself! Hopefully I'll be getting some photos of that second trip together in the next week or so, so I'll pop them and a write up on here if people are still interested. It ended up being a very different trip to this one!
If anyone is considering doing something like this in the future, I would wholeheartedly encourage it. It's not a cheap holiday (but can be made cheaper if you can stand camping every night) but is relatively easy to do, so worthwhile to see a beautiful bit of Europe and generally have a bloody good time with some mates!
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'99 Fiat Coupe 20V Turbo '08 Panda 100HP
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Dec 15, 2015 21:55:09 GMT
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Great report.
Thank you.
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Dec 15, 2015 23:02:34 GMT
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I'll look forward to the 2015 instalment, but thanks for this so far.
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We tend to drive to our holiday destination in Europe each year and take a few days to enjoy the route
Last year we did lake Garda via the St. Bernard pass and gottard on the way back
This year we did south of France via the Millau bridge, if any one goes that way stop off in the town lovely place, nice places to eat and cheap fuel
Next year we are doing Venice and taking a few days to get there via Germany and Austria , at the present time it's looking like the gottard again on the way back but I'm working on other routes
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