Everyone is so excited about hearing of your trip that only Scottishfiver picked up on your service to your country so I’ll add my sincere thanks for that.
Also congrats to you both for securing new jobs, not an easy task these days.
The memories of your amazing trip will be with you forever. A wonderful thing to do with your few weeks off.
Thanks for the replies, I’m not the fastest typist in the world, so like I said I’ll drip feed as and when I’ve got a few minutes to put together a decent chunk.
One other place on the way South from Paris(near Limoges) consider visiting is Oradour-Sur-Glane. After D-Day in 1944, the 2nd SS Panzer Division passed through here on their race to close off the beachheads of the Allies in Normandy (they had been stationed near Toulouse, awaiting refit after being mauled on the Eastern Front, so you can imagine how angry they were to have their summer holidays cut short!). Anyway, the Resistance had been delaying them all the way by various guerrilla tactics and sadly, it proved too much for one of the Battlegroups, who kicked off and massacred the entire village (it’s the basis of a lot of horror stories, myths and movies about villagers being locked in barns and set on fire/machine gunned etc etc - notably in that rank film by Mel Gibson The Patriot who fictionalises the Redcoats doing this in the US, except in this case it was sadly and horrifyingly true). The entire village (over 600 inhabitants) was massacred, less perhaps 20 who managed to escape.
As a monument/mark of respect the village was left in the state it was in June 1944, and can be visited as a museum. It’s worth it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oradour-sur-Glane_massacre
Right, so we left my mothers in Nanteuil, and headed south. This was to be the last day of Autoroute Kilometre-Krunching, so we left fairly early with the intention of popping into Bordeaux for lunch. Did I mention that since we had left Lincoln it had been top down action all day every day so far? Well, that ended on this little stretch between Nanteuil and Bordeaux, so we pulled into an Aire, had a small but strong coffee and pastry, put the lid up and decided to just head straight onto the Basque region. The traffic on the Bordeaux Ring was terrible too - one of the only true traffic jams we experienced all holiday, so it wasn’t much fun and we decided to cut our losses.
Its worth mentioning here about Aires (pronounced Ah-Ray) - they’re the Autoroute Services except they’re much nicer than our UK MWay services. There are two types, one just has toilets and a picnic area, the other has the full on shops and petrol stations. Usually they’re arranged so it’s one type then the other type then one then the other and so on, usually around 20km between each, but they are well signposted as to what they do have (and prices for Fuel) way in advance so just make sure you get the correct one. Another point to note is that when you want to check your tyre pressures, you might get to the Air pump and notice there isn’t an actual nozzle on the end – French folk usually keep one in the boot but inside the garage they’ll loan you one - “Avez-vous un pompe de l’air pour moi pneu s’il vous plait?” is the phrase that pays! Oh and don’t forget, in Europe they haven’t a clue about pounds per square inch or gorilla newton furlongs, so note down your tyre pressure in Bar (28 Psi is about 1.9 Bar, 29 is 2 Bar).
Really interesting read, looking forward to reading the next chapter!
As I’ve already mentioned, the only day we had to put the top up was the day going past Bordeaux on the ring road. After that we headed towards the corner of Spain and France on the Bay of Biscay.
I’d visited this region before, a couple of years back. SAFRAN, one of the worlds biggest gas turbine engine manufacturers has a big factory down near Bayonne, and I had been lucky enough to do a training course here a couple of years back. The Aquitaine coast is also particularly popular with surfers. There is an amazing seafood restaurant just up the coast from Bayonne, right on the beachfront. If you like Moules Frites, you need to stop here at La Plancha de pecheur.
We spent the night in Bayonne. This is Basque Country. You can’t move for the red white and green stickers for sale in the shops, and if you visit at the right time of year, there are the festivals where traditional Basque costume is worn (not the type they sell in Ann Summers, the white shirts and neckerchief outfits!). It’s a lovely town, at the confluence of the Nive and Adour rivers, and it’s kind of split into three where the bridges cross the confluence. Very pretty in the winter when the bridges are all lit up. It also has a double tower Cathedral and some lovely shopping streets.
There’s a tonne of lovely restaurants, including one where they only sell Cidre and Bouef. Pay 25 Euros and eat half a cow, and treat yourself to free refills of cloudy cidre from a giant comedy barrel set into the wall:
We were lucky enough to be there the night Spain played Portugal in the World Cup, so watched the game in an Irish Bar and had a nice glass of Leffé Ruby to wash down the cow.
Excellent stuff. Really interesting, makes me want to jumo in the car again and go abroad! The wife and I have just come back from doing the North Coast 500 for 2 weeks and 2000 miles in our Mk1 Eunos (1992) with 210000km on it and I was that confident I didn’t pack any tools and even took the spare wheel out for more space and took my vauxhalls tyre repair gloop for emergencies, which fortunately we didn’t need. Really good read thanks.
Me too by Jove.
Wonder how Red Five is taking it all!
This is a great read thank you for taking the time to write it all up for us. I look forward to the next installment.
Ben.
She looks so well looked after… sorry they both do, a credit to you.
I will have my first MX5 this Friday so looking forward to that, currently have a MGF with which we have done similar trips without any problems, including Corsica and Sardinia.
We also have a Hymer motorhome, just back from norther Spain, the Basque country where you also visisted, my favourite Spanish area, then down to Portugal for 4 weeks.
Your not mad to do trips like that at an average of 175m a day, especially I presume with two of you driving, unless its just us ex-service (Bomber Command myself) people, last year I took the motorhome solo to Greece across Europe to Greece where I have friends I used to sail with, then home via ferry to Italy, did 6000m in 6 weeks, loved it.
Looking forward to the next chapter from you.
Sarnia
You should have realised it would rain in Bordeaux. Even the map has a pic of someone struggling with a brolly.
I wonder if the locals wine about their weather as much as we do.
Next up it’s just a short hop across the border and into Spain. We’ve been able to see the Pyrenees for quite a while, but as we get closer to the border the actual size of the mountains begins to become more obvious. Although we’re nipping through on the coast side, the road starts to become more interesting, twisting and turning, a few tunnels and bridges.
I’ve always liked going through tunnels in the MX5 with the top down, maybe it’s a bit childish but the lights whipping past, the “twoc-twoc-twoc” noise of the tunnel structure, the sound of the engine and exhaust as you “make progress”.
The weather had brightened up significantly, and we started the descent into Bilbao; we had actually booked a house on Airbnb about 20km outside the city, but had decided to do lunch there before heading off. Another tick in the box for Google Maps here. When you park up, there’s a little button “Save Parking” which does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s simple, effective, and it means you can just go exploring then when it’s time to go, open your map and walk back to the car.
Bilbao is a clean, modern city, mainly due to the Urban Renewal project of the Luftwaffe Condor Legion and Francos Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War, where they took turns to bomb the Republican/Basque forces into submission. The Basque region is very industrial, and after the Civil War they wasted no time in rebuilding it, although the locals felt very hard done by (and supressed) by the Franco regime, as they felt he was punishing them for their part in the Civil War. Bilbao was also the birthplace of ETA (the Basque Separatist Terror group). Since the death of Franco the city seems to have been allowed to get on with growing, slowly moving from an industrial based economy to a service based one (Santander, one of the worlds biggest banks, hails from just down the road in erm, Santander). There are some amazing buildings, including the Guggenheim Museum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao) and it’s well worth stopping off.
After lunch we headed off up into the hills to our house for the night. Once you get outside the city, the Basque region is actually quite poor, and it’s easy to see why the Basque Separatists gained a strong following. There isn’t much to see really, apart from the amazing views, but the locals are very friendly. After taking over the house, we went out to a local pub/bar, and had possibly the cheapest round of drinks on the whole trip – a litre of beer and a (very) large glass of red wine for €2.50, and every round we bought they topped up the nibbles. It was hard to see where they were making a profit. We kind of mis-timed our dinner and with it being Sunday, nowhere was actually serving real food – so we sat at the local park and had more nibbles, and chips, and an ice cream. The locals were all out having barbecues and picnics in massive family groups. After our chips and ice cream, we headed back to the bar to take advantage of their very reasonable prices, then had an early night.
Nice registration number Richie:-)
Those detuned 1.6 cars go well enough don’t they? Owned my 1997 1.6 since 2002.
The next part of the trip was a quick scoot down to Pamplona, via Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Vitoria is quite well known as the last battlefield in Spain during the Peninsular War. Wellingtons Army comprehensively routed the French Army here, they broke and ran for the border. In the aftermath of the Battle, Wellington sent his infamous “Scum of the earth” missive in regard to the British Soldiery; they had failed to chase the French as they were more interested in plundering the Wagons which were stocked full of the Spanish Realms valuables that Boneys brother had stolen and was trying to spirit away into France.
Beautiful roads, clear blue skies, we stopped for lunch in Vitoria and then headed onto Pamplona. Pamplona is famous for the Running Of The Bulls – where loads of bulls are transported into town and then set free to chase young idiots down the streets, ending in the pens outside the bull ring. I’m not going to go into the rights or wrongs of bullfighting, but I’m secretly pleased that at least the Bull sometimes wins in this case. We weren’t there for the encierro, but one can imagine how exciting/scary it is in the small cobbled streets when a herd of two tonne bulls are chasing folk. Like a lot of European towns, Pamplona is centred around a large square, filled with restaurants and bars. Had an amazing dinner here, although we both had seafood paella as a starter which could have been a main course. I still managed to polish off a nice bit of cattle though.
We had an early night as we knew the next day would be an interesting and fairly lengthy drive.
We headed out of Pamplona, and mirrored the border for 100km, then turned left and back towards the Pyrenean peaks and France. This was a lovely drive up a valley towards the border and a ski resort at Candanchu. There is a fuel station just on the Spanish side, and as I mentioned before, it makes sense to top off when you can, so we filled up, had a coffee then carried on.
Down the far side, and stopped a few KMs into France for a picnic at the side of the road. Our destination today was Lourdes, but the satnav wanted to take us back onto boring roads, so we turned it off and navigated over the hills parallel to the border. Yes, it took us longer, but this was a driving holiday so why not!
Got caught in a traffic jam.
Made it into Lourdes and met up with my mother who had driven down to spend the next couple of days with us. Lourdes is quite famous as religious pilgrimage. Legend has it that the Virgin Mary appeared to a young peasant girl there, and the waters of the Spring are supposed to have mythical healing powers for all manner of ailments. I’m not religious at all, and am quite sceptical, but we’re not going to let that kind of thing stand in the way of visiting somewhere that is culturally important.
The road leading to the Sanctuary and the Spring can probably best be described as a Religious Blackpool Sea Front – loads of shops each selling pretty much all the same stuff; bottles to put Holy Water in, teatowels, candles, T Shirts with Jesus on the front, Rosaries, etc etc, and it’s quite expensive for a coffee, so this makes it quite easy to be cynical, but it’s worth the short walk to the Sanctuary and the Grotto. The Sanctuary was built in the second half of the 19th Century, and is a beautiful Gothic building, so it’s worth visiting for the architecture alone. I’m not going to pretend I had a conversion, but even a cynical old atheist like me found some sort of comfort in the idea that many people have over the years had the faith that visiting this place – some of them walking thousands of miles – in the hope that there would be a miracle to cure them of their ailments. We filled a couple of bottles with Holy Water for friends and family who do have the faith, then respectfully left them to get on with it. Unfortunately, my dermatitis hasn’t cleared up, and there wasn’t a massive stack of wheelchairs and walking sticks deposited at the gate on the way out, but there were people who clearly get a crumb of comfort from visiting so maybe it’s not such a bad place and I should stop being so churlish.
We had booked a lovely Gite on AirBNB close to Lourdes which had enough bedrooms for the four of us and a full kitchen, so we popped to the Hypermarche, got a few things for dinner, then sat down to watch the first England game of the World Cup while we had a load of washing on.
Next stop was Andorra. We left my mother to do the longer by mileage, shorter by time, far too boring Autoroute roads while we headed along the smaller roads, hugging the border a bit. Not a lot to tell you about this part of the journey, it was just a lovely driving day on single carriageway roads, and we stopped for lunch in a small town called Ax-les-Thermes (Hot Water Springs) before we began the climb into Andorra itself.
This was the first point on the journey that Mixie really started to earn her keep. The road was busy – there’s only a couple of roads in and out of Andorra – with lots of roadworks. There were trucks, campervans, people towing caravans, and not many overtaking opportunities. On top of this, ambient temperatures were hitting 35c and the air was getting thin (Ax-les-Thermes is at 2300ft, highest peak in Andorra is almost 10000ft). I had flushed and refilled all the cooling system three years ago, when I had fitted all new hoses, so I thought it would be okay, but at certain points, pootling along at 40mph uphill in fourth/third because you’re stuck in a queue of caravans, carrying two adults and all their luggage in this environment, well, something has to give. Usually, the temp gauge on Mixie sits at a needles width over midway – it has risen above that on occasions before but always came back down when the fan kicked in – as we were almost at the summit going into Andorra it decided that it wasn’t going to come back down, so we pulled over, got out, and left her idling with the heater on full to try and disperse some of the heat. We took the opportunity to sit and have a coffee, and lament on whether this road trip was, after all, such a good idea.
After ten minutes, the engine had dropped to normal operating temperature and the fan had turned off, so we switched her off to let her cool some more. The level in the expansion tank had dropped a little, maybe an inch, so I topped her off with some Evian, then we decided that we needed to press on. During our trip, I had to resort to using this technique again a couple of times, on the really tough parts of the route and when the temperatures were getting stupid. I suspect it may be an old and battered radiator, but as I’ve SORN’d her for the winter now, I think one of the first jobs in the Spring will be a complete flush of the coolant system and see how much crap gets washed out.
Anyway, we finally made it into Andorra. It’s well worth the visit, if only for the amazing drive and views. We got our first real taste of hairpins here – it’s amazing how addictive they are – and on the descent into the town (the town sits in a sort of mountain “bowl”) it’s a real roller-coaster ride. I wouldn’t fancy it much in the winter, I can imagine it’s very bleak. Andorra is a ski resort for the wealthy, and it’s also a tax haven. It’s remoteness and the fact that it doesn’t have an airport (nearest major ones are Toulouse or Barcelona) make it seem even more exclusive. Despite this, the hotel cost was reasonable and eating out prices were reasonable too. Fuel was the cheapest on the whole of the tour so we topped up just before leaving, and we bought a few bottles of spirits, plus we treated ourselves to perfume and aftershave. We don’t smoke but tabs are cheap here too. Tomorrow – Spain (again) then France and the Mediterranean Coast.
After breakfast and waving goodbye to my mother who was going back home to Nanteuil-En-Vallée, we headed out of Andorra by the southern route. As Andorra has stayed outside of the Schengen Agreement, there was a border control. We weren’t carrying anything crazy, I suppose it’s to stop Transit vans full of Spaniards and Frenchmen from pootling back and forth with tobacco and spirits, but nonetheless we were stopped and had to open the boot. Maybe the very nice Spanish Customs Officer was intrigued as to how tightly the MX5 was packed (like Tetris!). Anyway, a cursory glance to determine we weren’t international Whisky smugglers, and a quick distraction and chat by the Canary Islands sticker on our suitcase – she happened to come from Tenerife – and we were on our way. We were only doing about 190km today, so stopped for a coffee just before the French border, then passed through the tiny Spanish exclave of Llivia just because we could.
We didn’t hang about much though, the accommodation for this evening was booked through Airbnb and was on a complex of holiday homes on the Mediterranean coast near Perpignan on the Ile des Pécheurs. The complex had a swimming pool and we wanted to actually get an hour or two relaxing in rather than just driving. Besides, my “T Shirt Suntan” was really getting going now and I needed to try and even it out a little. It may sound obvious but I’d like to take a second to point out that day in, day out, open top motoring may not be all that good for your health. Make sure you take plenty of sunblock, lip balm, moisturiser, after-sun, hats, spare hats, sunglasses, spare sunglasses and keep hydrated. It’s easy to not notice the hours whipping past in direct sunlight when you’re doing 50mph. Ignore it at your peril. Luckily for me, my wife is a nurse with extensive experience of travel in hot/dry countries and neglecting sun care is not an option. There was a lovely seafood restaurant – Le Caparica – where we both had a massive pot of Moules Frites as the sun went down. Unfortunately the still water of the natural harbour made it a fantastic breeding ground for Mosquitoes, so another note here – don’t forget your mossie repellent, or you’ll end up looking like the Elephant Man.
The next morning I went hunting for a pharmacy to get some after bite treatment and some mossie repellent. In France, and many other European Countries, big supermarkets don’t sell simple things like paracetamol, Ibuprofen, mossie repellent, bite treatment, immodium, anti-histamines etc etc on the shelf, and they’re only available at vastly inflated prices in pharmacies, which naturally aren’t open when you need them the most, so another top tip is to take a big bag of all these kinds of things and any other ailments you might suffer from with you. Obviously any prescription drugs you require should be carried in the quantity to exceed your expected travel, plus spares in case you’re like me and have a tendency to leave blister packs in hotel bathrooms. We set off for another short hop down the coast, to Sète, only 130km today, so we were there for lunch and could spend the afternoon on the beach.
There’s a Casino in Sète so after dinner we went for a quick warm up and cobweb brush out for what was coming up later in the week. It’s a very informal Casino, but bear in mind that in most Casinos in France and Monaco they require proof of age. For some reason, my (EU!) Driving Licence wasn’t enough, and I had to quickly pop back to the hotel to grab our passports. Photos to follow when I resize them!
We had planned our next stop to be near Marseilles, however due to the French Grand Prix being that weekend, all accommodation was either booked up or ridiculous prices, so we decided to skip past and head a bit further on, to Fréjus. Like almost every other town and village with a harbour on this part of the Côte d’Azur, it was packed full of expensive sea-going toys. It has a lovely harbour and we had a nice seafront lunch before heading to our hotel for a bit of a sun bathe and swim.
Our next stop would be a two night stay in Monaco, and to be honest the constant drive, stop, check-in, sleep, check-out, drive routine was beginning to fatigue us both, so we were looking forward to a day where there was no packing and unpacking. I think if you’re going to embark on a road trip of this duration you will probably need to pencil in a couple of longer stops, or you’ll start to burn out.
Knowing that our next stop was Monaco, a Mecca for petrolheads, we decided that it would be worth giving Mixie a wash. We were now approximately halfway through our trip and she was starting to look a little grimy and the front end was splattered with plenty of little beasties we had splatted. We also needed to keep on top of our laundry situation, I didn’t want to run out of pants in Monaco, so we did a load in the supermarket car-park, then while it was whizzing round went to wash Mixie, popped back to throw it in the dryer then popped off for some breakfast while that was on the go.
After washing my pants and the car, it was time to head off down the coast again. There are two choices here, just blast past on the Autoroute or use the road that snakes along the coast. Although it’s a lovely drive and the views are amazing, because it is chock-a-block with villages, towns, harbours and other built up areas, it can take quite a while. We got as far as Cannes, stopped for an ice-cream, then decided to head back onto the Autoroute for the last 50km into Monaco.
Monaco needs no introduction. We had never visited before so when we got there spent an hour driving around just enjoying the craziness of the road system. Due to the land being so expensive and limited, there are loads of tunnels dug into the cliffs and it’s easy to get lost. The place is so compressed, hilly and has so many tall buildings and the aforementioned tunnels, that my GPS kept losing signal. It didn’t matter, it was just nice to drive around, and then now and again realise that we were on a famous part of the Monaco GP Circuit. After an hour of this we decided to just follow the road signs to where our hotel was – luckily we had chosen one right next door to the AS Monaco Football Ground, which happened to be signposted from almost everywhere. We parked Mixie in the underground car park amongst all kinds of automotive erotica and exotica; Ferraris, Porsches, Mercedes, Alfas, Lancias, Lamborghinis, Mclarens, Mustangs, Bentleys, Rollers, the list went on and on.
We had booked two nights here, intending to do the late night Casino experience first night then having a relaxing day before pressing on after the weekend. I had brought my Black Tie outfit, and the Mrs a dress, fully expecting the Casino to be the full James Bond experience, but there did seem to be a lack of people wearing this order of dress so I asked the nice concierge if Black Tie was appropriate. It seems that Monaco has left the 1920s far behind and unless you’re going to a specific function, then even the best Casino – the world famous Casino Monte Carlo – doesn’t require you to be dressed up. I would say wear trousers, shoes and a collared shirt and you’ll fit in nicely without standing out like a sore thumb. It was well worth talking to the concierge as well – he had been invited to a classic car night in the Casino Café de Paris but unfortunately for him, he had had to change shifts at late notice and couldn’t attend. He asked us if we liked Classic Cars…
So, we ended up in Casino Square, having fabulous free drinks and food, watching fabulous lumps of metal drive up, disgorge the fabulous people into the fabulous Casinos. It was really surreal, exactly like you see on the telly, and me and the wife just sat there in the warm summer evening watching it all with mouths ever so slightly agape but pretending to be movie stars. After enjoying the hospitality, we went to the Casinos, didn’t break the bank but ended up back at the hotel in the early hours exhausted but happy.
The next day we watched the England Football team tear Panama apart 6-1 in an Irish Bar, then had another wonderful seafood dinner before an early-ish night and the next leg on our journey where we would be going into our sixth country and our second Mountain range.
Nicely - good write ups & pics. Did something very similar about 30 years ago with a triumph stag and i’m plotting a spring offensive next year, but with my 996. The mx5 gets saved for a western highlands excursion later in the year…
Excellent! Our next Mixie Trip will be next summer, planning on doing a round Scotland jaunt.
Our next leg was from Monaco to Turin. We had two options for this route, either the longer coastal route then up the Autostrada, or the 50km shorter route up through the Col de Tende, which looked far more interesting and had more hairpins.
We decided to do the more interesting route. This involved us going into Italy for a little bit, then back into France, then a long slow climb up a valley to the Col. We were followed for a good distance by a Renault 4 painted in Gulf Racing colours that had a horn which played “La Cucaracha”. Clearly someone who owns a car like that has some sort of character, and he enjoyed giving the horn a blast through every single village we passed through. I’m not sure whether I would find it amusing if I lived there though!
Just as we were thinking it was about time to have a little break, we arrived at the Col de Tende tunnel. When it was opened in 1882 this was the worlds longest road tunnel, at 3.2km. It is a single road tunnel, and operates on a traffic light basis. There’s a little countdown clock, and we must have just got there on the red light as it was showing 23 minutes! Someone has missed a trick here, because you would imagine there would be at least a little coffee shop for the people waiting, but there isn’t. There is another tunnel under construction currently which will make the traffic two way. I wonder why it has taken someone 136 years to make the decision that perhaps it might need widening!
Once through the tunnel, it’s more hairpins but going back down this time. The Italians have kindly numbered the “tornantes”, counting down from 8 at the top to 1 at bottom. We stopped for an extra strong coffee at the bottom then pushed on for lunch at an out of town shopping mall in Cuneo, where they had a fast food pizza place – what else! The final 100km into Turin was all Autostrada.
We were spending two days in Turin so I planned to take Mixie for an unladen drive around on the off day, just to get her up to temperature, and double check the cooling issues I had experienced in the Pyrennees were just transient and nothing bigger to worry about. We were a long way from home and the next stage was going to be one of the most testing yet before the roads were to calm down. The double check came back positive, but we resolved to keep the heater on full at all times if we were in any doubt; we certainly didn’t want to cause any permanent damage by allowing the engine to overheat.
Our hotel in Turin was right next to the Juventus stadium, but on a bus route. As mentioned before we used the Moovit app and this made it really easy to get around and about. I wanted to visit as many of the filming locations from The Italian Job as possible, so we went to the Weir, the Gran di Dio church, the plaza where Camp Freddy stands and watches the traffic jam develop and the street where the Minis drive under the arches.
http://www.theitalianjob.com/the_film_locations_italy.htm
You can probably guess where the route is going to take us next!
When we had originally planned to do a driving trip of Europe, there were only two “must-drive” criteria.
We had already ticked off the first by taking Mixie round the Grand Prix route of Monaco, and today we were going to tick off the second, the Great St Bernard Pass.
For overall driving enjoyment, I don’t think there is a better road in the whole of Europe. This route has absolutely everything. There’s only one route to leave Turin by, and that’s to head north towards the Alps and Switzerland. The first 100km are on an Autostrada. I’m not sure exactly where the Minis being loaded onto the Coach scene were shot, but as we got onto the Autostrada I put The Italian Job soundtrack on, and we sped along to “Get Your Skates On Mate” and “Self Preservation Society”. After about 100km it’s time to get onto some proper driving roads, and start the climb up to the Italian/Swiss border, so I switched to Matt Monro’s Greatest hits and had a bit of “On Days Like These”. It was (another) gorgeous day, not a cloud in the sky, and the road surface was absolutely perfect. Thinking about the extremes of weather that this tarmac must suffer, makes me wonder why the Italians seem to be able to keep their road surfaces in far better condition than we do in the UK.
We climbed almost all the way up and stopped for a coffee before the last 15km. We had left the heater on all morning, this was to be the last really challenging driving day for Mixie and neither of us wanted to take the risk of overheating. Besides, since I had added more coolant to the mixture she seemed to be behaving better; not perfect, but noticeably better. When I checked at the end of this day she hadn’t used or vented any coolant, but we certainly didn’t want to call the RAC out to the top of the Great St Bernard Pass.
We then stopped about 3km short of the border – which is right at the top of the pass – where there is a lovely big lay-by, and had a picnic lunch. It was interesting to see all the different types of vehicles and travellers going past. There were quite a few tourists and folk on holidays, families in MPVs, couples in camper vans, lots of touring motorbikes, a few other couples in open-top convertibles (not MX5s though, BMW Z3s and Alfa Spiders were more common on the continent), even a few hardy and fit folk who were on bicycles, with calves and thighs like mechanical pistons pumping up and down relentlessly. A lovely Dutch couple stopped in the same lay-by and enjoyed a picnic too, so we managed to get a proper photo rather than “arm-extended selfies” when we both swapped our cameras over to each other. Although we had started the day at about 25°c, the temperature had dropped off significantly, like it does at 8000ft and we both put warm jumpers on for our picnic.
We did take a couple of videos but to be honest you may as well just watch the Italian Job with the sound right up, or better still, go drive it yourself. Exhilarating!
There’s a lovely little lake and a café at the top of the Pass, but as we had only just got going again, decided not to stop for an extended period of time, but we did have a change of driver so the Mrs could enjoy the hairpins going down on the Swiss side.
We were now into our seventh country! We had hoped to stay in Montreaux or Geneva this night but hotel prices in Switzerland were almost double what they were just across the French border, so we had booked a hotel overlooking Lake Geneva near Evian-Les-Bains.
Although we were quite clearly pointing North now, and there was a sense that our road trip was on the last lap, we still had a few more places to visit and over 1000km to go before Mixie could have a rest, including a visit to the Statue of Liberty.