Alps to the Ring Tour - Day 3

Day 3 - Interlaken to Willisau, 200 miles

The day dawned bright and...no, it didn't,  it was raining. Today was the Alps and the bucket list passes but first up was Lake Brienz on the other side of Interlaken and with the rain not as hard,  we managed to stop for a coffee and pics:

After another 30 minutes or so,  the Grimsel Pass was first, the only one I hadn't done on my last trip here in 2020. The rain was wire heavy and traffic slowed us down. Near the top, we hit cloud and could hardly see 2 cars in front. At the very top, it was snowing!

Yeah, probably a nice view out there somewhere....

But, 5 minutes down the other side, we burst out into bright sunshine and a view of proper majesty:

It was so hot, steam was coming off the road and we had a great run, roof finally down. We did have on and off rain for the rest of the day,  however, but it strangely never ruined the drive.

At the bottom of the pass, we turned up the Furka Pass and very shortly, I stopped at the same layby I had broken down in my kitcar, 5 years previously (throttle cable snapped) - ah,  the memories!

 A couple of miles further on and I, once again,  failed to stop at the famous Belvedere Hotel for a picture! I did see it but the car park was very busy and the others hadn't stopped either, so I drove on past and stopped for a few pics a bit further on:

The Furka Pass was much shorter than I remembered but we did fly up there - bloody awesome. Coming down, it was much narrower and bumpy, with some scary drops which kept us going slower.

We stopped in Andermatt for a very expensive lunch (£31 for a chicken pitta and apple strudel - lovely but pricey).

Next up was the Sustenpass and it was the highlight of the day - bend after bend for 20 miles or more. Traffic wasn't too bad and slower traffic was quickly dispatched. We kept stopping for pictures and re-overtaking the same people 😀

The last 30 miles of the day I hadn't expected to be much good - when planning, I saw an interesting small, almost single lane road with lots of squiggles. In reality, it was amazing, twisting frantically for miles, climbing all the time, with a stunning viewpoint at the top, overlooking Lake Sarnen:

The final 10 miles to the hotel was a slow cruise to our hotel, with beers, pizza and tenpin bowling to end the day - brilliant!

Alps to the Ring Tour - Day 2

 Day 2 - Cenans to Interlaken, 200 miles

The first couple of hours of the day was spent at a Mercedes dealer, getting 1.5L of extra oil sucked out the sump! No wonder he had blue smoke and he is furious with the garage - a bad review on its way.

Unfortunately, the rain continued for most of the day, but there were some good stretches of dry periods, and the views got better and better.

I hadn't planned the best route today, as we had quite a lot of traffic. 

At one point, we look stuck behind a tractor who refused to move over for at least ten miles. Frustrated, I took us on a detour which took half an hour longer but was more interesting for sure, returning back to the original route - right behind the same tractor!! But I managed to squeeze past him on one of the rare short straights and then I slowed to a crawl, which gave the others time to overtake him as well,  tractor man hooting furiously the whole time. Served him right... 😀

Lake Thunersee is normally a beautiful blue vision but our arrival coincided with some biblical rain - we felt like we were driving IN the lake! So wet, we didn't even stop for photo's. 

Our hostel in Interlaken was an impressive sight:

...with a resident St Bernard who was very friendly. We drove into town (too wet to walk), saw an impressive hotel:

...ate an expensive pizza (£22), had a reasonable beer back at the hostel (£5) and retired to bed.

Alps to the Ring Tour - Day 1

 Home to Cenans - 450 miles

As usual on these trips, I was up at a stupid hour - 4.15am to get a 6.30am train. For complex reasons , I was getting an earlier train than the others. Sadly, the rain was heavy and even worse in France , where it hammered down for the first 200 miles to Reims. But we got the ubiquitous photos at the grandstand:

There was another group of brits on a road trip with an amazing sounding Ferrari  something or other (430?). 

The rain took a break for a while, and we had a great run on local roads, for another 150 miles of twisting, smooth and empty roads.

The evening meal was a traditional McDonald's (it was a Sunday, hardly anything else was open) before the last 30 minute hoon to our quaint little gite in the middle of nowhere.

Already, the roads are getting hilly and twisty only a short distance from the edge of the Jura mountains - hopefully, the weather won't be too bad tomorrow and we can enjoy them.

However, we do need to detour via a Mercedes dealer - my son's car had an oil change at an AMG specialist (supposedly) and the muppets have overfilled his oil,  so he's getting a bit of blue smoke. He's worried he might get frothy oil which could cause some damage. So we're hoping the garage will suck a bit of the oil out for him...

Alps To The Ring Tour '25 - prologue

 So to the highlight of the year - a week long trip to the Swiss Alps, Germany and the Nurburgring. Planning started last October, the hotels are booked, the tyre pressures are checked, the weather is not looking great for the first couple of days but heatwave for the end - what's not to like?

The Runners and Riders

There are 4 cars and drivers (no screaming passengers) - first up is me in my 2005 987 Boxster S:

Then Vic in his 981 Boxster (the black one):

My son in his crazy C63 AMG:

...and his friend in his C43 AMG:

So that's around 16L and 1500 bhp in total - should be interesting.

The Route

The rough route is as follows (anti-clockwise):

I'll be doing daily updates with a more detailed route of the day. The only motorway is from Calais to Reims on day 1 (and a short stretch of unrestricted autobahn - ahem!) - the rest of the time, it's as twisty as it can get.

Highlights:

Swiss passes (Furkal, Grimsel etc)

Stuttgart (Porsche and AMG museums)

Unrestricted autobahn

Nurburgring

Hopefully, the weather will hold and we'll all get back in one piece (breakdown cover is sorted).

Let the Games begin....!!!!

I'm so pretty

 Barry is back from the cosmetic surgeon - a mate of a mate who offered to do my wings for half the price of everywhere else. He works from a farm in the middle of nowhere in Kent, so it was a bit of a trek to pick Barry up but the result is excellent, although not perfect, I'll be honest.

Before:                                  After:

 

Huge improvement, although it is a little darker than the bumper which I'm sure will be picked up on by the purists. However, I am happy and £700 less poor - win, win.

All ready for the Big One on Sunday...

The Heat Is On

 With the continued heatwave making a convertible the BEST thing in the world (if it wasn't already), I took a last minute decision to go to the Summer Flo at Brooklands on a balmy Thursday evening, even dragging the wife along.

It was a really nice event; music playing, stupidly expensive food (even worse than Goodwood - £10 for a basic burger) and an excellent and huge range of cars from all eras. I actually didn't take many photos for some reason I can't quite explain because there was some really interesting, custom stuff:

A slammed Allegro - who would do this?!

A gorgeous old Corvette:

A DeLorean with a modernised interior (note the time machine display is actually a screen):

A Maserati Khimsan (or something like that) - never heard of it before but beautiful:

One of  many old VWs:

Lots of other stuff - hot rods, brand new Rolls, big old US cruisers and pick-ups, old bikes, Vespas and, star of the show for me and my wife (which bodes well for a possible future purchase) was a purple TVR T350. It had an '08 plate on it even though production ended in '06 so possibly the youngest TVR in existence? I was so stunned, I forgot to take a pic...

Yesterday, I had a nice run with one of the Porkster group, to the Hawkhurst Fisheries for breakfast. A lovely 40-odd mile run on some great roads, with an excellent breakfast at the end:

After breakfast, I dropped Barry off at a friend of a friend who is going to respray the rear wings for a very fair £650 - hope he's ok at it! Should get him back at the end of the week, a couple of days before the Great Tour begins!!! Majorly excited...!!

Fairmile and More oily stuff

I hadn't been to the Fairmile pub meet for a while, so took a run there on Wednesday, meeting a couple of the Porksters. Very busy (275 cars they said) with a special display of Spyders. Some other nice stuff as well:

Tonight, a quick trek to Cearth to abuse his hospitality and change my oil and filter. Very lazy as I could just do it on the drive but we're in the middle of a heatwave and I sweated buckets as it was - really didn't want to be lying on my back under a hot engine.

Cearth is an ex-aircon engineer, so he also tested my aircon system (he has all the kit) and pronounced it in good condition, which is nice to know.