pork

BERT14
Buzzez Euro Road Trip 2014

This page is picture heavy, all of which are clickable to enlarge

Something I've always wanted to do was drive the Alpine passes. My brother's done it numerous times and I just really wanted to do it while I had a car that could do justice to them. A friend getting an Aston Martin V8 Vantage and me making the suggestion set the wheels in motion.

From the idea came the plan. This was expertly crafted by my sister-in-law to take in a lot of passes in 10 days. What became apparent was that we were going to need navigators to achieve this plan. So the feelers went out, two more friends tagged along and it became a boys own adventure!

What follows is a tiny portion of the photos taken, but I had to cut it back and keep it relevant and not to make it a tedious collection of my holiday snaps. So here it is, four blokes, two cars, five countries, 3200 miles and one of the best holiday's ever.

Our first stop off was Reims in France, home of the Reims-Gueux circuit, or at least what's left of it. Only the pit complex remains, the circuit has long been turned into local roads. For travellers from the south of England it's almost an obligatory stop off (it's about the right distance) with associated photos to be taken.

Team Porsche

The next port of call was Stuttgart and it would have been rude not to stop in at the Porsche Museum while we were there. I loved the fastidious nature of the place, there were rulers unlaid into the floors with measurements on them for the signs and car placement. Only the Germans would do this :)

*wibble*

It wasn't just race cars there, but I've mainly put the race car pics up as otherwise I'd have just filled this page with a shedload of pork. Plus, I really like the race cars.

It seems the Germans don't do colours. The car park was awash with black, silver, grey and white cars.
My navigator looked upon this and commented "I wonder where we parked..."

Onto Oberammergau where we stopped before crossing the border into Austria. I loved this place. Lots of people in traditional dress which I thoroughly approve of. The ladies we referred to as Heidi's and I developed a craving to wear Lederhosen in the hope of attracting one...

Mountains!

The next stop was Zell am See (seen in the distance) and in the morning we rode the cable car to the top of the mountain. Some stunning views from up here.

Into the passes. Here is a man at peace with life. Aston, mountain, peering off into the distance.
At least I think he's peering...

You find these dotted around the passes occasionally. One suspects it gets a tad chilly in winter.

One of the passes ends at a glacier. Properly high up. Walking up the short 50yard slope from the car park left me seriously out of breath due to the lack of oxygen. Not at all to do with me being totally unfit. You could really feel it in the car too, and we passed some disguised cars doing altitude testing.