Jon's Summer 2008 Alps Expedition

[JonS]

Done.

 

 

What a trip!! We had an incredible time! Great weather, great fun, great people, great cars, and unbelievable roads!! We cut the trip down a bit - ie we didn't go to Millau & shortened the return from Livigno to Rastatt by 200 miles. Stayed in some great hotels as well, Dijon, Monaco, Carimate (South of Como), Livigno.

 

2860 miles,

98 hours in the car,

36.8 mpg for the whole trip

123mph legally - for 6.5 seconds (6,000rpm in 5th gear is pretty loud!)

 

The best days drive was over Grimselpass, Furkapass, St. Gottardpass, Sustenpass, Grimselpass, and Passa Della Nouvena, and AWESOME route - the best drive you will EVER have!! It had everything, tight hairpins up and down, fast swoops, long straights, altitude, scenerey, glaciers, blazing sun! I simply fell in love with that are! I could quite easily live there!

 

As for Stevlio - 184 hairpins in 1 afternoon - most of them full lock, very tight and steep - grounded out on one of them so the car has a Stevlio Wound underneath the front clam. Apart from that the car performed excellently! My friend's Z4 achieved 29 mpg total to my 36! I got a max mpg of 44 on one day ploughing through Germany!

 

I'll do a full write up next week as I have few other things to sort this week, but as a quick summary:

 

France - Great toll roads, no traffic, but flat and boring.

Reims GP circuit - great feeling piling through a grandstand, really erie as well though.

Monaco - Awesome city, really enjoyed our stay there. Drove & walked the circuit - gave it the beans through the tunnel

Swiss Alps - If I were to move abroad, I would now go there - the circuit of passes named above are just simply the Best.

Stelvio - Well, Stelvio is Stelvio - great fun driving both sides, but we think the west side (Less well known) was more fun to drive, but the east side is just never ending! And has to be driven - but it was straight into the spa at the Hotel Lac Salin in (tax free) Livigno as soon as we got back! (FYI for the people going next month, Livigno is about an hours drive from the summit of Stelvio)

German Autobahns - A5: good stretches to get good speed. 123mph. A6: too twisty really to be able to build up to speed. 120mph

(remember boot FULLY loaded and passenger! )

 

Channel Tunnel over - Great, very smooth, easy to do, very little queueing.

Ferry back - awful weather crossing & crappy queues to get out of Dover let alone get through the few passport control gates in Calais.

The Chunnel really is worth it - especially as it is pretty much the same price!

 

SO - great holiday, would love to do it again every year, but hey! You have to do it once! I'll do a proper write up and maybe add it is as a blog starting next week.

 

Jon

 

[Greg.g]

Now you know why we are going back in two weeks

 

Its definately something that every lotus owner should do at least once.

[G]

That's a long way Jon, ive driven nearly 900 miles over the last 2 days and im shattered. Really fancy this next year though but would have to scale it down a little. Maybe break myself in first with the highlands tour i keep putting off.

[JonS]

It was a great trip indeed - but I do fancy putting this book that I have to the test sometime

 

[R.I.B.]

What an incredible trip it sounds like, I really do hope I can do it next year.

I've drove quite a lot around the highlands in Scotland, unfortunately not in a lotus but still enjoyed the amazing roads and scenery, definitely worth a trip.

Looking forward to seeing your pics

Cheers

Phil