Some of you might remember my previous road trip threads on here. As they seemed to go down quite well, I though I'd post another story of my well travelled X350.

After 10 months of living in France, it was time to come home. Which meant going from this:



To this:



As you can imagine, this was fairly depressing, so I decided to make the trip home as enjoyable as I could. So, I invited some friends to come down to stay for a few days, worked out a rough itinerary and set off.

Our first stop was Monaco, where we had a great lunch which I almost threw up when I saw this.



And then continued on to Lake Garda in Italy, where we were planning on meeting a group of mutual friends and camping for the night. The campsite was right next to the lake, which gave us a beautiful view of both the scenery and the 10,000,000 mosquitoes who's only aim was to get in the tents. I lasted for almost an entire minute inside the tent, before I decided to retreat and sleep on the back seats of my beautifully mosquito-free car.

The next day, we decided to rent some boats which we drove flat out, everywhere.



Amazingly, there was only one crash, and I wasn't even driving at the time!

That afternoon, we set off for the alps, deciding to take the ferry over Lake Garda to enjoy a bit more scenery, and spotted this mint Z8 at the terminal.





No different to the Woolwich ferry really.



It didn't take long to get to the Alps, where we were greeted with some absolutely fantastic, totally empty roads.



I enjoyed these very much, my brakes didn't enjoy them quite so much.



They proved very easy to cool down though







According to my phone, that road was 2600m above sea level!

We decided we didn't fancy camping anymore, so rented an apartment near Stelvio Pass which had some pretty nice views.





The next day, we decided to drive Stelvio Pass, which was exactly as I expected - fun, but very overrated - the roads we'd done the day before were far better.





Fantastic scenery though...





Next, we headed for Germany, home of the best town names in the world.



And the strictest police.



We then spent a night in a dodgy hotel in Stuttgart, and discovered that it's basically the street racing capital of the world. There was a huge variety of cars being ragged around - everything from a Gallardo to a 206 with a quad exhaust. Saw a few getting stopped by the police, but there were far too many people being hooligans for them to really be able to do anything.







As we were in Stuttgart, we couldn't leave without visiting the Mercedes and Porsche museums. They were both fantastic, although I preferred the Mercedes museum due to the sheer variety of exhibits - I'm one of those weirdos who loves seeing old, mundane vehicles in mint condition.







This could apparently do over 100MPH



And I can't even imagine how much this lot must be worth







The Porsche museum was good as well, especially as I got the chance to see this beast



(Yes, it really is a Porsche)

There were some other less impressive exhibits as well









But of course, no trip to Germany is complete without a visit to the Nurburgring. I hadn't actually planned on going round - a 157k mile Jaguar XJ6 filled with everything I own, pre-cooked brakes and a driver with no knowledge of the circuit whatsoever, combined with not enough money to pay for the €lol costs if I had a mishap struck me as a pretty bad combination. But I decided to be brave, as a mutual friend turned up who knew the ring pretty well, and offered to passenger with me and guide me round which was incredibly helpful.

What followed was possibly the quickest lap you'll ever have seen on the ring - a blistering 10:48!


Try not to be too jealous - not everyone is born with my natural talent.

In fairness, I plan to return in a few months with an MR2 Turbo which I should be picking up in a couple of weeks, and actually work on setting a decent time. But for now, I'm just happy that I've done my first lap without doing anything incredibly stupid.

After the laps, we let our hardcore race-prepped machines cool down a bit.



And settled down to watch a few people who actually knew what they were doing.







Then left the track in time for dinner and a few last photos.





The next day, we drove straight to the ferry port, only to find out it was delayed by several hours due to bad weather.

This did however give us the time to marvel at the ingenuity of our eastern european neighbours.



And have a chat to an old couple who'd owned this MR2 anniversary edition from new, and were just returning from a trip with the MR2 owners club. Fair to say it was in slightly better condition than my old one.



And that's it! Considering this was all very last minute and nothing was booked in advance, I think we did pretty well. Total cost of everything was €850 each, which seemed pretty good to me, especially considering we were cruising at 100MPH+ most of the time on the motorways, followed by thrashing the cars down mountain passes. If we'd have gone for economy, we'd have probably saved quite a lot, but where's the fun in that?

And now, back to life on the M25 for me

 

Superb, really cool pics, looks like a great time was had by all

 

Great story and some nice pics - scenery andcars.

Thanks for posting!

 

I am "officially" envious now...

 

Very nice report.
The advices of your passenger on the Ring look to be very helpful to anticipate and to choose the right trajectory (wait, wait, wait...)

 

And for those not doing German lessons, "Rennabteilung" on the Merc flatbed truck means Racing Division !!

Really lovely pictures that will no doubt see me booking some more holiday in Germany this year. The Alps are so beautiful.

 

What a great post!