Friday now and it was another early start again, a sad look back at our campsite as we left early again and we set off down towards the Italian coast, the stress of Italian roads still playing on our mind. The first part of the journey was as expected really – being tailgated, cut up, mopeds and bikes everywhere and as we got closer to Milan it got worse. Luckily sticking to the motorways this time didn’t take long to get around Milan and onto the toll roads down the coast where the standard of driving was much better and alot less congested.
We reached the coast and southern France by late morning along some more motorways (avoiding the coast road for stress free driving) and were heading into Monaco for lunchtime.
I couldn’t quite work out Monaco, it was an impressive place to come into from the cliffs above and was actually easier to drive around than I expected, but couldn’t really see the overall appeal.
We parked at the train station in a cool 14 level multistory carpark that went down into the cliff face (cost 7.50 euros for abour 2 hours). A few fancy cars in the car park (limo, Lotus Evora) but nothing really that special. After spending ages working out how to get down to the marina (the place is like a bloody maze! You think your heading down then you get forced to walk back up again) we wandered down a side street past a fairly plain looking dealer. Then it became obvious it was a Ferrari dealer when we spotted the cars parked outside and in the workshop – Enzo, F40, 288 GTO. Insane!
After gawping at them for ages like little kids we made our way to the marina, had some lunch and looked at the size of the yachts. Seriously, these people have outrageous amounts of wealth! We walked the Monaco F1 circuit back up the other side of Monaco and then more through luck than judgement found our way back to the car park and headed off to our campsite for the night in Antibes.
I’m going to throw this out there now. I hated the south coast of France, I can’t find the appeal in it. It’s noisy, dirty, overpopulated and just not that nice! Our campsite didn’t help this either. The staff were nice enough but in general it was just like a shit, sunny British holiday camp. The camp was huge, the pitches were rammed in there, they had ‘live’ entertainment and a crappy restaurant, and it was just a bit depressing. The toilets were worse, no seats, stank of shit and no lights at night. Great.
We thought we’d go explore to see if we could see any redeeming areas, but it just made things worse. It was slap bang in the middle of a run down industrial area, the local train station was mostly boarded up (but still in use) with graffiti everywhere, the beach was behind a fence and everything just looked so run down. People slag off Spain and the Algarve but from what I saw I’d go to either of those 2 areas every time. Also I would definitely not recommend Camp Du Pylone, unless you like above features in a holiday, which in that case crack on!
To make matters worse the Polo’s clutch was apparently getting heavier by the moment. They have a weak pedal box that after abuse can deform putting extra strain on the cable, it had already been replaced before for snapping a clutch cable so this was a big worry.
We went to bed early, a bit deflated but knowing that tomorrow we were going to hit the Col de Turini and Col de Bonnette (Europe’s highest road).
We’d paid our bill the night before and set off about 6.30am along the coast, then headed inland at Nice and things started to look up. The campsite was well behind us (we’d all had a very good nights sleep incidently!!!) and we were heading up in the mountains when a garble call came over the walkie talkie. Something about clutch cable. Looking up the Polo had disappeared out of my rear view mirror. Another call on the radio confirmed our fear, the cable had snapped and they’d had to pull over. We turned around and headed back to find the clutch cable already stripped out and being inspected.
Before I go any further I need to stress the importance of decent walkie talkies for a trip like this. It would have been impossible to navigate and communicate between both cars without them. Mine we £50 from Amazon and were perfect, I’ll dig out the link if anyones interested.
So, the Polo. The cable hadn’t snapped luckily, but it had pulled itself out of the plastic grommet that connects it to the pedal box. After some head scratching we bodged together a repair with some cable ties holding the cable in the grommet. It seemed to work pretty well. For about 5 miles.
This time it was game over, the cable had cut through the cable ties in a few depresses of the clutch and without any proper gear there was nothing we could do at the roadside. We were gutted, the guys in the Polo even more so. Thoughts of them getting towed all the way back home across France, or worse having to wait until Monday for a repair (today was Saturday, Eurotunnel booked for Sunday night).
This was our bad luck. But we were about to get lucky again, for both parties, in different ways. RAC were called and sent a very nice French gentlemen out from Nice to pick up the Polo. He spoke great English, had a sense of humour and was interested in the car. Good start. He loaded the Polo up and headed back to Nice with Taylor and Tilly in his cab. We carried on to the mountains, a bit quiet, missing half of our special little group.
We’ll come back to our day in a minute. When the other guys got to Nice they ended up in a little back street garage, a little back street garage with a special interest in rare European cars. They had a Golf G60 Rallye, Porsches and various other cars and were very interested in Taylor’s G40. They carried out a cracking repair to the cable and pedal box within a couple of hours, charged only 60 euros and got them on their way. I have no idea what the garage was called but they saved the trip from ending in disaster. The other guys were too far behind now to hit the mountains so had to slog up the motorway from Nice to the services for the last nights stay, but at least we could have a beer and some dinner together, and head home together on Sunday night.
Meanwhile about 5 minutes after we left the Polo being loaded onto the back of a truck we came across the kind of roads we were looking, stuff that looked like it was straight out of the Monte Carlo Rally. Little bridges, sheer cliff faces, lovely little villages, this was the south of France I was looking for. We couldn’t quite stretch to the Col De Turini as we were behind time due to the events of the morning so we cracked straight on the Col De Bonnette.
So we were hacking along some more great wide roads, dipping in and out of valleys, along rivers, when a couple of classic 911’s came flying past heading the other way. Another couple headed past as we started to climb the Col De Bonnette. Then a couple of E-Types. Then some more 911’s.
Soon we realised by pure luck, and mainly due to waiting for 3 hours with a broken Polo that morning, we were climbing the Col De Bonnette, the highest road in Europe, as exactly the same time a classic car rally was coming down it. Soon the only noises we were making were gasps and grumbles as all kinds of amazing vehicles came past us, at full chat, down these mountain roads.
Now there was plenty of awesome 911’s but soon we had a Lancia Stratos. Ferrari Dino’s. Ferrari 275’s. Shelby Cobra’s. Another Stratos. Old Alfas all over the place. Renault 5 Turbo 2. About 20 Porsche Speedsters. And about 5 Merc 300SLs, coupes, convertibles and the previously mentioned stripped out rally-spec on steel wheels. We rounded a corner and it was sitting there, on the outside of bend, no-one around it. Many photos were taken. (I will post them up when I get them!)
It was truly mind blowing and just the kind of luck that turned this trip from a great trip to a once-in-a-lifetime trip. As we carried on up to the top we passed more and more, they nodded and waved at us, we nodded and waved back. I think about 600 photos were taken in just this climb. Truly petrolhead heaven. Oh and I did I mention the pass was as good as anything Switzerland had to offer?
After coming back down the other side we spent the rest of the day trundling onto our trusty Ibis on the French motorway, stunned at how a shit start to a day can evolve into one of the most memorable days of our lives. It goes without saying the guys in the Polo were gutted, but if it wasn’t for them breaking down we may not have seen what we had seen. Karma!
Another massive steak that night at the services, 2 massive beers and lots of time running through the photos of the day and we went to bed exhausted from the day’s events.
Nice lie in on the last day, and a boring trundle up the motorway to Calais. It was a nice time to reflect on the week and all the crazy stuff we saw and did. We were running way early, so could have stopped either at Calais and just hung around for 3 hours or split up the time to waste and stop at some services on the way for an hour or so.
We chose the latter option and I’m glad we did. After stopping at the last services for a couple of hours we headed onwards for the last 150miles to Calais, and again by pure luck we were on the motorway at exactly the same time as a local VW festival was kicking out. There were Golfs, Beetles and Audis of all types everywhere. If anyone is familiar with the VW scene I’d imagine you’d recognise alot of these cars, the Milestone 71 Mk1 Golfs were there, Rotiform Porsche 911, pretty much the cream of the crop of UK/European VW’s. They filled the next petrol station we stopped at and passed us regularly on the motorway. We had a VW car show en route to the Eurotunnel and then in the car park of the Eurotunnel itself.
Just our luck J
The rest of it is all a bit of blur to be honest, got the 9.20 Eurotunnel, back in UK an hour later. We grabbed a Mcdonalds at Clacket Lane services, exactly where we’d started 9 days ago, where we already started discussing our plans for the next trip. Bring on 2015, 2 weeks in Europe, maybe Nurburgring and Germany thrown in this time as well!
So there it is, my little trip to some hills to take some photos! Hopefully many more (better quality photos) to follow! If anyone want's any of the routes I've described or any information at all just ask on here or PM me!
all his words, done a fantastic write up i didnt feel the need to do my own
really owe it to him as he planned everything and really made the trip of a life time happen
between me and my mate we have taken 3500 photos, so going through them is rather slow, but i will add them up as i go along and a detailed description of how the car did
Thanks for reading Taylor
*all sorted now with pics, think i missed a couple of days out when i first posted (the middle section)*