10 Countries 2017

[Nick Jones]

Lets give the new forum a bit of test then........

Tuesday 5th saw team Skip set out from Somerset for Dover port en-route to Lille.

We met a few friends on the way.......

I'm always amused by the reactions of the other motorists when they discover what we're up to...... "you're going to Italy....... in that??!"

In Lille we visited a very large supermarche (Auchan) to get supplies.  We also bought a huge pizza which became dinner, and later, lunch.

While waiting for that, we stood next to this

which is mobile phone charger where you have to generate your own electric......  Didn't see anyone try it though.

Then to the Hotel F1........  It wasn't luxurious in any way, but it was clean and very cheap.  The clientelle were quite, err, diverse!

Next morning was an early start as we had to get to my Aunt's house near Bern in Switzerland at a decent hour and it's the best part of 500 miles.  My cunning "shortcut" using free Belgian motorways backfired badly when we got stuck in appalling traffic and had to queue to 30 minutes to get about 500m to the nearest exit eventually sneaking the last 50m up the hard shoulder following a local.  Amazingly most traffic was staying on......

Rejoined the official route in Luxembourg and filled up with (relatively) cheap fuel.  Down more motorway to the Vosges mountains.  There are some superb roads and scenery but the weather was not co-operating and the higher we went the wetter and murkier it got so we cut some of the wiggly bits and headed for faster roads.

Passed this highly unusual beastie going the other way - he wasn't on the run but was no doubt aware of it

(Not my pic)

Passed into Switzerland at Basle without hitch having already bought our motorway toll sticker.  Unusually the traffic was ok-ish.  Didn't last.  The Swiss build a really nice motorway..... but not big enough!

Still made it to Aunties for 6.30pm as promised.

To be continued.......

[Nick B.]

It was a great run - I hope to do it again once :-)

Now - let's try this forum, sorry for the mess, just trying to upload :-)...

Lunch somewhere in france

Letting the car cool of while having lunch in the swiss alps. Lovely italian styled place. Chatting with two chaps in a red TR7

Bumped into Roy (amoingst others) on a small spot in the alps

Entering Livigno after a nice up the hill. Managed to catch up with the TR and do some overtaking on the downhill

Passed this hotel in livigno - I have stayed there twice for skiing trips. Looks different in the summer!

And finally arrived at Rolduc. Was the second car to arrive - and the first car to arrive that had followed the routebook. Car had been properly whipped ....

Edited September 20, 2017 by Nick B.

[Nick Jones]

Thanks for the nice pics Nick.  Really sorry I wasn't smart enough to hunt you down at Rolduc so we could meet properly!

Thursday morning dawned a little grey, but we could at least see most of the mountains.  A bit of discussion with the locals (AKA my actual Swiss uncle) over the best way to intersect the official route and we set off via the motorway past Thun and Interlaken headed initially for Meiringen and then the Grimsel and Furka passes before picking up the official route at Andermatt.  It's a pleasant run to Meiringen and quite quick.  The Swiss make a decent motorway when they are not over-filled with cars.  Near Meiringen we encountered roadworks.  The main road was closed.  The alternate route (which I knew about as we holidayed in the area in 2009) appeared to be open, but not for us - traffic plod was not negotiating - I have no idea why.  Possibly reserved for "local" traffic only and we were clearly not local.  So we got to detour via a longer route, which did at least make up for it by being scenic, steep and very wiggly.

The Grimsel pass is one the Vitesse knows well.  It took us up there in 1993 (on honeymoon), again in 2009 and again in 2011 (or was it 2013?).  In 2009 we took it's picture in a layby with the Rhone Glacier in the background.  I wanted to repeat this to see how much the glacier had receded.  Initially the chances of this looked poor as the higher we went the murkier and wetter it got.  Visibility was about 2 car lengths at the top and I'd just about given up hope of getting my pic, but as we came down the other side, we burst out of cloud about 200m before the critical layby and this pic was the result

Almost no ice visible in 2017.  Noticeable decline from 2009.

This pic shows the bottom of  Furka pass.  I like the way the hairpins are on bridges - quite a common theme in this part of the world.

Then onward to Andermat and just after that we started seeing other Triumphs.  Not many, but one or two.  Also coaches - lots of bloody coaches.  Which are slow.  And frequently followed by processions of cars.  As there was a fair mix of driver nationalities we noticed differences in "attitude" and willingness to overtake.  The Swiss and Germans will overtake but only when it is very clearly safe to do so (opportunity limited!).  The Italians and the Dutch will overtake almost anywhere as will the bikers of any nation.  The Belgians didn't appear to want to overtake at all (only a sample of one though) and there were no French available for the test.  The English in a certain small grey missile were very keen to overtake, but also to stay alive, and somewhat hampered by the driver sitting on the wrong side of the car.  This required teamwork and is not a game Chris had played before (he was driving at this point), but he soon got the hang of it.  We passed several coaches and the Belgian.  The other Brits were all behind us and we didn't see them again once we got past the first coach.....

This artic fella however, we did not get past.  Unladen, he was absolutely flying.  Had we been in front, we could (maybe) have gone quicker, but not much.  And some of the road we followed him on was MUCH narrower and wigglier than that in the pic.  Respect!

 

[Nick Jones]

Thursday included following ten major passes, all but one over 2000m

Grimsel 2,165m

Furka 2,431m

Oberalp 2,044m

Lucamagno 1,916m

(coming down the south side of the Lucamagno with a bit of a tail)

San Bernadino (old pass) 2,065m

(Rest stop 3/4 way up the San Bernardino pass, there were some hot smells - oil, tyres, brakes......)

Julier 2,238m

Bernina 2,328m

Forcola di Livigno 2,315m

Passo di Foscagno 2,291m

(towards the top of the Stelvio coming from Bormio)

(looking back the other way from nearly the same spot - awesome scenary if a little nippy at 2000+m and nearly 7pm in a draft top-down Vitesse)

Stelvio 2,757m

 

Top of Stelvio comparing wounds with Roy Lacey's Mk1 GT6.......  The young lady in the back ground got very excited about having two Triumphs to photograph much to the disgust of her Lotus owning boyfriend.

The car had an exceptionally hard day.  Especially on the lower section of San Bernardino old road, where I was gifted a clear run in perfect conditions........ And also on the way down Stelvio when the lateness of the hour meant that I got a pretty clear run down apart from a bothersome Merc picked up about 1/2 way down, who was quite determined I wasn't going to get past even though he was clearly in the way......... I was glad of him later though as he found the stray goats on the road and his brakes were still working....... (actually, mine were too, but on the squashy side of adequate at the point).

Got to our hotel in Coldrano at 8.30 pm after 12.5 hours on the road........ knackered!

 

 

 

[Sprint95m]

Thanks for posting these photos.

Every summer I watch on TV coverage of the cycling grand tours.

Like viewing this thread, it is worth it to see the scenery!

Hmm, maybe I should apply for a passport and apply to join Club Triumph..........

 

 

Ian.

[Nick Jones]

View from our balcony Friday morning....

View in the car park

We'd checked the timings for the full planned route and reckoned that it was about a 13 hour day - even without the extra 90 minutes our revised overnight stop in Bern was going to add.  So I'd chopped a couple of loops out.  Not without regrets as it meant missing the Dolomites - which are superb.  However, we've been before - twice on 10CRs and once on holiday.

However, we did manage to find some new roads which drastically shortened the route without being boring.....

The last section of this, coming back down into Bolzano included a couple of spirals, one a spiral tunnel which was a bit like going down a slide in a theme park.  IN hindsight I wish we'd turn round and gone back up it with the camera running..... but we didn't you you'll just try to imagine it from this

We then went up the Sarentino valley and over the Penser Joch.....

...where we had a chat with a group of German bikers who wanted to know all about the car having had to work harder than usual to get past us. 50 years old...... no way! (the car not me!).  We saw them again on top of the Jaufen and Timmelsjoch.

This area is especially popular with bikers, many apparently late for appointments in Valhalla, which can make for the odd tense moment.  Best avoided on sunny weekends.

Picturesque lunch stop between Jaufen and Timmelsjoch

and Timmelsjoch itself, with a rare sighting of Clive & Gill amongst others

Then downhill into Austria and Solden.  Just as well it was downhill too as we were determined to avoid buying fuel in Italy (€ 1.55 +/l ), not having filled up since Livigno (0.97/l ) and having ragged it over a number if biggish passes we were running on fumes......  Made it though.

After that it's a pleasant run down the valley .......

......to meet the east/west motorway  before turning west for Lichtenstein and Switzerland.  There are many tunnels on this road - some very long, though the longest (Arlberg) was shut for refurbishment so we had to detour over the Arlberg pass instead, along with everyone else, which was a bit tedious due to the traffic.

We weren't long in Lichtenstein and then it was a fairly long slog back across Switzerland.  Mostly great scenery ( i mean, how about this for a motorway services view)

but roads very busy on a Friday afternoon.

Made it back to my Aunts at 7pm after 11 hours - and that was the shortened route!

 

[Nick Jones]

Saturday was not the best day..... but it got better towards the end.

The price we had to pay for staying Bern was to be starting approximately 90 minutes behind the "pack" who'd stayed near Singen.  It also meant we had to use alot of motorways.  We'd thought, optimistically as it turned out, that Basle would be no problem early on a Saturday morning - we were very wrong and dropped a good 30 minutes there.  We opted to go up the German side of the border (no speed limits in places) which may have been a mistake as the Vitesse is speed limited about 80 mph (the car is quite happy to go faster but the wind noise is unbearable even with the hood/windscreen header joint taped up) and the mpg drops off fast too) and driving on bumpy dual carriage ways with one lane going at 65 - 70 mph and the other at 100+ is quite tiring.

We ending up cutting back to the French side too when Google maps warned of traffic problems around Karlsruhe which saved us about an hour and put us back among the pack.

We then met up with Martin in Birkenfeld (does the windscreen fit?) and also Jean Claude and Guy in their Herald estate.  We then followed JC and Guy back to Rolduc where it was the turn of JC's sat-nav to fail to find the Abbey.  It made exactly the same mistake as mine did in 2009..... though somehow mine has been able to find it since and did this time too.  Apart from that we were very grateful for the chance to follow the (nearly) local boys.  Just as well we have a tuned-up Vitesse too as I'm not sure a standard one would keep up with that Herald - I was relieved when JC told me they were running a well tuned 1500 as I'd been worrying my engine was going sick....!

Not many pics this time as the weather was a bit rough and the scenery not to the same standard as previous days..... 

At the finish

Nick

[triumphlux]

Well I have to agree that this 10CR was really excellent. Throught the Alpes with the sun out nearly all the time was gorgeous !

We only met Nick the last day but it was good to meet up with Martin and also good fun to be ahead of the Vitesse and not being chased

The car ran very good, the only problem we had was overcooking the brakes going down the Stelvio ..... I think we made it to turn number 23 .....

A Herald Estate fully loaded is quite heavy and with closed steel wheels and medium quality pads, plus a long diff that we needed to declutch on the bends didn't help!

Now the car will get Vitesse brakes and open alloy wheels as well as Mintex pads :-)

Another well prepared Herald :

On top of the Stelvio :

Too many tight bends ????

Brakes on fire .......

The finish :