cock a’ doodle doo. I woke up to the sound of a cockrel, It was still dark, and I wondered why my alarm hadn’t gone off. I checked the time on my mobile and realised that I had somehow woken at 4:55, 5 minutes before the alarm.
Time to get up, I managed to beat everyone else to the bathroom and got ready very early, no need for breakfast, it was way to early for that. We’ll eat on the way to our next destination, Florence!
Ajay managed to get up after I created enough noise, Ravi slept later than everyone else so he was spent the morning complaining about the lack of sleep, we ignored his moaning and got ready.
Once out on the road we were reminded of how kamikaze the Italian drivers can be. Ajay was at the head of the convoy when we set off and managed to take the wrong exit on a motorway, this added an extra 45 minutes to the journey, we wanted to be away from any populous towns during rush hour as we learnt that if we time the driving right and we don’t get any interruptions, we can maximise our fuel stops.
When we finally stopped at a service station for breakfast, we found it to be very busy. Ravi couldn’t wait for the next one so he attempted to order a coffee and got it completely wrong. Even he knew it wasn’t worth arguing over.
As Ajay left the service station he spotted his favourite car brand,
It’s an MG!
Ajay, 2018
The rest of the drive was quite boring, except for a new MX-5 saying hello by beeping at us as we cruised down. We arrived at the hotel quite early and immediately headed to the underground car park. It was so tight for me in the Q3 that I feared for the alloys. Once checked in at the hotel we started chatting to the very friendly staff on the reception. they gave us some great tips and we decided to leave the cars in the hotel and take a bus into the centre of Florence.
Once we were on the bus which happened to pick us up directly from outside the hotel, we found ourselves standing for the whole journey. Once we arrived at our stop, me and Ajay got out of the bus, Ravi got stuck on the bus and it travelled off without him getting off. We assumed he would just get off at the next stop and walk back to the stop we had gotten off, that would have been too rational. He managed to get off eventually but his phone didn’t work so he was reliant on free wifi to make what’s app calls. this made it very tedious locating him.
One we found him there was a very specific shop I wanted to visit. It was a 600 year old pharmaceutical shop called Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella Firenze. They made their own products so I was keen to check it out. I planned to buy a perfume for my wife and found one, but I decided that I would get it for myself instead, even though it was a unisex fragrance.
We then went sight seeing around Florence and Ajay found a lucky pig to put money into. Florence is a beautiful place filled with very cool buildings. We checked out a busking violinist and bought a few souveniers, Ajay bought a wax monogram letter stamp and I bought a old looking traditionally bound book, the kind that looks like a spell book in Harry Potter.
We found a desert parlour with a chocolate waterfall and stayed in central Florence quite late. When we did decide to head back to the hotel we experienced the comedy of a stag party encountering a hen party. They weren’t for the same couple but it was hilarious, if I was recording it I would put on my David Attenborough voice over the top of it.
This time when we used the bus, Ravi managed to get off it when we arrived at our stop. We went straight to bed when we got to our room as we had spent most of the day on our feet and were quite tired.
On Tabish’s orders we were told to complete the Stelvio Pass before anyone else got there. This would mean we would have to get up early, eugh!
I thought that was a cracking plan, especially without traffic. We could really see if the MX-5s were a good purchase and whether they lived up to thier great reputation on these fabulous driving roads. So we went to bed early-ish, well midnight because I was so excited.
We woke up at 5am (4am UK time) and man was I exhausted. My first thoughts were to forget the Stelvio, I wanted a lie in.
We left very early to set up the cameras on the cars. My car’s engine didn’t start when I turned on the ignition. At that point I realised I may have made a mistake. I left my car lights on over night which drained the battery. This felt like a huge set back especially with the lack of sleep and early start. The MX-5 doesn’t have a conventional layout, its a “front engine rear wheel drive” car with the battery in the boot. This normally wouldn’t be much of a problem but this time I was at the back of the car park and on an upwards slope with the back of the car close to an overhang onto other properties. Starting the car in did feel a bit adventurous because if I rolled back I would be going through someone’s kitchen roof.
After half an hour and lots of manoeuvring by Ravi to get close enough to the battery, we charged it with our short jump cables and were on our way. Tabish’s extended nap was over.
I led our convoy to Eyres, a small petrol stop prior to reaching the Stelvio. It was then that I realised my MX-5 had developed a squealing noise when engaging the clutch. Initially I thought it was tyres or belts.
It was quite a tight squeeze at the petrol station. Someone almost reversed into Ravi, It was probably Ravi’s fault for being so close to him. We then headed for the fabled Stelvio, I was in front navigating, Ravi was in the middle and Tabish brought up the rear in his massive Audi Q3 SUV. Ravi started dropping back and created a gap which other drivers overtook and filled, thus ruining the convoy. Ravi got told off for that.
We finally got to Traffoi at the start of the pass and parked up at a hotel to set up the cameras. get cameras on and around the vehicles.
I navigated the group up the pass by screaming down the radio to let everyone know when the bends were coming up and what type of oncoming traffic there was. Tabish didn’t need any navigation help because as we later found out he had three sat navs in his car. He was also the size of a bus but he did need to know what was coming down the pass in case he hit it.
The corners going up the Stelvio were amazing, some bends were off camber, most were blind, a few had very little barrier to stop you going over the edge, we called those “dirty bends” on the radio. The views were amazing in the background. It was refreshing to be driving a group of cars on roads like this with friends. I found the 1.8 MX-5 quite a bit faster on this trip, Ravi certainly had the power over me in my 1.6.
The entertainment continued when Tabish explained over the radio how he felt he could have fallen off many of the bends whilst negotiating around oncoming vehicles. This road isn’t designed to be enjoyed by the common SUV driver. Two minutes up the Stelvio and Tabish had been left behind. We took a break to see the beautiful mountain view from a restaurant car park 1875m up.
When we reached the car park at the top, Ravi decided to have a picnic. I took a few pictures, changed the batteries, memory cards and enjoyed listening to Tabish’s hardships on this road. He told me he stalled the car whilst coming round a bend. His jealousy was clear but he did have air conditioning which I didn’t.
Once we had enough of the view and cold mountain air, we decided to head onward to Bormio. We realised there were some shops at the top of the pass, I really fancied some chips but the shops weren’t open. The roads descending on the other side of the Stelvio Pass is less technical and had more open flowing corners. The hairpins weren’t as scary so our over all speed increased. Ravi wasn’t paying much attention to us on the radios, we later found out he had turned the volume low.
The journey down was actually blissful, we even found some sheep. There we no road markings for most of the route and surprisingly less barriers on the side of the road. The decent was having quite an effect on our cars, mine and Ravi’s brakes & clutches were getting quite a lot of abuse and started smelling bad.
We paused halfway down the pass as Ravi wanted to rest his car after reporting a stiff gearbox issue. He spotted some fluids coming from the underside of his car and started to panic. Tabish and I reassured him that it was water from his AC condenser.
After we set of again down the rest of the pass, we noticed there was a lot of traffic that had started to arrive the further down we went. We encountered cyclists, cars, motorbikes, animals, tunnels, traffic lights and some very slow drivers in front of us as we progressed. A bus was coming the other way up the pass. How was he going to get up the pass? I thought, I wouldn’t mind a ride on that!
We had to stop at some traffic lights for a few single lane tunnels to open We noticed there were a lot of Porsches on the pass, far more than we would reasonably expect. A lot of people seem to love Porsches in this part of the world. The Stelvio Pass was the best road I had ever driven on, next time we have to get to the pass for 4am to enjoy it without the traffic.
We arrived in Bormio for 8:30am and went to a local supermarket / restaurant for some breakfast. This was quite a busy town. After a quick petrol top up because the rest of our journey would be quite long we headed off to where we were staying for the night, Gavardo.
The route that our sat navs took was mostly through tunnels, very long tunnels at that. I had never been in so many tunnels in my life. This allowed me to enjoy my stainless steel exhaust, which also really annoyed Tabish, I tried to play a tune with my exhaust in the tunnels for him to cheer him up, it didn’t work and he became even more annoyed. We stopped off for a snack at a place called Bar Rododendro in a small town called Aprica and got some ice creams. Tabish tried putting on an Italian accent when ordering his. I wasn’t sure if the the people in the shop were amused by his attempt or offended and were just being polite.
We eventually arrived at our stop in a town next to Gavardo, the place we stayed was an apartment called Casa del Sole rather than a hotel. Ravi made friends with the neighbours dog, a small white creature with a bit of poo smeared on it’s backside. Ravi immediately picked him up and let him sit on him, me and Tabish thought it was disgusting. We told him he couldn’t bring it back to the room or we will feed him spiders.
After dumping our stuff in the room, I felt very hungry. Me and Tabish found a pizza place on google maps and headed out to get some food, Ravi said he didn’t want anything. We walked to the pizza place called Pizzeria D’Asporto Al Borghetto Di Dallevedove Jur and realised that the menu wasn’t in English. I fancied a gluten free pizza, and after several minutes of struggling to translate my order to the non-English speaking staff, I pulled out google translate on my google phone. We eventually placed our order and I explained to Tabish that gluten free pizzas were quite tasty back home in the UK. When we received our order I realised they didn’t put any cheese on the pizza, I was okay with this, Tabish found this upsetting. We took our food back to the accommodation. Rather than eat in the apartment, we decided to eat in the back of the Audi Q3, it was quite spacious.
When we arrived back in the apartment, we had found that Ravi had decided to do his laundry, we left him to it and went to bed early.
It was 4:30am when I decided that I had enough of sleeping and wanted to get moving. Especially after the poor night I had. We made ourselves quietly downstairs to the cars in order to not wake anyone else up.
Ajay had picked the location for the night based on it’s proximity to a castle which he wanted to visit. The Neuschwanstein Castle is famous due to it’s classic Disney-esque design, in fact many famous fictional castles are based on it including the recent movie Beauty and the Beast.
It is quite a tourist attraction but as we went there at 5am, it was deserted. After looking around for suitable car pparking nearby, we decided to see if we could just drive up to the castle itself. We were in luck, as it was very early the carpark in front of the castle itself had ample parking.
As the sun rose from behind the mountains, it bathed the castle in a golden light, this was the perfect time for taking photos as this sunrise time is known as the golden hour. The location of the castle itself was stunning, the castle itself was quite imposing. We were disappointed when we found the front of the castle covered in scaffolding. after taking a few pictures we decided we would head onto the motorways to Italy via Austria before any commuter traffic began.
Ajay was at the front of the column and managed to make an interesting detour onto some forest fire roads as soon as we entered Austria, we don’t know why his sat nav decided to take us off road but our first impression of Austria was that we had entered a backward country with unpaved roads. Luckily this wasn’t the case as the sat nav brought us back to civilisation.
I complained that the twisty roads aren’t very good to drive on in the Q3, Ajay replied back on the walkie talkie that his brakes were on fire and Ravi added that he had probably popped his tyres. My reply back over the radio was a single word “Good!”, as I wasn’t too happy with being in an Q3 as opposed to an MX-5.
It seemed as though the Austrians didn’t appreciate Ajay’s and Ravi’s headlights blinding them with their unaligned beams. This is becacuse when travelling to Europe where they drive on the right, the headlights are pointing in a different direction than lights in the UK.
We stopped off at a supermarket which also had a cafe to have breakfast and Ajay and Ravi decided to use the beam converters they had purchased on the car. We purchased this one to use on the cars, they work on every car:
Ravi found another dog outside the shop and decided that he would try to feed it. We didn’t really have time for his animal shenanigans so we decided to leave before he ended up kidnapping it.
The remainder of the journey to our hotel in Merano was relatively uneventful. Once we arrived at the hotel we were staying at called Hotel Laimerhof which was surrounded by vineyards we decided to look for food. We found a pizza place quite close to the hotel and didn’t venture far.
Once back in the hotel for the night, a lightning storm arrived, it was brief but exciting as the view from the hotel was great. I was awaiting news from my brother to see if I was to be an uncle again and was told that I had to wait a bit longer.
I had a much better night sleep than the previous hotel, we would need a good night considering that we were going to tackle the 2nd highest mountain pass in Europe the next day, the Stelvio Pass.
I woke up to a knock on the door of the hotel room. It was the owner with two people from the car hire company, I felt relieved that I had a car, but what did I get? After giving them all my details, we walked to the car park and I asked, “so, what have I got?”, “Q3” they replied, “here it is”.
I took the keys and said thank you. It was a manual diesel Audi Q3. I hadn’t driven a left hand drive manual before and I wasn’t really a fan of SUVs either, but beggars can’t be choosers.
“Hey Ajay, I got an Audi Q3” I announced as I walked into his room. I correctly guessed his reaction which was a mix of annoyance of me getting a new Audi and relief that the holiday can continue without any change of plans.
Ajay decided that the Q3’s boot would take all his luggage and equipment too.
Once we had left the hotel, we immediately went searching for a petrol station and couldn’t find one close by. I was slowly adapting to sitting on the left of the car and using a gear stick with my right hand, this required quite a bit of concentration initially.
After we found a petrol station, we went through a few tunnels, which Ravi kept forgetting to turn on his lights for. The sky opened up around noon and we had to deal with the sudden downpour. Ajay also discovered that BMW drivers in Germany were also psychos after one tried to overtake him and almost hit oncoming cars in the rain.
Once we arrived in Fussen and our hotel which was the Steakhaus Fussen and Tapas Bar, we played some tetris with the cars to fit them into the car park and headed into town.
Immedaitely opposite our hotel was a rather nice waterfall and series of rapids. Our surroundings were stunningly beautiful, and the rain had cleared at the perfect time for us to enjoy the walk into the town.
Ravi found a cat he really wanted to stroke and followed it down the street, the cat was quite indifferent to him but that didn’t deter him. he managed to stoke the cat before it decided that it didn’t like Ravi and ran off.
The river Lech which flows through Fussen is a weird shade of milky turquoise, this is due to the minerals in the water. The colour was stunning. Ravi also felt like feeding some ducks so we spent some time at the river’s edge. I grabbed one of the cameras and practiced some photography whilst Ravi tried to break up a fight between two ducks.
After wandering round the town, we encountered a middle east goods shop called Marrakesh run by a really nice Morrocan man. He even gave Ajay a sheet of goats leather.
After that we sat down to eat dinner and discuss the plan for the next day we decided we had to get up early to get to the fairy tale castle. After eating we went for a walk around Fussen and encountered a dry ski slope which Ravi got very excited as he explored the area. We also found a frog which tested the bounds of Ravi’s love of animals as he wouldn’t touch it, double standards indeed.
Once back at the hotel we settled in for the night. I didn’t sleep well. The room I had was very small and the bathroom did not have a door. Because of this I heard a lot of plumbing noises as the toilet wasn’t very far from the bed. Half-way through the night one of my bedroom windows swung open due to the wind. This startled me and made the night even worse. As the bed was right up against the windows I could hear a lot of howling wind noises as the area forms a valley. However, Ajay and Ravi said they had a very good night sleep, so I got the short straw with the room.
Long Way There 