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European roadtrip.


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Hi guys and gals, I hope this is in the right section.

 

I just thought I would put a little post together about our wonderful road trip to Lake Como Italy.

 

There was 3 cars and 6 people, @andy james @buster and I with our lovely wives aka:- Katrina, Annette and Sarah. we each set off from home on Friday 6th September. We travelled down to the holiday inn at Folkstone.

 

We set off from there on the 7th and went through the channel tunnel early on Saturday morning. travelling down to a little village called Birkenwald. The hotel was called Hotel Des Vosges. This was a cracking little hotel. As we arrived I discovered that i had got a puncture. :angry: The staff were brilliant, they phoned a local garage who came out on Sunday morning to sort it out or should I say have a look and say he wasnt prepared to help us out but heyho. So we tried out the tyre weld I had bought just in case. Well i have to say it worked superbly.

 

We left there on Sunday morning to head down to Switzerland. The weather wasn't too good upon leaving france and into Switzerland. We arrived at our hotel for the night late afternoon. This hotel was called Park Hotel Schwert, upon arrival we received a free upgrade to better rooms as ours weren't ready yet. :yahoo: This was a great hotel also.

 

We left there again fairly early the next day. We wanted to go and travel the St Bernadino Pass, which was awesome if I do say so myself.  We went from like 17 degrees at the start to around 6 degrees up the top to 25 degrees when we got down the other side. :lol:  when we stopped for some lunch a local biker came up to us and told us that we the brits are quite famous there. He said they still have some in prison for driving too fast and racing type of stuff. He went on to tell us that if you get caught over a certain amount of miles above the limit it triggers their racing law! Which means your car is confiscated and sold and the money is given to the state, you are also imprisoned stuff like that. :scare:  We had loads of fun driving around there though. We wanted to appreciate the scenery rather that go fast.

 

Monday We then proceeded to head out of Switzerland and onto our base camp which was Lake Como Italy. When we arrived here it looked great Zed friendly long drive behind closed gates down to the apartments. When the host lady arrived to check us in she sorted us out with our keys and stuff. We went in and relaxed for a while, taking in the fabulous views from our balcony. We had a few issues with the apartments, but nothing too bad.

 

Tuesday  we heading into Menaggio, luckily we found parking for all three Zeds along the Lake shore road. They got rather a lot of attention! :teeth: Someone even came up to us to check out if we were the Topgear guys. :lol: We had a lovely breakfast, then headed out for a nice little drive before heading back to the apartment for some well deserved beers.

 

Wednesday was spend having a nice relaxing day by the pool. enough said about that really it was great... Just a little trip to the local supermarket for essential supplies. we all gathered in Andy and Kats apartment for our Italian feast of lasagne, pasta and pizza all sourced from said supermarket. We had to go there as they had the oven :lol::lol:

 

Thursday we took a nice little trip across the lake to Bellagio. It was litterally across the lake, however it took around 2 1/2 hours to drive there :lol:  Although the roads were really great if a little narrow in quite a few places. We found parking and went to have a walk around and some lunch. whilst wondering around we found the ferry and decided that if it was an easy entry and exit, we would have a little boat trip on our road trip. When we saw it was we decided to go for it and save some time to get back to base camp. it was a great little boat trip. We ventured into Menaggio in the evening as it was our last night there to have some fantastic food and drink.

 

Friday started with checking out and the host lady tried her best to rip us off for some 361 more euro's :angry: but was told she had no chance. But don't worry about that we sorted it out.... We then set off back to Switzerland for some more passes. We headed for the St Gottards Pass, then the Furka Pass. we had to go over the Furka Pass 2 times as we were getting further away from our destination, Shame of course. Unfortunately on our decent from the pass 1 of the Zeds broke down with an alternator failure. We unfortunately had to leave then on the side of the road, which was awful! they got recovered and got to stay another night local before receiving their rental car. ;) it took us ages to get back to Strasbourg, but when we got there the hotel was really nice and the rooms were awesome. 

 

Saturday we left and headed back to Calais. essentially straight up the pearge. around 400 miles to our hotel. where we were met by our lost comrades with their hire car. :yahoo:The gang was back together for the final night. 

 

Sunday we came back through the tunnel and came home. 

 

Oh and by the way my rear tyre is still up and going strong. :lol: 

 

If you have managed to get this far reading this I hope it hasn't bored you to much. Photo's will be uploaded from my phone shortly. thank you for your time. Picture heavy. Hope this is OK guys. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Andy_Muxlow
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23 hours ago, Andy_Muxlow said:

Thanks guys, it was an amazing trip. I would definitely do something like this again. :thumbs:

Looked like fun. Some wallpaper worthy pics here. Especially the one with your Zed and the lake between the mountains. . It'll be a good experience I bet. Total miles covered?

Edited by GranTurismoEra
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1 hour ago, GranTurismoEra said:

Looked like fun. Some wallpaper worthy pics here. Especially the one with your Zed and the lake between the mountains. . It'll be a good experience I bet. Total miles covered?

Total mileage from door to door was 1862 at an average of around 27.5mpg B)

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Great pics and thanks for sharing on the forum:thumbs:

 

Sounds like you all had an amazing time with some challenges along the way but hey, seeing all that scenery and enjoying some epic roads will have given you memories that won't be forgotten B)

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So another little update to our trip. We set off late Friday / early Saturday to head back to Switzerland Bob and I so we could collect his car as it was completed on Friday. We had a long coach ride down to Heathrow with what can only be described as a nut case! :lol: we caught our flight to Zurich at 6am. Picked up our hire car and went off to collect the beast. We left the garage at around 12.30 ish to drive home. Some more fantastic scenery and the odd tunnel of course :thumbs: We finally after being able to catch the early ferry back arrived back an Bob's at 04.30 am. So around 900 miles in 16 hours. Not bad going at all if you ask me. 

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