We travelled from Fife down to Newcastle and got the over night ferry to Amsterdam.
We then headed for Stuttgart for our first over night stop.
The next day we went to the Beetle/Porsche museum.
Then headed down to Switzerland to meet up with a VX forum member. We then stayed over night at Brienz.
The next day we headed up the Grimselpass and at the top meet another owner!
We then headed up the Furkapass where John’s radiator decided that it had had enough and dumped all his coolant over his windscreen.
After much deliberation and an offer from our friendly local VX owner to use his spare radiator, the car was recovered back to a local garage and is in the process of being recovered back to the UK. This kind of put a dampener on John's trip and he was given a Polo diesel estate as a hire car so at least I could dump all my kit in his car. (Every nuclear cloud has a silver lining etc….)The evening before John got his hire car were took my car for a drive up the Nufenen pass. The road was technically closed but we sneaked round the barrier and had an amazing road almost to ourselves.
We were now a day and a half behind our planned schedule so we decide to head towards the Stelvio Pass and try and get a campsite on route. We kind of failed at that so decided to rough camp which isn’t strictly allowed and finally got the tent put up at midnight.
The next day we made it to Stelvio and into Italy.
We had initially planned to then spend a night in Italy then head north into Austria but we were running out of days. So we turned west and went back into Switzerland and stopped in a place called Zernez. It was an amazing road and once we had set up the tent I gave John the keys to my VX and told him to go and have some fun. He said he passed a black speedster on that road and had a good play with an Audi S5 RS. Wish I had stuck the gopro on for that drive!
Next day we headed north into Germany and onto the Autobahns and picked a random place on the map and headed for it. Stayed in Sigmaringen had had a nice evening sat outside a pub watching the world go by.
The next day we were in for a treat. We had booked a Suzuki Swift through Rent4ring.de for as you can guess, a few laps of the Nurburgring. It was brilliant. We had a very comprehensive brief before heading out on track. It was really quiet and we were buzzing for the rest of the evening. Had to go into Sabine Schmitz restaurant and have steak on a stone. Brilliant!!!
The next day it was just head for the Ferry port and drop off the hire car. Turns out that the centre of Amsterdam in the rain isn’t the most fun in a VX.
Highlights of the holiday were the Swiss passes and the Nurburgring. The Stelvio was worth going to but it is so tight and busy. Some of the roads around Stelvio were amazing though!
I think we would also try and cut down the mileage for the days in the mountains as we felt that we were always needing to be moving and the scenery was just amazing!
And a slow lap of the Nurburgring:
Looks like lots of fun despite the car issues.
