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Trip to the Alps Report
greenwood03 - 20/6/13 at 12:52 PM

a few of the skcc guys popped over ( as you do ) to the Alps last week for a cheeky 1700 mile road trip.....
report and a few piccies here
Alps report

DavidW - 20/6/13 at 01:54 PM

Enjoyable reading, thanks!

I choked on my sandwich at day 8.

David

pif - 20/6/13 at 02:37 PM

sounds amazing,

Who what and how much was the car transporter?

Chris

nick205 - 20/6/13 at 02:52 PM

Sounds a great trip and very well organised.

Day 8 certainly made me chuckle - how did she recover herself from that

adithorp - 20/6/13 at 03:00 PM

Looks like you didn't get lucky with some of the passes. Lots of them have opened up this week.

Off to the Pyranees and Alps tomorrow. It's a balancing act between quiet roads and reliable weather; Wouldn't like to try any earlier.

How hard was it to organise the transporter? How did the cost ofthat and flights compare with driving?

phil m - 20/6/13 at 04:10 PM

exiting stuff - I'm cycling in the high alps in3 weeks! hope the snow improves

Phil

wombat - 20/6/13 at 04:44 PM

Great read, Would love to do that. One day............
Day 8 classic 😀

greenwood03 - 20/6/13 at 05:42 PM

Adi, + others....sorry thought i'd posted a reply earlier....obviously i forgot to 'submit'.....

transporter was a terrific deal......worked out at 550 for the return journey plus a 100 for the flight......
guess the petrol cost would have been 200 plus tolls, plus losing 2.5 days, so net cost i guess 350/400 ish? but benefit of having extra days to play.......

yes there were some passes that were closed, but that apparently added to the fun, finding alternative routes etc and enough were open to savour......

next year will see 2 SKCC EU trips, cos we're taking the more gentel UK road trip abroad with a 5 dayer taking in: Chimay/Spa/'Ring ( viewing to driving ) Black Forest, Mosel Valley, Schaffhausen Falls and the Vosges mountains inc a quick stop at Verdun and Reims.......

the 'hardcore' tour....well they are debating Spain, eastern Europe etc etc......

these tours are always open to non skcc'ers......this year we had a westie from Mancs and a tiger from Grimsby join us at the 1st night stop - both enjoying the roads and cameraderie......so in future feel free folks to ask if there's an opening......they could have had 3 more cars on that transporter./...

dhutch - 21/6/13 at 04:44 AM

quote:
Originally posted by nick205Day 8 certainly made me chuckle - how did she recover herself from that.
Indeed!

I've only done one international road trip, which was in the kitcar, with a group from my uni motorclub, going for a week in the nurburg area, right mixed bag of cars from the westfield to a ratty mk3 supra, and from a track-spec quattro to a diesal one series but it was a cracking experience and it sounds like you had a great trip too.

The number of failures surprised me, you probably did more miles of blatting if less motorway miles, and some of the cars we took where peoples daily drives, but between a total of about 12 cars and despite almost everyone being on a fairly shoestring budget I think the only 'breakdowns' we had was a leaking water-air intercooler rad on an mr2 turbo and my sump coming loose on day two. Although the mr2 driver did then write the car of by repeatedly being a huge knob on the ring and eventually meeting the armco at the end of lap three.

But yes, sounds awesome and the transporter costs surprisingly reasonable.

Without wishing to expose you exact budget, i presume that's 550 per head? How many on the transport and who was it with? PM me if you want, but genuinely interested.

I've also started doing a annual trip to the Alps mountain biking with another group of mates, we fly our bikes out there at 50quid a bike, on top of 180 for the flight, into Geneva, chalet for 15, ski lift pass, down hill only!!


Daniel

greenwood03 - 21/6/13 at 08:49 AM

the breakdowns to be fair aren't a fair reflection on a typical trip.....
ie/ on this years UK trip we had 25 cars of which 1 had a failure - was transported home and the guy rejoined us 2 mornings later havingr eplaced the offending part.

But the Alps trip well where to start.....
the Green Machine seized its engine 12 days before the off, that was pulled out and a new one dropped it, it was driven for 80 miles and then deemed to work. Its issues were ones that would have been resolved with a normal running around period.

white westie - had had its engine dropped back in 2 weeks before the off and i doubt he'd put more than 100 miles abs tops on it.

white shelsey, not sure how much that car has been used before the trip.......

saab engine bearings....that car whizzed around 1400 miles of UK road trip 2 months ago without missing a beat and i'd imagine that this was pretty much it's next piece of work.....just unfortunate.

So all in all a higher rate than would expect, but when all said and done 2 of those would have been avoided if they'd had the chance to run them around a bit more, and likely same with the other 2 cars!

past trips have seen the usual: clutch/throttle cables go, exhaust brackets needing welding mid trip, cable mechanisms needing a bodge part way round etc etc - barring a crack appearing in a de-dion last year everything has been fixable in the past.....

anyway, hoping that between them they stitch together some decent video for our amusement......