2500 Mile European Tour

[Chappers]

Well, it's been nearly 2 months since I returned from this trip and I promised myself I'd get around to posting this so here we go!

Early in the year I convinced my lovely OH, Anna, that she needed to see the sights of Europe and that I should take her there, in my M3 CSL to utterly obliterate its value and take it to the sky high mileage of 130,000 just for the fun of it. Along the way we'd swim, drive great roads, eat lots of great food and see things we'd never seen before. Anna is Russian and so most of the places we were going were going to be completely brand new to her.

I also managed to convince her that the best and most fun way of doing this would be camping. So after a few trips to Go Outdoors buying a much bigger tent than the single-man one I'd used for previous motorbike-based tours, a nice comfy mattress, a lamp, a stove, a big double sleeping bag, and a whole host of other useful stuff we were ready to go.

As with all European trips, this one came with months of planning but unlike many it came with only two or three bookings; the ferry home, the Eurotunnel there and the first night's Airbnb were all we had when we left England. The route was set but easily adjustable if things popped up along the way, we wanted to stay anywhere longer or we just couldn't be bothered to go somewhere.

Whilst packing the car, I set the rather optimistic rule of "no crap in the car" so that things wouldn't rattle around in the interior and distract me from being a top-class mountain road helmsmith. This pretty much worked but we found as we went through the holiday, our apathy for tidy packing got the better of us and things tended to leak back into the cockpit.



Eurotunnel. Incredibly empty truck carriage just to rub in the fact we had to wait an hour to get on.



First stop - St.Quentin. No pictures of the first night but this was the town in the morning, we found a lovely market and ate some incredible croissants and probably the best tomatoes ever.



Then onto Reims for the Notre Dame Cathedral, lunch and the standard Petrolhead photos at the old F1 pits







Next morning, waking up in the Vosges mountains after our first night camping, a quick swim and sunbathe and on to the first of our fun roads





Next stop, Germany. Todtnau, The Black Forest. Cool church at night and some great scenery. We spent a couple of days in the Black Forest driving about, eating Schnitzel, looking at waterfalls and generally having a wonderful time. We even found a waterpark which had a bar in the swimming pool.





Switzerland - Lake Lucerne. Our first encounter with a Swiss man and possibly the grumpiest chap of the whole trip. After emailing him in advance and telling him every detail, his response was “no need to book for one night” - On arrival he’d closed, so we knocked on the door and a rather angry sleepy man eventually came to meet us. “Hi we’re here to camp” I said. “Do you have a booking?” he replied. And fun ensued.
After a short back and forth he eventually agreed to let us onto his completely empty campsite. As it turned out it was absolutely worth it because we had the entire small beach to ourselves the next morning and were treated to a swim in cold but crystal clear clean lake water and breakfast on a rock.





After our wonderful breakfast it was time for some Alps. Susten Pass, Grimsel Pass and Furka Pass were on the list but after some lunch and wandering and photos we only managed 2/3.



I made some friends on the way (actually, not, they were very rich and very Swiss, they even moved their cars away from me just after I took this picture!


Stopped for a couple of work PC backgrounds











Our second morning in Switzerland and we were once again treated to some beautiful weather



Next, it was onto France. Unfortunately the weather started to get worse as we approached Chamonix and the clouds closed in. The plan was to ride the cable car up to see Mont Blanc but we were advised not to go because all your could see was white at the top. Anna was sad. Here’s a glacier.



Next stop, Annecy. One of our favourite places on the trip and time for a spot of relaxation(ish). We stayed for a couple of days, sunbathed, ate Tartiflette and cow, swum, and even hired a bike for a tour-du-lac. Bike hire man was impressed and Anna’s legs were not after a 40km Tandem ride.











Once we’d finished in Annecy it was time for some more hooning on some of my favourite roads, starting with the first half of Route Napoleon and what can only be described as a tarmac rally to finish the day. Randomly, we found this beautifully secluded lake with an incredible view





The next day, it was the second part of the Route Napoleon and onto the Verdon Gorge. I can recommend the first lake because it was absolutely empty, the water looks like it was distilled in a lab and has very good value pedalo hire. We had one for an hour and had the standard cheese, tomato and bread lunch out on the water.



This was followed by a second lunch when we accidentally travelled into Forza Horizon 2



Onto the Verdon Gorge proper and the second, much bigger lake. More pedalos and some freezing cold swimming









The second Verdon lake marked the end of the hooning section of the holiday and it was time for some sigh-seeing starting with St.Tropez



Carmargue, where we hated the place (dusty, awful, characterless sh*thole) but saw the most beautiful sunset.





Carcassonne in 37 degrees.







It was all going so well until I got a bit cocky with the distance I was leaving to the tollbooth on the left. Could have been worse, could have been better.



At this point, we were pretty fed up of packing and unpacking the tent so we decided that it was time for a little more luxury and headed straight for the Atlantic coast. Biarritz, St.Jean De Luc and San Sebastian filled our final few days before we shot down to the ferry home.





This bird had no knowledge or respect for religion, surprisingly.



San Sebastian is bloody lovely, go there immediately. Not all at once though.







Ferry time, and a rough night ahead across the Bay of Biscuits. Goodbye Spain.



Hello Portsmouth. 16 1/2 days later it was time for a quick blast home.





Hope you enjoyed and hope you tolerated all the non-car pictures!