Day 4 - Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany to Trento, Italy

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Day 4. This is the biggie. Mid afternoon, this seemed like the worst day, but on the way to the hotel, it all dawned on us that this would probably be the best day of the entire trip. We soon set off from Garmisch after a quick tyre change to get some more tread, as we didn't really like the idea of going up and down the Stelvio Pass on a tyre with near minimum tread. We took on some lovely winding mountain roads. Nothing compared to what we will get later. We stopped off at a little golf course surrounded by mountains, just as it was starting to rain. The rain was torrential, and we were warned about this. Wipers on full, doing about 30km/h in a 70km/h zone.



We approached the Austrian border within about 30 minutes of driving, to be greeted to some of the best mountain views I have ever seen. Austria is a nice little country, as you'd expect. Autobahn's go through the centre of the valleys, but we decided to take the small roads through the villages which was a good choice as we had mountains on either side of us all the way to Stelvio. Now, Stelvio. This was it, we were about to go up the fabled Stelvio Pass. I was feeling a bit anxious. A 15 year old car, with a full boot, 3 passengers, budget tyres, and brakes that didn't really work. As we approached the start, we could start to see some of the hairpin bends just sticking out about the trees. We started to climb the pass going through hairpin after hairpin in what can only be described as a forest.



Driving up the Stelvio Pass is a weird experience. You have to be constantly checking for people coming down, as they need to swing wide on the exit, and also for bikers, as they seem to just go as fast as humanely possible with no care for anyone else. We soon exited the forest and were on the pass that most people have seen on TV. At this point, the car was reaching about 100c so we decided to stop and let it cool down a bit. We then saw some Porsche's heading up, which made an amazing noise that echo'd around the entire valley. This was not the last we saw of them on this trip. After a quick pee break, we started off again. I think in the entire hour or so on the pass, we never went out of second gear. The car actually seemed to be handling it well. Felt perfectly fine power wise, just it smelt really really bad. We soon got to the half way point and stopped to have a look at the views (and let the car cool down), which left me gobsmacked. The views halfway up were stunning, I couldn't wait to see the top.



We set off on what would be the final leg to the top. This was fairly easy, just check the corners, what out for bikes and make sure you didn't hit the wall on the exit. Some flat spots also gave the car a chance to relax a bit and get the fresh freezing cold Alps air. After about 10 minutes about about 20 hairpin bends, we reached the last corner and then the home stretch to the summit. When we got there, we were greeted to a lot of tourist shops, the highest sausage stall in Germany and lots of hot smelling Motoscape cars. The views were breathtaking, absolutely stunning. We decided to stop at the top and have some lunch in the panorama restaurant and the views from there were beautiful too. We all noticed that it was slightly harder to breath, and seeing as we were 2.5km above sea level, it wasn't hard to understand why. The car also noticed it... When we tried to start it, it stalled about 3 times. Finally, on the fourth time, it coughed into life but didn't feel healthy at all. The idle was all over the place, so we decided to head down the other side fairly quickly to better air.



This is where it all went pear shaped. The first few corners on the way down didn't seem too bad. Few long winding hairpins and gently slopes. We did not expect what we got next. Almost Stelvio Pass type corners, but even steeper. The first few corners we took fine, but then the brakes didn't feel as good as they were. We carried on regardless as there was a moronic local behind in a minibus that wanted to do three times the speed of sound. The next bit was scary. We started to slow down for the last corner before a long steep decent when we lost practically all braking ability. We headed down looking for a place to stop and let them cool when the local decided to overtake us. He flew past us when we couldn't brake, at which point I gave him a long blast of the horn. Luckily, when he got past, we saw a gravel lay by and decided to aim for that. I have not been that scared in all my life. The brake pedal was planted on the floor, yet we were hardly slowing down. We finally stopped on the gravel, after a sharp drop from the road onto the lay by. This is when we saw smoke.



Oh Christ! we all thought (and said!). We got out after pulling the handbrake up the highest it would go, and checked. The brakes were literally on fire. The left side worse than the right. It was amazing, and scary at the same time. This however gave us time to enjoy the scenery and go for a quick toilet break (which was needed after that incident!). After about 15 minutes, we decided to carry on. We thought it would be best to save the brakes and just use the gears to keep us at a slow speed, so we settled on second gear. This was a good decision and we got to the bottom of the pass with little more trouble. This is when we saw some smoke coming from the exhaust. We thought nothing of it, with it being a diesel, but as soon as we decided to head up the next pass in Bormio, did it start smoking really badly. We pulled over and flagged down another Motoscape car, who told us that it was burning oil, which we expected. We had breakdown cover, but we didn't want to ditch the car, so we started her up again. I don't know why, but it didn't smoke, and it hasn't been smoking since. No idea why, maybe it burnt some old oil in the turbo of something? Who knows.



After this, we decided to avoid all passes if we could, and Tom found us a route down via Milan and then up to Trento. This was a long trip, very long, about 5 hours all told and around 350km. We didn't get to the hotel in Trento till gone 9, while most of the other teams had got there around 4ish. This trip, we thought, would be terrible, but it was really nice, as the roads were quiet (apart from Bergamo) and it was motorway all the way there. Trento is a beautiful city nestled right in the middle of the alps. The car arrived there in one piece and didn't feel as if it had gone up a 2.5km pass at all.

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