We are clear and free to navigate.

First off, anyone who can place the title with a character and a film, needs to get out more.

We were back on the autobahns and eating up the miles, the weather had cooled so the windows were up, the car was holding together so we allowed our speed to creep up, 125mph was sustained for a while until our nerve regarding the welded wheel bearing, oil leak and the dwindling fuel supply persuaded us to return to a more sedate 85 - 90, hell if its going to let go at 70 it will still be a mess so why be scarred.

In time the Alps appeared on the horizon, majestic, snow capped and beautiful, and hiding in them somewhere was the Neuschwanstein, our first detour of the day, apparently it was well worth an hour or two before we thought about camping and the Stelvio Pass.

Our borrowed sat nav did not seem able to find the Neuschwanstein, no matter what we tapped in garbage came out, this was possibly not helped by the fact we did not really now how to spell it, so armed with several maps written in German we turned off the Autobahn at what we felt was a realistic point and headed into the Mountains.

We drove up passes and down passes, we did U turns, we started again, we pulled over and looked at the maps again, we each looked at a different map in case the other person had made a mistake, then we swapped the maps back. We were sure we must have been a nats whisker away but try as we might, the castle eluded us.

Unlike the rain, that had hunted us down and now followed us on every road, pass and valley, occasionally the rain would succumb and allow it's good friends mist and fog to join in whilst it went off to get its strength back. By now the car was misting up nicely and the damp air was mixing with the damp sweaty bodies of the occupants, opening a window simply allowed more rain to poor in, it was turning into a long day...

Goodbye to Obervolkach and its Vineyards

After two very memorable and enjoyable nights staying with Manuel and his father Klaus; to whom we are both appreciative of their hospitality it was time to head south for the Alps, so after loading the car our road trip started again.

But not without some recommendations for sightseeing, it was pointed out that we would pass very close to the Neuschwanstein a castle that was by all accounts well worth a brief detour to see.

Well, armed with a Tom Tom and an array of maps what could possibly go wrong?

Living the dream..

In addition to a private tour of the Bishops Palace we were also privileged to enjoy a private wine tasting at the Schloss Hallburg wine estate , in addition to being somewhat of a historian Manuel was keen to show us his other talent, which is a broad knowledge of wine and so Marc and I were to be found in what could only be described as heaven, keen as we both are to a small drop of wine. As you can see from the photos a vast selection was available, from which our host selected a significant amount for us to sample. Another truly memorable part of our trip.

And some more...

More of Wurzburg

These two buildings are superb examples of Baroque and Baroque Rococo, the Rococo style being more flamboyant with shell like motifs.

Wurzburg 16th March 1945

This day saw 90% of the medieval city destroyed by the RAF in 17 minutes, now I have walked around Bristol, London and even Coventry and never really given much of a thought to them being bombed and burned, largely because what was lost has been replaced with tower blocks and 1960's Britain. However walking around Wurzburg you would never know it had been destroyed. Despite being burnt to the ground with the fire bombing, more so even than Dresden, the City appears untarnished. This we learned was because over the next 20 years from 1945 the buildings of historical importance were painstakingly and accurately replicated.

This did not happen in Coventry

The 2nd picture is part of a replicated church, the image quality is poor as the zoom on the camera was not great. It shows a recreated gargoyle (or grotesque as no water flows from this) the principal being a figure representing evil spirits. As you can see this has been carved by the people of Wurzburg to replicate an Allied soldier, complete with grenades and a weapon.

Wurzburg, wine, and culture...

Our next stop was to be Manuels pad, here we were introduced to fine wine, local restaurants and a very enjoyable and informative tour of the Bishops Palace in Wurzburg, a local Wine Châteaux and vineyards.

Wurzburg is quite frankly an awe-inspiring place, Baroque in architecture and vibrant in spirit. We were taken by Manuel to the Bishops Palace, here we enjoyed a private tour (Manuel who had been studying history was working as a tour guide among many of his other attributes) so was able to take us beyond the areas usually seen by the public. Unfortunately no photos could be taken within the Palace, and I will not attempt to describe what was seen as quite frankly my writing style could not convey the true beauty, elegance and extravagance of the interior. Suffice to say I have seen the largest unsupported fresco in Europe and can tell you that it depicts good vs evil and an ascension into heaven.

The box full of heads though, did slightly freak me out. And no that is not a typo.

Outside we were able to park the car directly outside (you can tell this is not the U.K)

Fancy a swim?

Manuel met us in the bar and after passing verdict on the car asked if we fancied a swim as the hottest part of the day seemed set to last a lot longer. Excellent idea lets head for the pool. No this is not Britain, we headed for the River Main. And jumped in. You can't do that in Bridgwater. Now this is a pretty big river but instead of being full of silt, dead dogs and rubber items it is clean, easy to get to and full of speed boats and water skiers. As well as kids jumping off the main bridge. No, this certainly is not the U.K. We did not come across one official telling us or the kids that we were not permitted to swim, jump in or try to drown ourselves because of health and safety, not having a licence or because "you just can't" Germany was getting better by the hour.

Next stop Wurzburg

This is a picture of the pub (on the right hand side) in which we had a well deserved beer.

Having now danced in the face of adversity whilst poking it in the eye, and having actually completed the original purpose of our road trip in addition to watching a car burn to death we now realized that we were, again, running very late despite avoiding the gift shop and cafe. We had planned to be leaving the Ring at around 11.00am but had not even arrived at that time so now our relaxed drive to Wurzburg to meet up with Manuel was going to be another hard push, made worse by the fast approaching hottest part of the day, the lack of air con starting to take it's toll on the cars occupants.

The drive to Wurzburg was fairly uneventful despite finding some chaps wallet stuffed full of cash, but this was later returned as his I.D card was present so Manuel was able to track him down using the internet, so that ended well.

Now Manuel lives in a small village called Obervolkach which we found easily with our sat nav, only we could not find Manuel, despite being parked (allegedly) outside of his front door. We eventually arrived at a beautiful town square, and thinking that this must be central phoned Manuel to tell him what we could see so that he could come and guide us in. He knew immediately where we were. In the wrong village apparently. We had arrived at Volkach not Obervolkach. So with the clock ticking we had a beer and waited for Manuel to arrive on his Trans-Alp

On the Ring

With two laps of the Nurburgring under my belt it was time for Eds go, Yes we did only buy two laps originally but unfortunately one lap didn’t scare me enough so I decided to do it all over again, alright I made a mistake and went sailing past the exit at 120 mph. Back in the car park I recovered my breath in the fantastic German sunshine as Ed went off to buy another lap of the Ring and then it dawned on me, I would have to go round again! This time with Ed at the wheel!! Sorry Ed nothing against your driving it was just the possibility of an under garment malfunction, I’ll let the video do the talking


www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqM6VTQX4mo






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Back in the car park we assessed the damage to the car, our laps on the ring were scary but seemed very slow, but a look at the tyres gave a very different story, they had got so hot that the rubber had started to roll off them, they had been a bit on the used side before we’d left Blighty and I thought we may have to replace them before the end of our journey, (Monza seemed like a good time to change them, it, but that’s another story) I’m not saying we were going fast but we had pushed the old girl hard.

It was past noon and we were absolutely buzzing, so much so that we completely forgot to look in the gift shop (I know what your thinking “GIFT SHOP, YOU TARTS”) We parked up on the road just outside and allowed the Celica to cool down, We noticed a BMW parked two or three cars back also cooling down, though he’d obviously pushed his car harder than us as the steam coming from his car was black! It was on fire, another by stander emptied his co2 fire extinguisher into the engine bay with little effect, I pulled my fire extinguisher from its bracket and emptied its contents into the engine bay of the Beemer and for a moment I thought it was out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHbqEeAu4BY&feature=related

2 Laps of the 'Ring, or maybe 3...

Let me start by saying to sorry to all the decent cars that were out on the ring at lunchtime on the 5th July 2009. It's not that we wanted to drive slowly, but the car was just not that quick. Everything was quicker than us, in the same way that Concorde is quicker than a Cesna, we did our best, but at every corner we had to move away from any racing line to let quicker, and much better cars past. Marc drove the first lap and to be honest we felt like we were rookies taking on the Luftwaffe. The rear view mirror was full of German machinery bearing down on us with headlights blazing.

Admittedly the box of dry ice, crates of beer, cooking and camping gear were not helping our cause much either, nor was the 196000 recorded miles on the odeometer but, now committed we pressed on.

.....and this is it.

Well we finally arrived, parked up and paid for our "Ring Card" which we loaded up with 2 goes, one each.  We felt that one lap each would be adequate, bearing in mind we were slow on the open road....

You can see the back of Marcs head as he looks up how to say "can we take our really cheap car round your lovely track with the Lambo's and Porsches please?" in German

We are here at last....

After breakfast were headed to the Ring, the sat nav was generally unhappy with the destination however and so refused to pinpoint the location for us, undeterred we resorted to the map book.

Not so good as the whole of Germany is only a page wide so it's level of detail was, shall we say insufficient, a bit like looking for Silverstone using a world atlas.  However in time we sighted a Renault Five Gordini so we opted to follow it as surely it must be heading our way.

The Renuault 5 Gordini is quite quick, so we didn't follow it for long, our camping gear, box of dry ice and crates of beer were taking their tole on speed / handling.  Its a shame we are heading for a race track really.....

To cut a long story short we had to ask for directions to find the entrance, we drove under and round the ring for a while, we could see it, hear it we even tried following some exotica but we were always left behind.  Looking good for the actual Nurburgring then.

The photo at the top is us,  lost within a quarter mile of the ring, the problem is this; the ring is almost 14 miles long, so we did not know which side of the ring we were on in relation to the entrance,  so it was a reasonable trek to keep going round the outside to find our way in, plus we wanted to be on our way to the next stop (Wurzburg) by mid day.  The photo was taken at around 11 am so we are running late allready.

Sunday morning saw us up and for the first time attempting to fold up our "pop up" tents.

Hmmm

The best analogy I can conjure up at present is it's like trying to fold springy wire into a Tupperware container and putting the lid on, although I will probably think of a better one after this is posted.

Now the night before we had inspected the showers, 1 token for 7 minutes. No problem. In the morning I was up and first in the showers, token in the slot me in the shower what could go wrong.

Let me tell you. After 3 or 4 minutes standing (running in and out) of a shower so cold I swear slush was forming on the floor, I gave up, wiped the soap from my hair, dried myself off and warned Marc who by now had arrived. I watched amazed as steam rolled from the cubicle, so I dived back into my shower by now so hot the tiles were melting for the last 30 seconds of my tokens time....

Tents away we headed off to find a cafe or such, which we did by chance within 5 minutes of the camp site, very good coffee and rolls. Then onward to find the Nurburgring

We tried very hard to get to the Ring on Saturday, but what looked like a short dash on the map was in reality a long drive, with early evening threatening to become late evening we realised that

A) We were still 20 or 30 miles from the ring

B) We had no idea as to the location of the campsite

So we started looking for any available campsite, youth hostel,lay bay or hollowed out tree in which to spend the night.

As luck would have it we found a really nice campsite near Gerolstien, the owners had long since stopped serving food but were happy for us to pitch anywhere we liked, so with our new"pop up" tents we happily parked near the stream and amazed the other campers as our tents erected themselves in less than 3 seconds. Magnificent.

Some more random shots that might not fit elsewhere..

Let's break out the improv ' air con!

As previously mentioned the air con is dis-functional, therefore armed with much cunning and a box of dry ice we "chilled" our water sprayer so it would deliver fine mists of cooling air.

As you can see from the pic we may have over estimated the temperature of the ice which meant that we had a bottle of ice and no method of keeping cool.

The temperature outside was staggering, so we did several hundred miles with the windows down and the sunroof open being sun burnt and deafened

Next stop Nurburgring

Well we are now on foreign soil and eating up the miles on our way to Germany, the car is outstanding and driving like a dream, it's times like this you are glad you have left the Camaro at home. Let's be honest it would have got stuck on the ferry anyway.

We are trying to get as close to the "Ring" as possible before we run out of day, we are heading for the main campsite that the interweb tells us is the mecca for ring users, shame we don't know exactly where it is....

We are clear and free to navigate...

Lay in a course for the Nurburgring number one...

Independance Day

We celebrated Independence Day on the M25 by flying the American Flag from the ariel, having a Snickers bar whilst playing Jimmy Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner on the "stereo"

You might like to have a listen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2bGUeDnqPY

I am sure the French appreciated this playing as we rolled off the ferry onto French soil...

Anything beyond Dover is a bonus

Friday morning saw us maintain our annual pilgrimage to the Goodwood Festival Of Speed, both myself and Marc were through the gates at 07.30 ready for a good 12 hours of petrol induced utopia., suffice to say that we left at around 19.00 that evening having crammed as much into one day as we could humanly do, takeaway was then ordered and taken back to the campsite were thoughts turned to the Nurburgring, Alpine passes and more importantly how far the car would go before we booked ourselves on Easy Jet to head home.

The photo at the top shows the tent we all used. It is the biggest tent you can erect without a licence. Probably. Marc and I had the modest task of putting it together for the first time, what the photo does not show is the temperature in which we had to put it up. Although my sun hat kept the sunburn at bay it did somewhat boil my head so the rest of the day did not go well.

Just some of the highlights....

Thought we would do a taster, just to prove we were there, in case you all thought it was a big Capricorn 1 hoax