Another solo trip into Europe.

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It's a bit of a crappy day here, raining on and off so I don't think I'll be doing anything interesting. Stay in, drink and play guitar!

This nice little 900i was in the car park earlier:



I was out this morning and saw a little monument thing at the side of the road. I pulled up and tried to take a couple of clever, arty pics that you always see in car mags and on the Internet. It never works when I do it, they all look the bloody same!

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GreatGranny said:

You've cut off the bumper with the plinth on the monument :-)

Oh yeah! Clueless!

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Allyc85 said:

I do short fly and drive holidays, generally to the French/Swiss Alps. The plan was to get the Mk5 Golf Gti I always wanted and explore europe in it, but I just never have the money for it. I love the freedom of being able to go where I want, when I want etc, but I really like all the random people I get chatting to, even if there usually is quite a language barrier. On one trip I was on the Sutenpass chatting to a old French guy, who was curious as to what an Englishman was doing on his own in an Italian hire car in Switzerland! All good fun

Sounds great!
Flying and then hiring is a really good option, I like to take my own cars but that means lots of miles if you want to get down to the Alps or the south of France.

And it is amazing some of the people you end up having a beer with, never gets boring.

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Drove into Frankfurt today. I was on route to another hotel but I thought I'd drop in at McLaren Frankfurt just to have a look.

I put it in the sat nav and just expected to pull up at a dealership, however the place is on a huge site called Klassikstadt which basically caters for all classics and Supercar upgrades! What a place!

Grateful to Stephan of McLaren who came straight out when I pulled up and started showing me around.
First into the showroom to see these.
P1 GTR:









F1 Car:







He said they do lots of conversions for the track there:





As usual my photos are crap but you get the idea.

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bungle said:

Interesting thread - sounds fun! (particularly the saunas). I think I read your previous thread(s) as well. I've always fancied a solo trip, but life / young kids / time / money seems to get in the way...

Do you have a luggage car following you?! Guitar, bike, etc.

How do you deal with the frequent tolls? Fine if there's 2 of you, the passenger can deal with it, but I imagine it's a pain if you have to get out each time. Actually, as writing, I realised you probably just have one of those tags that auto-charges you...?

Yeah things get in the way. It took me a very long time and a lot of hard work to be in the position to make these trips, life keeps interfering.

Bike was rented from the hotel. Large holdall for clothes in the boot, manbag on the passenger seat for chargers, headphones, paperwork etc and the guitar slots in the footwell with the neck up on the seat.
I can just do it. Get the hotels to do laundry for me on the way round.

This McLaren is actually pretty good, because it doesn't have shocks there is quite a bit of room in the boot.

The Ferrari was manageable but the Lambo was a nightmare! Just no room at all in that.

Yeah, Sanef tag, drive straight through the barriers.
Hotel car parks can be tricky.

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More Macs:







MUST NOT ORDER A 570S!!
MUST NOT ORDER A 570S!!

Lambo, beautiful:





Evora:



Aston:



Lovely old Mercs:



150,000 Euros if you fancy this one:



Roller (a bargain at 50 grand!):

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Just as they come now:













Superleggera having work done:

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Love this:











Wonderful Stingray interior:



I had to stand a long way back to get this all in!:



Massive Sxalextric, wasn't running:

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Look at this delightful thing!
A young bloke who lived next to an ex of mine had exactly this car, it was the days of easy credit and he drove it like a complete tit, ruined it in a couple of years:

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Loads more pics to come, I need to get back on the hotel WiFi. Out in a Biergarten at the moment listening to all the German old girls doing their dirty laughs!
I've no idea what they're saying but they are all having a great time!

Love this country, well the Bavarian bit at least. It's completely beautiful, the roads are epic and you never, ever see a speed camera, ever.
Living in South Essex and running a business in East London where there's a camera every 84 inches driving here is like waking up in Nirvana.

Might try that tying the phone to the front of the car thing tomorrow. So if I stop posting it means it's fallen off and I've run over it.

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How the living fk can you do that!
Witchcraft, that's what it is.

I don't even need to do this bloody trip, I could just pay you to concoct all these pics of me enjoying myself!

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They do like to stare!:



Let's have some more pics from the klassikstadt:

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chasingracecars said:

Used a clone tool in Photoshop to trim part of the block away and replace with some grass and fill the bumper edge back in.

My pleasure doing this. Nice car and photo there is always something that needs to go.

Thank you, looks good.

Leins said:

Great selection of pics there Brad, although I always find it upsetting to see cars being so underutilised. That Scalextric track should be going 24/7

Thanks. The track looked like it hadn't been used for a while, shame.

LeoZwalf said:

Just another messsage from someone enjoying your thread I lived in Frankfurt for 5 years and never heard of that place, st!

It was a pretty flashy building, looked like an old warehouse had been converted so it may not have been there long, the McLaren dealership would be pretty new.

TonyTony said:

Good read.

Maybe you should get a camera and Vlog a bit of your traveling?

I've done a video, it's uploading now. Fair warning, it's bloody awful!

plop71 said:

Great thread - really enjoying reading it.

Thanks OP

Thank you.

bobski1 said:

Brilliant thread, how did you go about planning the trip, did you just book a bunch of random hotels or are you just driving wherever you fancy?

The first few times I did this I would just wing it. Head out into France and just stay wherever I ended up. While it was great from the adventure angle it started to become a pain with regards to the car. I have to have a hotel with some sort of on site or secure parking, I can't just leave it three streets away in a strange place.
So I would arrive somewhere after a lot of hours driving and just not be able to get a decent hotel, so I'd have to set off again.

This got too much after a while so now I do meticulous planning, and it works, I get very good hotels and a nice route and because I'm booking in advance I get good rates.

I used to turn up somewhere, there'd be one hotel with secure parking and they'd say "We have one room available, it's the top floor suite sir, that'll be 1100 euros".

I stayed in some fantastic rooms but got robbed blind!

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magooagain said:

Very nice reading and a very nice car thank you.
I am over on the west of France and we have some good roads also. Just one thing though this time of year. Watch out for them there tractors.

Yep! Been there!

CS Garth said:

I would however add that whilst we are all enjoying this thread it would be immeasurably improved if there was some kind of gold heist on a German Bank followed by a swift getaway via a carefully planned non-conformist urban route leading to a nerve jangling finish in the Swiss alps.

Or at the very least I'm calling custard on all of these saunas full of naked milf. So pictures please.

Whatever else I do on this trip I'm certainly not putting custard on naked milfs!

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I thought fish were supposed to have a 10 second memory? I came out into the garden of this hotel this morning and there was nobody out here. There is a big pond surrounded by all the tables, it's very pretty.

I pulled a chair out next to the pond and all the fish came charging over and stuck there heads out waiting for food!



My cup of tea came with a biscuit so I crumbled it up and dropped it in, they all went completely batst mental! It was like piranhas!

The tea comes with an egg timer so you can check how long you leave your tea leaves in:



Drove along the Mosel to Trier this morning and spent a couple of hours cleaning the car inside and out:



These self clean places are great but the buggers all use their own tokens that won't go in any other machines so you end up with loads of this crap:



German's a proper jaw cracker, this is in the little town I'm staying at, it means "Butchers":



And this is the beer garden I was in last night:



All the old girls in there were pissed, it was a great laugh watching them all, might go back in there later.
(Christ, what happened to the coke and hookers days!)

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Right [drumroll] I've done a video!
Please don't get your hopes up!

I was driving a different route back to my hotel earlier and noticed this lot coming up on the sat-nav:



So I pulled over just before it and faffed around with my phone.
Now there is nowhere in this car (without drilling holes) to mount a phone holder so I just have a spiderpodium wedged in the fan hole thing so I can play music and have Google sat nav. This means this video is not only the wrong way round (horror!) but most of it just shows the dash board.
What your getting is a little off-centered bit of film reminiscent of those postage stamp sized things Microsoft were so excited about back in Windows 95.

Caveats.
I had no idea of the bends obviously. It also became quickly apparent that with the width of this car on such a narrow road passing anything would be tricky. The bends were completely blind hence why I'm getting on the brakes way too early incase anything is coming the other way.

All the crashing about is all the loose st in the car rolling around!

I'm not sure if the vid picked it up but I kept getting too close to the edges and I could hear all the dirt getting thrown up under the car!

And if only I could have shown the rear view mirror, that airbrake thing bouncing up and down is a joy to watch!

This will probably be put straight into the "Bad driving caught on dashcam" thread

https://youtu.be/sk1UMIZi8Tc

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They didn't deserve it.
They'll go out next game.
Portugal that is.

Here's Lotar and deiter:

Surprised by their hatred of Merkel, seems like 50% here reject the EU.

Can't let this descend into politics.

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More pics:



[url]|http://thumbsnap.com/XXOPVfwZ
[/url]













Nope, my bottle went.

Might as well face it you're addicted to love.

https://youtu.be/XcATvu5f9vE

Edited by br d on Thursday 30th June 23:47

Edited by br d on Friday 1st July 00:13

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