1 Mx5 - 4500 Miles -12 Countries - 30 Days
Discussion
Jusy a bunch of photo's and a few lines of text from a roadtrip me and my wife did in June. The Wife (need to get used to saying that!) planned the wedding and I was left with the honeymoon. We were just going to have a mooch round France and Itally but as you can see I got a bit carried away!
Thats the route of our trip^
We did everything on that appart from Prauge and Heidelberg, Penneys were getting short and that Nurburgring cost money!
Used the MX5 as our wedding car. I drove the misses from the ceremony to the reception too, pretty good fun. Other drivers were stopping on roundabouts and letting us go. All very jolly. The Misses said she might start wearing a wedding dress on the daily commute!
Woke up the next day with the mother of all hangovers, set off for france 12ish. Stayed in some roadside place outside calais for some kip and cracked on through france to chamoinix on sunday. Seen quite a bit of france already and we were keen to get on and into eastern europe, besides, it was pissing down!
Chilled in chamonix for a couple of days. Worked there back in the day for a holiday company, Used to LOVE this bit of road going down from the Mt blanc tunnel so had to give that a re-visit:
http://www.youtube.com/user/scoggle#p/a/u/0/8m47lF...
Next we drove to lake Garda, Itally. Rather than go through the tunnel as planned we took the long way round through Switzerland and the Col Du Grand St Bernard:
Got a bit side tracked by the Emerson Dam, Drove up this little road nearly 1000M climb to get to it. Had it to ourselves!
St Bernard Pass (crap pics by the MRS - mad road!):
Looking down on Martigny with the pass starting in the valley on the left.
Climbs a bit! ^
After a bit of Italian motorway (they don't mess about) we were at Lake Garda. Stunning place!
Dove around the western shore and stayed at Riva Del Garda. Great atmosphere there, Loads of classic cars. Top food and drink, Those itallians know how to live!
Stopped off for a dip on the way back down the eastern shore heading for Venice, So HOT!
Venice was great but silly busy, Couldn't stand the crowds myself. Resorted to getting up at 5am, Had St Marks to ourselves!
Next up was Slovenia, Very much like Austria, All Green mountains and little hamlets. Nice place to chill for a few days after hectic Venice!
Holiday reading, Yes, I am a boring fecker.
We had another day in slovenia before leaving to Croatia. Took a trip to this castle up a mountain road composed soley of hairpins, The place was FULL of bikers going hell for leather, really getting the knee down. Amazing. We also came across this chairlift used for mountainbikers, not a bad view up there at all.
Was only about two hours down from slovenia to the croatian coast (istria). roads were unremarkable really, Was great just to just veg out and leave the car parked up for a bit!
Croatians are really cool people, The Border guy that inspected our passports made a double thumbs up and did his best Borat 'Great Success' impression!
schoey_photos
After a couple of properly chilled days we set off inland for Serbia!
I was getting a bit worried the wild east wasn't going to make an ideal honeymoon location when we got into Serbia! We had to pay 100Euros for insurance at the border as our green card wasn't valid :-( driving through towards Belgrade people on the motorway were looking at us like we were mad, not a single non-Serbian car on the road and the local cars got gradually more and more decrepit and Smokey.
Anyway, We arrived in Belgrade and found our hotel, a roadside type motel place that was also a car sales pitch. The interior was very sparse and when we got to the room it was FITHY! Carpets deep in dust and everything worn beyond belief. The hotel info listed only 'massage' under its services offered and we can only guess that’s where the guy in the room next to us was having judging from the thumping noises!
We made our excuses and got the hell out of there! So we had a little drive around 'new Belgrade'. The name sounds like some sort of flashy inner city apartment zone. Actually it's a decaying, soviet style concrete jungle. We were feeling a little uncomfortable driving around in a convertible past massive shantytowns.Didn't even think about getting the camera out!
We decided we probably weren’t going to find a nice hotel and didn’t much fancy Belgrade anyway after that! So we traveled on to or next stop straight away ‘the gates of the Danube’ thinking things would be better out in the sticks. Wrong. Coming off the motorway after an hours drive we saw people scouring huge rubbish dumps/huge factories rusting away/a grandmother beating a young girl. To cap it all off nicely we hit a massive dead dog in the road, I managed to avoid running the thing over with the wheels but the facking thing made a horrible noise bouncing around under the car. Mrs Scho was really thrilled by that.
It was getting dark and everyone was staring at us and we defiantly did NOT feel safe! To make things worse the sat nav we had gave up and decided there were no roads in our location. That’s when we decided Serbia might not be for us!!! We’d been on the road for 8hours at that point and it and the Romanian border was about 2 hours away if our tiny map of Serbia was any good. We got there as fast as we could, dodging dead dogs and serbs overtaking into oncoming traffic holding down the horn and putting the hazards on! The border queue was massive and people were having their cars ripped apart by customs. When out turn came the Romanian guard was really cool, asking us about our trip with an accent like vlad dracul himself! Where you from he says? Me: manchester Him: City or United?!
Some of the pics the misses grabed:
We stopped in a little roadside place just over the border, then set off for Brasov the next day. Was another 8 hour trip and the roads were totally ruined/non-existant in places but it was generally top fun! I got much better vibes off the romanians and everyone seemed mystified and freindly in equal measure.
Bad traffic:
Old steel works, quite a lot of ruined industrial buildings over there, incredible scale to them:
Honest trading:
Cheap fuel! Think that works out at around £25 a tank.
Random bits:
So next we arrived in Brasov, Close to Transylvania. Amazing walled city near to Vlads castle.
Got caught in the middle of one of the most impressive thunderstorms i've ever seen, very welcome after all the sun we'd had!
Some more of Brasov and Bran Castle. Had a wicked time in Romania, It's really cheap, beautiful country and the people are ace!
Left Brasov and started Traveling north into transylvania:
Another walled town, Sighisoara. There's loads of these in Romania, They got a bit of stick from the Turks in the past amongst others!
Drove north to Maramures the next day, 6HRS of the worst roads I've ever experienced. Spent the day clenching my arse cheeks going over some proper sump smashers! 40mph was the fastest i'd dare. Was worth it though as the scenery was awesome. Properly rural communities up here! animals everywhere. Everyone kept stopping what they were doing and staring at the car. Loads of birds of prey, storks galore too. like a living museum.
Off to Budapest next. Heres a few pics from the journey:
Seems like everyone cleans there cars on sunday here too!
'part from this guy^
Some hand painted adverts going though a town.
Drum bun, Presume that means 'see ya in romanian. Not sure why but that always tickled me.
In hungary, Felt a bit like northern france. Suddenly there were proper roads. To be honest it all felt a bit boring
Budapest, s
t, Everything feeling really expensive all of a sudden!
Our room on a boat, bit s
tty to be honest. Woke up to utter deluge. Decided to get out of budapest and crack on to czech.
Stopped for some fuel. some thing crazy like 330 hungarian beans for the £. How does twelve grand to fill an MX5 sound?
Good breakie though!
Also, I got a new tatoo...From a crisp packet.
On to the Czech Repulic...
Stayed at a little place called cesky krumlov just over the border. Very impressed by Czech, Beautiful countryside and towns, Reasonable food, hotles, and obscenely cheap beer.
"This might be a good place for later luv?"
Amazing beer gardens by the river :-)
Off to germany and the 'ring next!
This misses getting her toe down on the autobahn despite the bad camberg.
The area around the nurburgring is STUNNING. Some fine metal around too! a few that took my fancy:
Getting ready to give it a bash:
The misses had the first lap, good driver but really has no idea about the racing line! note my scoul of disapproval :
After a couple of laps i started to get my eye in!
Brilliant experience, the mx was great. bit sort on power on the uphill sections but i felt we were holding our own towards the end. Only porsche turbos and M3 CSL's overtaking etc. Got a vid I'll upload if you want boring to death!
Tiring work, Me at dinner!
Fleet of M3's ready for the ring, Just parked up close to where we were staying.
Stayed in a great little place really close to the ring, was a 14c converted mill run by a young German couple, Really Nice people.
Sold cold beers and stuff for 1E each, Just sat in the garden and got drunk in the sun one day :-)
After the 'ring it was just a case of blasting home across Belgium, pretty decent finale in my book!
Good things to look back on from the ferry!
^Got stuck in a massive jam 10 mins out of Dover, Welcome back to Blighty eh?!
WOW, Needed a holiday when i got back, I need one even more after putting all that together!
Really enjoyed the driving. I was a bit worried we wouldn't have enough time in each place but after a couple of days somewhere we were always itching to jump back in the car and get moving!
Edited by Scho on Friday 16th July 09:44
Edited by Scho on Monday 19th July 22:29
Edited by Scho on Monday 19th July 22:51
Eh thanks chaps 
luggage wasn't much of a problem to be honest. I had half this little case for a few shirts and a couple of pairs of shirts. The Mrs filled the rest with her shoes and had a huge hold all full of gear too!
was a bit tight in the cabin once she's filled the glovebox with tat though!
luggage wasn't much of a problem to be honest. I had half this little case for a few shirts and a couple of pairs of shirts. The Mrs filled the rest with her shoes and had a huge hold all full of gear too!
was a bit tight in the cabin once she's filled the glovebox with tat though!
It's alright actually nicey!
You can see it in a lot of the above pics, It doesn't eliminate wind totally. You still get some on the top of your noggin, Doesn't bother me, I wear a baseball cap anyway innit. You forget how much it does until you push it back down and feel the full force of that backdraft! It does so a fantastic job of keeping heat in the cabin on cold early mornings.
Worth having, Fits in 2 secs. Looks factory and has a cool pocket for maps and stuff.
You can see it in a lot of the above pics, It doesn't eliminate wind totally. You still get some on the top of your noggin, Doesn't bother me, I wear a baseball cap anyway innit. You forget how much it does until you push it back down and feel the full force of that backdraft! It does so a fantastic job of keeping heat in the cabin on cold early mornings.
Worth having, Fits in 2 secs. Looks factory and has a cool pocket for maps and stuff.
for doing the trip
Pete Franklin said:
That looks cracking
I did a similar trip in the MX5 with the mrs a couple of years of years ago, gotta be some of the happiest memories.
We camped most of the time. its amazing what you can fit in these cars, if you try really hard.
True.I did a similar trip in the MX5 with the mrs a couple of years of years ago, gotta be some of the happiest memories.
We camped most of the time. its amazing what you can fit in these cars, if you try really hard.
I'd go so far as to say there is plenty of room for two people staying in hotels.
We had the spare in and took masses of stuff just for the car as each country required different things.
Sure the boot was FULL but we took everything we wanted.
Wouln't fancy going camping in one though, Tried it once, Couldn't even fit my chair in!
Scho said:
True.
I'd go so far as to say there is plenty of room for two people staying in hotels.
We had the spare in and took masses of stuff just for the car as each country required different things.
Sure the boot was FULL but we took everything we wanted.
Wouln't fancy going camping in one though, Tried it once, Couldn't even fit my chair in!
well you cant do luxury camping- bring a rug instead of a chair- theres a chair in the car for christs sake I'd go so far as to say there is plenty of room for two people staying in hotels.
We had the spare in and took masses of stuff just for the car as each country required different things.
Sure the boot was FULL but we took everything we wanted.
Wouln't fancy going camping in one though, Tried it once, Couldn't even fit my chair in!
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