The Alps

Yet another early start on Tuesday, we were all worn out from Monday and all regretting the those few drinks in the early hours.
We tried to head to Itally without going into Switzerland as we wanted to avoid the road tax. Having hoit 3 seperate borders and turning around we soon found more and more bangers driving in different directions having the same problem.

The CB radio really paid off and soon we found an driver who had done the route before and was confident on which way to head.
More and more cars joined the convoy of the weird looking vehicles. A real sense of comarardery ensued even to the point of playing inter car "eye spy" over the radios.

The mountain roads soon started to tax the cars to their limits. There were reports of cars in others covoys failing and our own car started to flash warnings at us.
Coolant level was the first of many but the old volvo didn't overhead, and kept its power.

We made multiple stops for other cars to cool down and the drivers to get release from the smells of clutch and brakes.

Reckless Robin turned started to show his parenting skills and decided to play daddy to the group of drivers.
Pulling the volvo into the lead postion he set a slower pace through the climbs and acsents and everyones car started to complain less, making progress easier. (He soon went back to form when he made doughnuts on the ash covered local school football pitch at the top of the pass!..it had a foot ball post but it was a carpark! Ed.)

Robin's recklessness looked insignificant compared to Richard risking life and limb to get some good photos.
He spent the majority of the day with only his legs still in the car, Mark shouting for his life everytime a lorry came the other way.

Mark supassed "the" slowest lap of the Ring on record with the slowest decent out of the Alps.
Robin nursed the car out of the region to Ritten and provedhe could drive a long distance and let the volvo sip fuel rather than burn it like the space shuttle on the autobahns. Then with in a few km of the hotel Reckless Robin reared his ugly right foot again as one of the Jags over took him and he could not let them think the volvo could not keep up. So with possible knockered breaks he made it to within a inch of their bumper(WIN, Happy Robin).

Richard continued to risk his life for the pictures by balancing on crash bariers with 100 foot drops and cars flying past just to get a good picture. While these pictures do look "amazing" they do not do the local countryside justice.