Short European Trip

[DavidB]

Day 1 - England to Nürburgring, Germany - 390 miles

My first proper trip abroad in the M - we travelled via the tunnel from the UK to the Nürburgring, an easy journey with little traffic on the roads. We stayed overnight at the 'Hotel am Tiergarten' owned by Sabine Schmitz' family which was nice and we met Sabine's mother :) I last visited the 'ring in 2007 and a lot has changed since then - the area is now much more commercialised although, with most of the new complex shut, there was hardly a soul to be seen!

We knew the 'ring itself was shut now until March so we'll have to go back at some point. Instead we found some great driving roads in the area with lots of hairpin bends :D

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Day 2 to follow...

[DavidB]

Day 2 - Nürburgring, Germany to Luzern, Switzerland - 335 miles

On day 2 we travelled from Germany to Switzerland - on the way we had some fun on the derestricted autobahn as we were blessed with another day of beautiful sunshine :) After about 5 hours we arrived at our destination - the city of Luzern in Switzerland. Neither of us had visited here before and we were both impressed by it's beauty. :)

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Abarth 500

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The amazing Kapellbrücke

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[DavidB]

Day 3 - Luzern to Andermatt, halfway to Interlaken & back, Switzerland - approx 100 miles

Day 3 we decided to head to the mountains and set off for the St Gotthard Pass which I'd only done before in the summer, we expected it would be closed but in the spirit of adventure we decided to give it a go. Almost as soon as we departed Luzern it began to snow, not a good sign.

Although the Gotthard Pass was closed we headed up the mountain road towards Andermatt.
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As we stopped for this photo the engine started back firing followed by an engine emissions light :o We decided to head back down and find a BMW dealership...
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While we waited we drooled over this beautiful black M3 - fully loaded with carbon fibre roof 8)
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In the dealership they didn't speak much English but basically they reset the light and advised us to get it checked in the UK. We decided to take a trip to Interlaken instead of heading back to Andermatt as we thought it would be more of a main road, the snow was getting worse.

Turned out the route to Interlaken involved more mountain roads, this was getting bad :(
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Minutes later the snow was laying on the road, even the slightest touch of throttle caused the back end to twitch and DSC to kick in (the summer performance tyres didn't help)
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Looking at the Sat-nav we were heading up more mountainous roads, it was time to retreat and get to a lower altitude. It felt like I was driving in the Arctic again as I was in December. As soon as we got back down we headed back to Luzern for the rest of the day...
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[Fredrik]

Cheers David - brill piccies there mate.
Interesting journey, always nice to read about these adventures of yours. They must be a bad habit by now ;)

[powernap]

WORLDCLASS pictures!

I lived in Bern some months, way back, i did some roadtrips in the wounderful montains of Switzerland!

[dvorak]

STOP TEASING WITH THE RING!!!

I have enough urges already! :D