I thought today's answer to "What did you do with your GR86 today?" might justify its own thread. At 15 images per post it's going to take a couple of posts to get through - perhaps get a coffee or a beer if you'd like to follow along . . .
What I Did On My Holidays this year was drive my car about 2,200 miles across Europe to Austria and Italy, taking in mountains, museums, scenery and city breaks.
This is a road trip I've been meaning to get around to for some time. In some ways it's been a bit of a mechanical pilgrimage, though I've (mostly) managed to hold back from prostrating myself in front of the machinery along the way. I've been accumulating assorted European locations on a list for something approaching twenty years (
), and realised a while ago that with a little effort most of them could be strung together into one big road trip.
Over the long dark winter evenings of 2024 I spent far too much time with an Excel spreadsheet, Google Maps, and Tripadvisor, and eventually pitched a concept for a two week trip across Europe to the committee for holiday planning. If I'm making it seem a bit like Dragon's Den . . . well, yes, that is rather how it went.
My better half, having correctly identified that the first part of the itinerary would involve a long drive across the UK, northern France, and Belgium before spending two days in a transport museum, quite eloquently summed up her position with regards to this element of the plan as: "Bollocks to that". After some delicate negotiation an agreement was reached that there was an excellent holiday lurking somewhere in the middle, and that she would be delighted to join me on it providing that I pick her up at Stuttgart airport at a convenient moment. Sorted.
Anyway, one Saturday morning in September I loaded up two people's worth of luggage for two weeks into the 86 and set off for the channel.
The weather was fine on the British side of the Tunnel, and wandering idly around the Eurotunnel car park in Folkestone I spotted quite a few interesting vehicles from other Brits who'd plainly had the same idea. Hat tip to the two different Alfa Romeo Montreals that happened to board my train!
The less said about driving in torrential rain through France and Belgium the better, but the car handled the motorways admirably. Carplay and some podcasts kept me engaged, while cruise control dealt with the long boring stretches. I did however find that at motorway speeds road noise can give your podcast hosts a run for their money if they aren't using high quality microphones, and that after a couple of hours at a stretch I was ready for a bit of a stroll to keep parts of me from going numb. I was also briefly reminded that the combination of cruise control and standing water can make for slightly eye-opening moments . . .
After about 450 miles of driving in a straight line I peeled off onto the little roads around Spa for my first overnight stop.
The town of Spa itself is mostly famous for its springs and thermal baths - if you want a motorsport connection you're probably better off going to Stavelot, where there's a racetrack museum on the site of the old abbey. Nonetheless, Spa is a pleasant place to be of an evening, with plenty of history and the obligatory frites.
Thus refuelled, I got an early night in preparation for another long day ahead.
I walked out into the car park the next day to find that the Polish Alpine A110 Owners' Club had been on a road trip of their own, presumably to Spa-Franchorchamps. As well as a regular A110, there was an A110S and an A110R(!) on the back of a low-loader. Very nice indeed.
I set out onto the Belgian N-roads with a specific goal in mind: I wanted to go around some corners before getting back on the motorways for the day, and I wanted to drive the old Spa street circuit. This is straightforward enough to do, but I was a little surprised to find that there isn't really a straightforward guide to the roads that make up the old route if you aren't quite old enough to remember where it went. There are some creaky early 2000s websites that make a comparison, but the best routefinding is actually a combination of Grand Prix Legends and Google Streetview. Either way, I can add the Masta to the Mulsanne on the short list of famous road circuit straights where which I have (briefly, officer) been at full throttle.
I also took a diversion on a particularly steep hill out of Stavelot to find this monument to Eddy Merckx, most successful Grand Tour cyclist of them all.
Mission thus accomplished, I reset Google Maps to take me on out of Belgium into Germany, in the direction of Stuttgart, for stop number 2, Technik Museum Sinsheim outside Stuttgart.
The first part of this was actually a really enjoyable drive. The autoroute out of Belgium swoops and dives around the Ardennes, and as you enter Germany the autobahn is derestricted, doesn't seem to serve many people and is therefore quite empty. Should one wish to push on, one could absolutely choose to do so. It's about as pleasant as motorway driving gets.
Unfortunately as you get further into Germany traffic and roadworks start to bite as population density increases, and progress slowed somewhat. Nonetheless, I made it to Sinsheim in time for lunch.
The big headliner for Sinsheim is clearly visible from the A6 autobahn. Parked up together on the roof, nose up in their landing configurations, the museum has both a Concorde and a Tupolev Tu144. It is the the only place outside Russia to have a Tu144, and the only place in the world to have examples of the only two supersonic airliners to see scheduled service. You can go inside them, and you absolutely should.
They also have the Blue Flame rocket car, holder of the land speed record for thirteen years at a breezy 622mph, along with more cars, motorbikes, tractors, railway locomotives, aeroplanes, helicopters, gliders, tanks and musical organs (not kidding) than you can shake a stick at. And a submarine.
Because I'm a very normal person, I stayed until closing and then went back to my hotel to spend the evening reading the flight test reports of the Tu144 that NASA recommissioned and test-flew after the Cold War ended and the Russians were briefly our friends. Spoiler: it wasn't a good aeroplane.
On day 3 I got up and went to Technik Museum Sinsheim's sister museum in Speyer. Not quite so vast and all-encompassing, but with some unique pieces that make it well worth the trip. They have a 747 up on hundred foot high stilts, on the wing of which you can walk and from which you can descend by a slide; they have Lamborghini's prototype Miura, still wearing most of the many coats of paint they would put on for the next international car show; and they have a Buran. They have so much more that it would be hard to describe it all.
The real highlight for me was the Buran. Buran is the Soviet space shuttle, and rather like the Tu144 at Sinsheim, Speyer is the only place outside Russia to have one. While Buran's service life was trivial - the only example to briefly fly in space was destroyed in a hangar collapse at Baikonur in 2002 - there are seven visually representative examples now on display, with these mostly having built up from static test articles. Speyer's Buran, OK-GLI, was the prototype built for atmospheric flight testing. It filled the same role as Enterprise for the US shuttle programme, but while Enterprise was air-launched from one of NASA's 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, OK-GLI took off under power from a runway courtesy of four turbofans borrowed from the Su27.
It pleases me, if nobody else, that OK-GLI and Enterprise therefore represent an inversion of one of the key distinctions between the Buran and Shuttle programmes, with that being the question of where in the stack the propulsion system was located. The Buran orbiter was not normally fitted with engines, with the huge external booster lifting all the weight, while the primary propulsion system of the Shuttle was built into the orbiter itself. I'll get my coat.
Having left the museum and made my way to Stuttgart Airport for a brief discussion about what time I thought this was, on to Salzburg via more autobahns. More densely populated Germany, more traffic jams, no real opportunity for making progress, some stunning scenery entering Austria, some tense uncertainty about whether the Austrian autobahn vignette is required for the extremely brief section of the A1 between the border and our exit (it wasn't), and we were settled into our B&B in time for dinner.
Part 2, Austria, to follow . . .
What I Did On My Holidays this year was drive my car about 2,200 miles across Europe to Austria and Italy, taking in mountains, museums, scenery and city breaks.
This is a road trip I've been meaning to get around to for some time. In some ways it's been a bit of a mechanical pilgrimage, though I've (mostly) managed to hold back from prostrating myself in front of the machinery along the way. I've been accumulating assorted European locations on a list for something approaching twenty years (
), and realised a while ago that with a little effort most of them could be strung together into one big road trip.Over the long dark winter evenings of 2024 I spent far too much time with an Excel spreadsheet, Google Maps, and Tripadvisor, and eventually pitched a concept for a two week trip across Europe to the committee for holiday planning. If I'm making it seem a bit like Dragon's Den . . . well, yes, that is rather how it went.
My better half, having correctly identified that the first part of the itinerary would involve a long drive across the UK, northern France, and Belgium before spending two days in a transport museum, quite eloquently summed up her position with regards to this element of the plan as: "Bollocks to that". After some delicate negotiation an agreement was reached that there was an excellent holiday lurking somewhere in the middle, and that she would be delighted to join me on it providing that I pick her up at Stuttgart airport at a convenient moment. Sorted.
Anyway, one Saturday morning in September I loaded up two people's worth of luggage for two weeks into the 86 and set off for the channel.
The weather was fine on the British side of the Tunnel, and wandering idly around the Eurotunnel car park in Folkestone I spotted quite a few interesting vehicles from other Brits who'd plainly had the same idea. Hat tip to the two different Alfa Romeo Montreals that happened to board my train!
The less said about driving in torrential rain through France and Belgium the better, but the car handled the motorways admirably. Carplay and some podcasts kept me engaged, while cruise control dealt with the long boring stretches. I did however find that at motorway speeds road noise can give your podcast hosts a run for their money if they aren't using high quality microphones, and that after a couple of hours at a stretch I was ready for a bit of a stroll to keep parts of me from going numb. I was also briefly reminded that the combination of cruise control and standing water can make for slightly eye-opening moments . . .
After about 450 miles of driving in a straight line I peeled off onto the little roads around Spa for my first overnight stop.
The town of Spa itself is mostly famous for its springs and thermal baths - if you want a motorsport connection you're probably better off going to Stavelot, where there's a racetrack museum on the site of the old abbey. Nonetheless, Spa is a pleasant place to be of an evening, with plenty of history and the obligatory frites.
Thus refuelled, I got an early night in preparation for another long day ahead.
I walked out into the car park the next day to find that the Polish Alpine A110 Owners' Club had been on a road trip of their own, presumably to Spa-Franchorchamps. As well as a regular A110, there was an A110S and an A110R(!) on the back of a low-loader. Very nice indeed.
I set out onto the Belgian N-roads with a specific goal in mind: I wanted to go around some corners before getting back on the motorways for the day, and I wanted to drive the old Spa street circuit. This is straightforward enough to do, but I was a little surprised to find that there isn't really a straightforward guide to the roads that make up the old route if you aren't quite old enough to remember where it went. There are some creaky early 2000s websites that make a comparison, but the best routefinding is actually a combination of Grand Prix Legends and Google Streetview. Either way, I can add the Masta to the Mulsanne on the short list of famous road circuit straights where which I have (briefly, officer) been at full throttle.
I also took a diversion on a particularly steep hill out of Stavelot to find this monument to Eddy Merckx, most successful Grand Tour cyclist of them all.
Mission thus accomplished, I reset Google Maps to take me on out of Belgium into Germany, in the direction of Stuttgart, for stop number 2, Technik Museum Sinsheim outside Stuttgart.
The first part of this was actually a really enjoyable drive. The autoroute out of Belgium swoops and dives around the Ardennes, and as you enter Germany the autobahn is derestricted, doesn't seem to serve many people and is therefore quite empty. Should one wish to push on, one could absolutely choose to do so. It's about as pleasant as motorway driving gets.
Unfortunately as you get further into Germany traffic and roadworks start to bite as population density increases, and progress slowed somewhat. Nonetheless, I made it to Sinsheim in time for lunch.
The big headliner for Sinsheim is clearly visible from the A6 autobahn. Parked up together on the roof, nose up in their landing configurations, the museum has both a Concorde and a Tupolev Tu144. It is the the only place outside Russia to have a Tu144, and the only place in the world to have examples of the only two supersonic airliners to see scheduled service. You can go inside them, and you absolutely should.
They also have the Blue Flame rocket car, holder of the land speed record for thirteen years at a breezy 622mph, along with more cars, motorbikes, tractors, railway locomotives, aeroplanes, helicopters, gliders, tanks and musical organs (not kidding) than you can shake a stick at. And a submarine.
Because I'm a very normal person, I stayed until closing and then went back to my hotel to spend the evening reading the flight test reports of the Tu144 that NASA recommissioned and test-flew after the Cold War ended and the Russians were briefly our friends. Spoiler: it wasn't a good aeroplane.
On day 3 I got up and went to Technik Museum Sinsheim's sister museum in Speyer. Not quite so vast and all-encompassing, but with some unique pieces that make it well worth the trip. They have a 747 up on hundred foot high stilts, on the wing of which you can walk and from which you can descend by a slide; they have Lamborghini's prototype Miura, still wearing most of the many coats of paint they would put on for the next international car show; and they have a Buran. They have so much more that it would be hard to describe it all.
The real highlight for me was the Buran. Buran is the Soviet space shuttle, and rather like the Tu144 at Sinsheim, Speyer is the only place outside Russia to have one. While Buran's service life was trivial - the only example to briefly fly in space was destroyed in a hangar collapse at Baikonur in 2002 - there are seven visually representative examples now on display, with these mostly having built up from static test articles. Speyer's Buran, OK-GLI, was the prototype built for atmospheric flight testing. It filled the same role as Enterprise for the US shuttle programme, but while Enterprise was air-launched from one of NASA's 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, OK-GLI took off under power from a runway courtesy of four turbofans borrowed from the Su27.
It pleases me, if nobody else, that OK-GLI and Enterprise therefore represent an inversion of one of the key distinctions between the Buran and Shuttle programmes, with that being the question of where in the stack the propulsion system was located. The Buran orbiter was not normally fitted with engines, with the huge external booster lifting all the weight, while the primary propulsion system of the Shuttle was built into the orbiter itself. I'll get my coat.
Having left the museum and made my way to Stuttgart Airport for a brief discussion about what time I thought this was, on to Salzburg via more autobahns. More densely populated Germany, more traffic jams, no real opportunity for making progress, some stunning scenery entering Austria, some tense uncertainty about whether the Austrian autobahn vignette is required for the extremely brief section of the A1 between the border and our exit (it wasn't), and we were settled into our B&B in time for dinner.
Part 2, Austria, to follow . . .
