Tunnelling Through

Day 10 of Roadtrip: Italy to Austria

Waking up from a night of very heavy rain to find the sun shining through the trees is a nice thing for sure. Still being dry yourself helps a lot too. My phone hadn't faired too well - the flash is now a fixed on feature, its long battery life hurt.

Dried off and packed up, we finally set off for the hills. Those Alpine hills. The Zastava had taken the necessary head start, and the Peugeot headed off for some more brake fixing and to avoid early mountain passes.

Amazingly the rest of the group; the 850, Audi, 205, E30 and Zastava caught up with us in the Saab, Citroen and Suzuki (I think that's all of them) at lunch, and we continued on as a whole group, stopping again at the top for some views and a break. Some mountains, these.

On the way down Arron took the Zastava leaving me to get stuck, unable to overtake, a local camper for a while. Even wet weather meant I couldn't enjoy the scenery without a roof. A shame but that's why you get a convertible and not a permanent spyder - so you can drive it in the wet.

Despite the dullness of the motorway cruising, the border cross pass was something that added a bit of joy and drama to the day. Taking off in the faster group was good and all that since the rain had stopped, but alas the Peugeot and Saab's fuel gauges quickly dropped (thanks to the reluctance to fill up in expensive Italy) and we were left climbing further - up to 2.5k - with little enthusiastic driving. A shame since this was such a brilliant road - although it was wet, greasy and at times incredibly foggy with rather large drops off the side. This is what roadtrips are for though - I had fun anyway.

Arriving in Sölden with 10 minutes until the campsite closed, checking into a weird barrel-cabin thing and having a meal out at a rather upmarket restaurant ended the day nicely. It was perfected by the litre of beer - we're back in the right countries for this stuff all right.