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Christmas Eve 1968 I smashed the Lotus Elan to pieces - complete write off - but bought another - this time it was a BRM Lotus Elan - with "go-faster stripes".
Aileen and I went off to Italy in it....
First port of call was Mike Waller who was by this time working in Geneva
Here's Wal parking his Marcos (WPL 975 G)just below his
flat. That is either Peter Simpkins or Guy de
Gonzenbach with him. We had arrived the evening before and I'd parked on the
road opposite Wal's flat. We were out on the balcony looking at "Geneva" when I
saw a lady "French parking" - that is banging the other cars at either end of
her supposed parking spot - parking by touch - rather than by consideration. The
disaster was - that my Elan was one of the "touched" cars - and the bumpers were
for show only - being made (like the rest of the body) from fibre-glass.
Wal had problems of his own - the tape you can see in the back window is attempting to keep the window in one piece and waterproof after some guy had crunched a brick through it!!
View from Wal's flat - I was parked elsewhere by now!!
We did some sightseeing around Geneva, getting out
into the country around the lake and into the vinyards.
With....(r to l) Guy de Gonzenbach, Wal, wife of next man (who was ?brother of?)
Christian (Guy's wife) and the immaculately attired....me!!
And then we were off.... round the north of Lac Leman through Lausanne, then via Martigny, over the mountains..
GPR
665E - the boot is packed with tent and camping gear. All my clothes for a
couple of weeks are in the cricket bag strapped to the luggage-rack - Aileen's
stuff had to fit - inside the car!!
Somewhere along this route we came upon a Swiss Ford Mustang, going down the hairpins and twists and turns. He tried to shake us off - but really.....no contest!!
Into Italy near Aosta, through Turin and down to the Mediterranean coast at Nice...
If I
remember rightly... we went sun-bathing on this beach - it was stony and an
overcast day - fairly windy and not very warm... but we stuck it out, all day
and only realised what we'd done later that night and early the next morning. We
were like fried tomatoes and could do nothing for a day or two until the effects
(stretched, burning hot skin, off our food etc....) wore off - silly!!
Round the Italian Riviera, through Genoa, to near Pisa then inland to Florence and the Uffizi Gallery - i got a bit taken-away in here... fabulous place!!
I'm pretty sure this is outside the Gallery....
Then round to the Cathedral again...
Surely this is the Vatican in Rome????
Then down to Naples and up Vesuvius....
A cloudy/misty and smoky day... looking down into the
crater...
careful Aileen - not too close!!
What
a smoky spot!!
Well... this is where record-keeping seems to have gone awry, because there are no further piccies until we get back into the Alps and I know we turned inland from Naples and went via Avellino and Foggia across to the Adriatic coast heading north. Pescara, Ancona, (around here - we camped on the coast for a few days during which - the clutch went (as it often did). From one day to another the clutch fluid would leak away. I managed to drive it into the nearest town - looking for a Ford dealer. Found one - lots of gesticulations and laughing - but they were interested in playing with a Lotus and when they realised it was lots of Ford bits - they were confident too. A few hours sitting around waiting for it to be fixed, then we see a guy racing it around - laughing like crazy, and we knew the "road-test" was just about over and it worked fine from then on) - Pesaro, Ravenna, Ferrara, Padua, Venice, then West, bypassing Verona (and it must have been around here - near Modena) that we saw a red Ferrari with "PROVA" plates burbling along the Autostrade... he came for a bit of a chase... but I think he was more interested in "keeping to a plan/schedule" than having some fun) - through Brescia, Bergamo, north of Milan then north up to Como and Lugano and over the St Gotthard Pass - where I bought these "summer and winter" shots....
Home through Lucerne, Basle, Nancy, Chalons sur Marne - and it must have been around here that I went mad...... We were racing for a ferry at Calais and we got onto an Autoroute that provided an IBM punched card at entry showing our entry time... Aileen was sort of dozing/sleeping - the hood was off - and I went for it.... 140 mph a lot of the way... I can remember flashing cars up ahead from something like 1 mile back - trying to give them ample warning of what was bearing down on them. Fantastic!! The car hugged the road even more than usual - it really did feel as though it was being pushed onto the road - and the steering got heavier the faster I went. At one point, Aileen sort of woke up, and looked at the speedo and said "is that one hundred and......." - and she was back asleep again - good because I was enjoying myself!!
Suffice to say I cannot remember the figures now - but I handed the ticket in at the exit which was only 20 or 40 Kilometers from the entry and it showed and average of 120 mph!!
A bit further on up the road maybe near Rheims or Lille we got our come-uppance! The rearmost portion of the muffler/silencer broke off! I just jumped out, picked it up (hot) - and forced it behind our seats - but from then on - we sounded like - well.... an unsilenced Lotus - very impressive on over-run - slowing down... And coming into London at about 02:00AM we had to be very careful not to annoy PC Plod!! with our noise.