DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

We all love a good roadtrip .... so with months of planning in the bag a group off ddkers all set off from Hull on the party boat heading for Austria and Italy . Of course what the months of planning hadn’t taken into consideration was that the 2019 snowfall would be heavier and later than ever before ! Id been monitoring the Facebook pages of various mountain passes along with the Italian roads website etc etc.
We really thought we’d timed this trip wrong !!

Weds afternoon before getting on the ferry was spent trying to check for road closures ... Austrian alps was the main area of concern and based on the latest information we adjusted the routes to miss some of the closed passes, luckily only 2 from the whole trip.

So , a group of 6 cars and 7 ddkers met up in Hull and headed off to Europe in mix of cars ... 2 early, 2 SC’s and 2 964’s ... anxiously studying the terrible weather forecasts we were heading into . Boydy in his 964 speedster had already said he was roof down no matter what and either way, his car always brought out the sun



Now our first day was always going to be a grind away at the miles one to get ourselves in Germany near the Austrian border. It was a 9am-7pm run, but majority was clear running with the autobahn helping ( and hindering later due to traffic and roadworks ) ... eventually arriving to our hotel near Ulm ready for a beer

Nice view for lunch of the Mosel from the service station






Also found this in the hotel car park, the grandfather of the hotel owners family who’d recently passed away. The daughter was waiting until she’s allowed to drive it when she hits 25

That long run down through Germany did result in one of tyne first car dramas of the trip ... JohnM’s car sounded like a bag of spanners as it pulled into the car park... not good for his stress levels. A bit of investigating and turns out the manifold nuts had decided to loosen off . So , with the drama sorted and a night of good food and drink we woke to stunning sunshine ready for heading to the hills.



.... and 5 mins later we got distracted by a Porsche centre ... who very kindly supplied coffee to 7 blokes who were obviously not going to be customers. They did have a few old cars in with the moderns though and they also did photograph our cars out front

/\ /\ Targa looks nice.

Been following on Instagram, looked like an epic trip. V. Jealous.

On a side note, what's the story with the rear spoiler on the Speedster? Never seen one like that before?

James what’s your Instagram?

Loving the photo story. Keep it up please!

KS wrote:/\ /\ Targa looks nice.

It wasn’t .... all very shiny but you could see patches and sanding marks under the paint

Boydy will be along to say, but think it’s a strosek part ? Very cool car

James, it’s not me on Instagram... Peter has unbelievably mastered it ... search for RPR626

So , free coffee consumed and we headed off on the road again and what would become almost a twice daily routine for some, a visit to the petrol station . Turns out we’ve got it good in the UK as prices everywhere were high.



.... so, heading into Austria and the roads and scenery began to change. The first sight of snow capped mountains always gets the excitement going



And onto our first ‘diversion’ from the original route and up the hochtannbergpass .... great first pass and straight from summer into a winter scene



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The roads were great and as hoped, due to being early in the season the roads were quiet with no campers and only a few bikers . Most cars were locals . Quick blast down via the flexenpass and St Anton and we were off down the long valley to our 2nd hotel

Hull stop...

Moody skies

Mosel bridges are epic. Much anticipation building....

So ... mentioned at the beginning that some of the passes were still closed. Our 2nd hotel was at the end of a long valley and the bottom of one of Austria’s big passes the Timmelsjoch with the plan being the next morning that’s what we’d head over on our way to Italy.

Unfortunately for us, they just couldn’t get it clear ( it’s still closed with a plan on opening early June) , but with hotel booked we though we’d attack it anyway and see how far we could get .... again, due to it being closed there was no traffic at all.. we had the lower timmelsjoch all to ourselves . Another amazing drive upto the motorcycle museum on the pass to where the gates were closed for the rest of the road . This was becoming a habit and the cars were standing up to the abuse well







The boys chillin

Looks like a great trip with some stunning scenery.

I can see who the seven participants were now ...

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Had a great night at the hotel with the owners , takeaway pizzas ( long story ) and schnapps ... we were the only guests . With a major route change now needed we headed back up the valley to take the long way round towards Italy And to drop in to the st leonardo pass via the jaufenpass . This was my kind of road, narrow twisty and bumpy at the beginning opening up to smooth fast and I managed to squeeze past a few cars on the climb and get the run on the rest of the lads which meant I had time to snap a few pics from the small wooden cafe at the top