Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

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hot66
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Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by hot66 »

Road tripping to the Pyrenees

Hopefully you all enjoy roadtrip stories … if not this thread might bore you :lol:

An area id never been to was the Pyrenees so last October set about planning a road trip there. The aim as always is getting the roads before the camper vans and cyclists descend on them so mid May was chosen which fitted with most of my friends . Problem with May, as in other mountain areas, is it’s between ski and summer season so lots of hotels closed for their annual shut down.

Either way over the winter months i put together a route planned around doing all the best passes…. With the assumption ( wrongly as it turned out) that May in France / Spain the weather would be good and all the passes open !

Friday

So … most of us met on a summery Friday evening at a pub in Hampshire ready to get the ferry to Spain from Portsmouth. Majority getting this one, but 2 getting the Portsmouth / Caen . Then one other on the St malo and finally Boydy had driven from Scotland and taken the tunnel and driven to down through France staying at our ddk favourite lemans hotel and then with friends near Bordeaux.

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There was quite a bit of nervous anticipation for this trip as it was a big one in terms of miles for some of the cars and additionally stories of the Spain ferry crossing being rough are renowned.

We sailed at midnight so we had a 2 night crossing ! As it turned out we had a wonderful time. Crossing was calm , we’d paid for the posh lounge with food and drink on tap and we even spotted dolphins on a regular basis . A couple of the group fully embraced the ‘cruise’ and kept disappearing off to the organised activities

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Sunday

We arrived in Santander at 8am on Sunday. Expectations of Spanish sunshine went out the window when we saw the low clouds over the mountain near the port ! Weather was going to have a big part of this trip. Today was a get the miles in day as the first hotel was 283 miles away. I had planned today’s route to start with some twisties up in the hills then keep off the tolls and head east. The plan was then to somehow meet up en route with the 3 other groups that had driven down through France .

Regarding navigation, each days route is basically planned using a number of plot points that are entered onto waze or Google maps in advance… additionally each morning each waze plot is shared onto a WhatsApp group so everyone can click it and know where we are heading .

So, Hill climb one … thick fog and slippy tarmac! Not a great start but the road was good. So good that I might have been slightly pressing on when I rounded a corner to find some motorcycle police who’d just pulled some cars over … he heard me come round the corner and went to step out into the road to stop us, then I think he saw we were English and a group and decided he had enough on with the 2 Spanish cars he’d already stopped :lol: . One close call witching the first 30 mins of a road trip was not a good start !

We soon dropped down the other side and below the cloud cover and headed off to a cafe in the middle of know where to meet Gary and his son. In a master of planning / luck we arrived and about 5 mins later Gary and his green 911 rolled up . Cant fault that timing after all the travel. So onwards to the next meeting stop about 2 hours down the road. These first days of getting some miles in are good … they allow everyone to settle into their cars , get the excitement out of the system and get used to driving as a group again.

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So a few hours down the road , unexpectedly we passed the 2 964RS’s heading the opposite way :lol:…. They’d read the instructions wrong and were heading to a plot point on the route which wasn’t the meeting place .. either way it worked out well and we gathered them up . Then finally another hour later we stopped at a strange Spanish road cafe where we met the final car , boydy who’d travelled the furthest of any of us .

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So finally as a full group we hit some of the smaller roads and had our final run to our first hotel after a good 7 hours on the road .
With us all at the hotel and we could see what An eclectic mix of cars we were. All air cooled apart from the rogue GT4 which if you’ve been following Sladeys thread you’ll understand why he brought that. Ironically the first mechanical on the first climb we had was thr GT4 :lol: . You couldn’t make it up. Luckily it was just a tyre pressure sensor playing up .

Unfortunately 2nd mechanical happens as we approached the hotel and the 993 cab snapped its fan belt. No problem you’d have thought as between us we had enough spares … until you realise that 993 and 964 fan belt swap needs a special tool to hold the alt shaft and this tool is not standard in the Porsche tool kit. this could be tackled tomorrow as it was getting late and the bar was calling.

This first hotel was stunning just outside Boltana , east of Pamplona . An old monastery . It was just a shame the food didn’t match the quality of the hotel. Disappointing was the best way to describe the restaurant.

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So day 1 complete… long time behind the wheel but great to meet up with friends and finsh the day with some beers. I was looking forward to the next day as I knew it was going to be a good one Image
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James

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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by Ollie »

Subscribed!

Looking forwards to the next instalment!
Gary71
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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by Gary71 »

I’d choose the Portsmouth- St Malo route mainly as I hate ferries! Going out at least this means you turn up in the evening, watch the sunset then wake up in France at 8 having cut out a good chunk of miles and a night in a hotel.

We pressed on that day down to just outside Bilbau, a solid 9.5 hours drive. 8.5 of which was melting hot and 1hr of which was torrential rain!

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We met up with the errant 964 RS boys on route somewhere in France and cruised together for a few hours before they realised they probably should book a hotel… Image

Arriving at our hotel outside Bilbau was a bit damp, but a really great place
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When near Bilbau it was rude not to try and grab a quick landmark pic!
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Stunning hotel with shite food. :)
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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by anglophone1 »

Good stuff guys- we did this with 6 911s two years ago ( only 2 air cooled though) so be good to see how your route differs- two key passes were still closed for us….
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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by sladey »

Image
First (unsuccessful) go at fixing Boydys fanbelt
The simple things you see are all complicated
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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by Gary71 »

sladey wrote:Image
First (unsuccessful) go at fixing Boydys fanbelt
Using absolutely everything except the right tool ! :)


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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by 70sThrowback »

wow what a trip, and one I am planning in the future so can't wait to hear how it went
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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by 911hillclimber »

Good reporting as ever.
Trips to remember for sure.
We are in north Italy at the Lakes, and the weather if all over the place.
Have to say great hotels and great food.

Not sure about the FIAT. Hybrid Panda…..
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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by neilbardsley »

Well done. We are aiming to head that way next month. St Malo to San Sebastian. Will be following for places to stop

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Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by hot66 »

Monday

Today was the first proper day and the weather was looking good. We had 220 miles ahead of us , all ‘driving roads’ . Boydy had got up early and managed to blag a tool from the local garage to swap his fan belt so all was good there.

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On our last trip, we started using Walkie talkies . Probably the best thing we’ve done as along with the banter, they’re useful to warn others of hazards up ahead , directions when needed and if some of the group get stopped at the lights and of course the ‘I need a pee’ shout out . These were handed out and we were ready to go .

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So after a poor breakfast, we left the hotel at 9:30 am ( for consitancy leaving time was the same every morning ) and headed east. Today’s roads were not mountain ones, but valley roads and they turned out to be maybe the best of the whole trip. Within a few miles the roads narrowed and the scenery got more spectacular. Think of smooth tarmac, ultra twisty and in places balcony style roads with tunnel sections cut from the rock. To add to this , we did about 120 miles of non stop fast driving and maybe only came across a few cars … and when we did even the wagon pulled over for us all to pass. Additionally the weather got better and better

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Lunch was calling so we stopped at small place we found in one of the villages thinking we’d grab a sandwich and go …. of course it never works that way , so 3 courses later on a 15 euro all in menu and we realised we were still only 1/2 way through the route and the day was getting on. The restaurant staff were lovely and lucky for us Jack speaks fluent Spanish so we were looked after well.

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At this point, You might have noticed that in the back of one of the 964’s is a road bike. Practical cars these 911’s . Anyway, after lunch, Adam took off to the next hotel via a slightly different route with the aim of getting some training miles in before we all arrived there ( he’s got some daft big cycle challenge in a few weeks time and hasn’t really prepared thus the reason he brought along his bike ) . I got a phone call later on telling me to watch out for him as he was cycling up the climb we were about to blast down and not to run him over :lol:

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So onwards all went with the 2nd half of the route up Coll de Jou and onto a real fast tight snake of a road for another 100 miles or so . I’ve never had so much fun in the 964 .. to the point every corner I was getting more slip on the tyres … lesson number 1 of these roads in this heat was keep an eye on tyre pressures ! I had to drop about 6 psi hot out of front and rear to bring back the grip.

having stopped for a breather and to let gary have a look around his car due to a clicking noise, we could hear teh rumble of a classic V8 coming up the road we were heading down … a UK plated rover P6 who’s driver was waving enthusiastically at us … followed promptly by a Merc coupe, then an MG .. etc etc . Turns out a Cape to Cape rally was taking place . Great selection of cars that we happened to come across again in the coming days !!!

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Final push on was great .. I managed to miss a deer, Richard managed to be less lucky with a squirrel :lol: .. Talk from some about fading brakes and you’ll get the idea of what these roads were like.

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We finally arrived at the 2nd hotel near Ripoll , a small interesting place with a nice little underground car park that most of the cars couldn’t get into due to the ramp ! Nice family runing but again the food was a disappointment especially following the stunning huge lunch wed had.

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Time for beer & wine and the usual craic . Today had been a really good day .
James

1973 911 2.4S
1993 964 C2
2010 987 Spyder
1973 MGB Roadster

Its not how fast you go, but how you go fast ;)
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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by Gary71 »

As James notes my car woes had started by this point but I wasn’t ready to give up (just!) yet… and the roads were just amazing, so I just reduced the pace a little.

Following Sladey in his GT4 was amusing as I was exploring every ounce of my underpowered 52 year old car whilst he was tickling along on 5th gear barely breathing on the throttle and cornering with 1 finger whilst I was in an arm wrestling competition with my steering on each hairpin!

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We stopped in an almond grove and I got the proper camera out as the light was excellent

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The lunch stop again was another photo op, we needed to rest after the 5000 calorie snack…

A quick look at the map freaked us all out how far we had come!

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After lunch we pushed on to the next hotel where I continued to explore the clicking noise which was getting worse with no obvious explanation.

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This was my note to bring a proper jack of some form as this is unstable junk! :)
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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by sladey »

Yes when we stopped in the afternoon we were all actively helping Gary trace the noise

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Just to be clear the GT4 was incredibly capable but I was taking the corners in 2nd not 5th.

I would far rather have been in my backdated hotrod as I know its limits and enjoy playing with them. In the GT4 the limits are so much higher. However I still had great fun pushing it through the corners and moving it about a bit.

The roads were incredible. Tight twisties and amazing views.
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young but I'm just backdated yeah
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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by Gary71 »

sladey wrote:Yes when we stopped in the afternoon we were all actively helping Gary trace the noise
It’s the moral support that matters :) :)
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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by yoda »

Sounds like fabulous trip and you’ve been a bit unlucky with the weather and food. I’m in San Sebastián and both have been amazing!

Keep the reports coming and any details of good hotels / restaurants / roads are always appreciated.
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Re: Road Tripping to the Pyrenees

Post by abzadams »

Looks fantastic gents, not jealous at all!
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