Day 2 - "The Loop" and losing things.
Awaken early and check the weather......sunny, blue skies. Excellent.
The Hotel
Shower, dressed, breakfast and out the door by 9am. Unfortuantely, by 9.45am i realised we've left my daughter's coat at the hotel and i don't have my wallet. So we pull over and i search my car for the wallet. No luck, so message the hotel and we carry on. Thankfully, my wallet only had foreign currency and my pre-paid credit card. A few taps on my phone and the card was blocked.
No time to head back, we carry on. The plan today was get to the hotel, check in, then hit "the Loop". But before anything else, we needed to check out that tunnel. In the film, they actually used some clever editing, as only one of the tunnel has an arched entrance (the other end is square). As such the Lamborghini Miura enters and crashes at the same end of the tunnel in the film. But for us, no bulldozer
First pass of the day was the Colle San Carlo and Col Du Grand St. Bernard passes, and as quick as we entered Italy, we left and headed into Switzerland, towards the Nufenen Pass.
Re-creating the photo from 2013 (i think)
2016
2013
At the Grande St. Bernard pass.
En route, we passed an awesome looking pedestrian suspension bridge, so i quick U-turn and we park up.
The Nufenen Pass leads into the St. Gotthard Pass and then onto the base of the Furka Pass. As we ascended the Gotthard pass, the blue skies disapperared and the fog moved in. Our hotel was located 2 miles from the Furka.
After checking in and dumping the bags, we consult the map and decide on the best order to tackle the passes. Decide on Furka -> Grimsel -> Susten, after already completing the Nufenen and St. Gotthard on the way to the hotel. By this time it's 16:30 and were hoping that the passes would be quiet....
The hotel
And we weren't disappointed! We had them pretty much to ourselves. But, by this time the rain had joined the fog and as started to climb the Furka Pass the driving conditions were very poor.
Any hope of recreating that classic scene from Goldfinger dashed.
But anybody that has driven in the mountains knows, the weather can change in a instant, so we carried on, hoping that on the otherside of one of the passes lay blue skies and sunshine.
And, as you can see.....sunshine!!!
On the descent of the Furka pass there is the Rhone Glacier and over the summer months there is an "Ice Grotto" were you can walk 100m into the glacier. This was extremely cool and i wasn't expecting it to be blue on the inside.
After a browse of the souvenir shop we head back to the cars and carry on to the Grimsel pass and to find some food. At this point, the GF says, "i can't find my car key!!!!!!" We empty her handbag all over the road......not there. Empties all her pockets.....nope. We ask at the shop, Ice Grotto and the small cafe to see if anybody has handed one in......nope! The walk from the shop to the entrance of the Ice Grotto is erm.....quite lengthly, and if she dropped it there, it was never going to be found. So, i locate her spare key in my car and cautiously hand it over to her. She also contacted BMW in Germany about ordering a new one and collecting it in a few days.
So, just a recap, we've now "lost" my wallet, daughter's coat and the GF's car key!
After the mini crisis we soon find ourselves on the Grimsel Pass and have reached the peak in no time at all.
By now, we're starved and nowhere appears open
but!!!.......just before we head onto the Sustem Pass i spy a restaurant! I can see people outside drinking beer and the lights are on. Excellent. We park cars and drag our weary bodies to an empty table. After a little conversation, turns out they're just closing at 20:00 (we parked up at 20:03), but just for us, they'll stay open! The staff were lovely and no doubt didn't want us to spend ages choosing what to eat, so they quickly explained about their speciality.....rosti. I've never heard of it before, so no idea what it was. Always willing to try new food, i was like, bring us two! And while we waited for it to arrive, a nice cold beer to relax.
This stuff is nice and by 20:45 we're back on the road with full stomachs! Now it was just a case of getting to the hotel for sleep.
A quick dash through more fog and over the Sustem Pass, and there was the hotel. I'll be honest, these two days were brutal. 30 hours of driving and 1000 miles covered and glad that day 3 was a rest day.
Cool map of the St. Gotthard area.
Total driving time (including stops/fuel ups/food/etc) - 13 hours / 260 miles