Official Nurburgring and Europe Thread

[c.gerrard]

So, as the majority of you know, a few of us have recently been on an trip to the Nurburgring and then for an epic road trip across Europe.

Who went?
Me in my 1.9 TD accompanied by Fooby
Jonny in his estate accompanied by Ash (milkman)
Tom (rocker874) in his GTi6 accompanied by himself
Martyn in his 1.9 TD accompanied by his annoying GF

Our ferry left Dover at 12:00 Friday and so after a full day of work and driving for some us to get down south, we then got in the ferry and carried on driving all the way to the Nurburgring. Jonny and I cruised the journey at quite a slow place and with picking up Ash and Fooby nearly missed the ferry

We had an nice drive across France, into Belgium, where we got had an 'extended' tour of Bruges. Basically, Ash got us lost and we ended up on some narrow, cobbled streets. Not fun in a lowered car! We then thought it would be wise to drive straight through Brussels and got even more lost in their silly on way system. But it was all good, as their system is pretty much underground, so some amazing tunnel noise banter began.

There was then a drive, which was pretty much motorways until we got to the Nurburgring. Eventually found ourselves an amazing campsite and despite being on the go for more than 24 hours, decided to go check out the Nurburgring. Came back, had some tea and after being on the go for 30 odd hours decided it would be wise to get some sleep.

Following day was the reason for out trip. The Nurburgring. I'm still getting goose bumps thinking about the track and how much fun it was to drive. So we had a few laps, no major dramas, apart from Jonny completing loosing the estate and nearly ending up backwards in the barricade, but we will gloss over that The day was quite overcast and condition were not the best, which was quite fortunate in a way, as it meant that the track was quite.

The following day was more a day of dribbling over the cars in the car park. The sun, had come out, clear blue sky and just generally awesome conditions. The car parks were full and track looked very busy. There were quite a few bashed in cars and recovery trucks so it was funny to laugh at people's failures in rental cars. So after a spot of go-karting we headed off.

We then started heading south, with the intention of spending the night near Stuttgart, but ended up in Hockenheim. At this point we discovered that there was too much snow in Switzerland and Italy to drive all the intended passes, so we had to re-plan the rest of the trip. We ended up on some stunning passes near the Alps, which I would say at time rival the popular ones. We actually ended up messing up our cars more on these passes, than we did on the Nurburgring. Martyn had steam pouring out his rear breaks, Jonny's stunk to high heaven and my discs were glowing a lovely orange colour.

After a two days of beautiful roads and scenery we ended up in Monaco Never before have I felt more out of place. Super and hyper cars everywhere, every man in a suit and just a general feeling of wealth. So how they reacted to a few old, dirty, French diesels makes me laugh. Oh and don't you worry lads; I coaled the f*ck out of an Aston Martin. One nice surprise was that they have already started preparing for the F1, so we actually had the honor of driving the track. The tunnel was AMAZING.

After that it was time for the cross France journey back to Calais. Nothing major happened, just had to cover the distance to get back in time so a lot of Motorway driving. Apart from Jonny's car breaking of course. This happened in the middle of Lyon at rush hour, in the middle of the tunnel. So I had to tow him to safety.

There were quite a few breakdowns as you would expect. Personal highlights would be Tom's coolant pipe coming off and steam pouring everywhere and choosing to ignore it. As well as the chronic brake fluid leak. Which is a story in itself actually, we ended up taking it into a Peugeot garage and they wanted to charge 900, yes 900 Euros to fix it so we left in a hurry. Martyn had a few issues, the steering column playing up and my favourite was when the rear wheel was taken off and the pad fell out just afterwards And we all know the situation Jonny is in, I assume. My car was the surprise package, 100% reliability. It did not need to be touched once!

In summary, for me it was a trip of a life time, so much happened, went to some amazing places and achieved a boyhood dream of driving around the Nurburgring and couldn't have asked for a bunch of lads to do it with

NURBURGRING 2014 BRING IT ON!!!!!!!!!!


Photos:

http://www.nurburgringinfo.com/photos/060413/peugeot/