It was now the start of the journey North and where better to head than the Black Forest. The roads started off great from the hotel as we headed upto Lake Konstance, but as expected as soon as we got to the lake the traffic got heavy , not helped with road closures. I've never liked it around there but needs must to be able to crack on to the Black Forest. Due to all the traffic we got split up again so we continued on waiting for a regroup. All was going well until we got a call from JP to say he'd got a flat tyre on the Autobahn , so we pulled into the first parking area and awaited for him to turn up with his 1970's space saver fitted.
Luckily JohnM had a full sized spare he swapped onto JP's car when it turned up and we quickly found a tyre place only 15 mins from where we were in a local town. We all rolled upto the first tyre place and had little success as they had no 15" tyres, especially nothing to fit an 8" fuch . So with hunger kicking in it was decided most of the group should grab some food and head on following the route and some of us would stay and see if we could sort a tyre. Boydy spoke to a local privately own tyre place at the far end of town so 3 of us nipped up there to see what they could do. They were fantastic , dropped what they were doing and pulled out a temp 195/65 to fit to JP's car ( to allow John to have his spare back for the rest of the trip home ) but inisisted that was an emergency fitting but really JP shouldnt drive too far on it. The tyre man had tried to source correct size tyres that afternoon , even phoning a friend who had an old porsche with the correct sizes ( he'd thrown out his spare tyre the week earlier ! ) . In the end, the tyre guy said he could get the correct rear tyres ( a pair) shipped to him for the morning and have JP back on the road by 8:30am.... even suggesting a nice hotel they could stay at. JP decided this was the best option, so him & his passenger Simon decided to stay whilst me , Richard & Boydy headed on to the hotel in Baden Baden ( which was still some distance away )
It was sad to leave them , but was best to be safe.
SO, running behind schedule, the 3 of us abandoned the planned route & blatted on up into the black forest on the famous 500 ( I was trying to keep off this road as its too famous and busy these days ) . After a frustrating drive as we neared Baden Baden, we had a little bit of time to spare so we went off piste and found a real fun road ... a full on narrow rough hill climb kind of thing . What a way to end a pretty shitty day and what a drive to end the last of the fun days before tomorrows motorway slog .
We finally rolled up to the hotel , minus JP but to be greated with Adams 1973 car looking fantastic that the Porsche centre where it had been dropped had managed to fix ( with a little persuasion from the 6ft2 owner
) .. to be fair they did a great job and also fixed it free of charge . Great service.
Forgot to mention .. Baden Baden is difficult to get hotels with parking so our solution was this posh hotel
An evening in town followed but we were worn out by this point.
That evening we parted into our respective travel groups and said our goodbyes as the tunnellers were leaving early where as us Rotterdam guys had more time on our side.
The return to Rotterdam was a slog and as boring as ever but we had little excitement when Ian's front brake started binding on . All good after a fettle and back on the ferry for the journey home to Hull
Motorway lunch
The final fuel and pee stop
and if it can inspire others to get out and use their cars whilst they can then so much the better.
