It’s pitch black. The sound of thunder bounces from surrounding peaks and rolls down to our valley. It can’t reach us. We are cocooned within high thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, windows luxuriously hidden behind heavy weight plush blackout fabric, safe, snug, warm.
Sleep’s embrace gently slips away, and I slowly wake. Still dark. It’s all good. Plenty of time before we have to get up. Maybe there’s time for another swim before we get going. A sauna perhaps. I wonder if it’s still raining, and whether the coming sunrise will burn the mist from the mountain tops. I cross the room silently and open the curtains to take a look at the day ahead…
Or, as it happens, the day already well alongside. Sunlight streams into the room, and we realise with a start that it’s already 0730hrs.
They’ll be serving breakfast. This will be our first since Saturday. And it’s marvellous. An antechamber of cyclists feasting upon muesli, granola, vegan yoghurts, fruit, smoothies, decaf coffees. All the natural enemies of the classic car community distilled into a single meal. We relish it. Evie and I swim through the throng and uncover a second breakfast room. Grander, quieter, almost ceremonial in its serenity. The furniture has the settled calm of beautiful things made to last: pale wooden chairs standing squarely beneath long tables; broad upholstered benches framing the windows, clean lines woven through a muted natural palette. It is interior design, rendered as meditation.
We sit and sup lattes. Beyond the glass, the mountains aren’t quite tranquil. They offer a different kind of stillness. The repose of a wild animal at rest. Beautiful, immense, utterly indifferent to us, and so very capable of turning. There is a cold threat of power in the calm, and the day ahead seemed to be waiting for us.
We lose an hour in awe, using caffeine and cereal to steel ourselves. Somewhere in the background, the burble of a TR6 firing on 5 cylinders floats in, but I’m not hearing that right now. At ten to nine, we finally exit the hotel.
TS2 has been outside in the rain overnight, and has the reproachful look of a wet cat about her. The roof has held up well, but we won’t be taking it off any time soon. More rain is expected within the hour, and it’s here for the day.
Evie bribes her with a few glugs of oil and tops up the water levels as we’ve dropped below the magic “half way up the filler arm” sweet point. With the side-screens installed, ease of access takes a considerable hit, but we make massive gains in boot space and can be quite laissez faire about what goes where.
Evie clambers into the driving seat, pats the leather trim of the door reassuringly. “Good morning, Darling” and we are on the road.
We almost make it out of the car-park before realising that the windscreen is going to immediately and repeatedly mist up if we drive without airflow. We stop, remove the side-screens, acknowledge we will now have to re-pack the boot, and finally set off. We grab fresh fuel on the way out of town. A sprinkling of rain floats down onto TS2, but she’s undeterred. Onwards!
After yesterday’s fairly torturous roads, Evie’s keen to have a longer stint at the wheel. We are weighing up the suggested route vs. the weather, and realising this could be another long one.
We are already in Austria… The cyclist in me understands the relationship between gradient and water. Could we follow rivers? I scan the map ahead. A thread of blue, thin as a vein, bouncing its way from Lienz to Dobbiaco: The Drava. It gathers the Rienza, and further on the Isarco. I don’t need a contour line to know what it means. Water finds the flattest ground. Given enough centuries, it carves the road for you. The Isarco carries on through Bolzano to meet the Adige, itself fed by the Passirio, which cleaves Merano and flows beneath our hotel window tonight. We could spend the whole day drifting through sleepy Austro-Italian towns, watching the landscape drain the skies, and give poor Darling a well-earned rest.
An hour later at San Candido, the rain arrives properly, but we are making good time. It blips in through the missing windows, and I’m soon soaked on the left side. Evie is faring equally badly, and has a matching set of rights.
At 1pm, we stop for a rest and some fuel.
As always, TS2 pulls a crowd, and we are soon getting our spirits lifted by a lady who enthuses over the car. She proudly tells us of owning the first BMW Z3 in the country, but reminisces fondly over the TR3 she’d had use of long before that. We trade stories outside the services, and she’s keen to read the blog.
Pulling on her dry robe to begin the final stint, Evie has already brought us within 35 km of Merano. We are well inside Italy already, and have a choice regards a quick toll road, or slower but more picturesque route. Given visibility is supported entirely by regularly wiping sleeves, socks, t-shirts, literally anything we have to hand over the inside of the windscreen whilst peering out through the raindrops on the outside, prettiness doesn’t really score high. We choose… poorly.
Mountain vistas give way to concrete walls. The toll-road is a mess. Traffic and chaos steal two hours from us, whilst we creep along in first. TS2 isn’t happy at the average 6kph we’ve been holding for over half an hour. She’s hot, and prone to cutting out on idle. It’s a mind fraying choreography of throttle, clutch and hand-brake. We know if she stops, she won’t want to go until she’s back under 188°F.
Unfortunately, the rain, trucks, ever-present nervousness of reliability, and gradient all conspire against Evie. The temperature is rising. It’s been an increasingly hard day. We are blind and seemingly eternally static in the queue to exit the toll when Evie announces “I’m done. You drive.”
A comedy of errors
Some challenges are forced upon us. Some challenges we create. TS2 decides we haven’t shown enough remorse for the weather and routing, and as soon as Evie gets out to swap places, she promptly cuts out. Immediately the camper van blinding our view to the front pulls forwards three car lengths, pays its ticket, and exits the toll plaza.
We are suddenly car number one, deep in the funnel of the toll approach, and head of a queue already frustrated by an hour at walking-pace. I quickly run around to the drivers side and try to coax TS2 back to life. She’s showing 195° on the gauge and has her arms folded resolutely. There’s no way she’s starting yet. Five, six, seven prolonged attempts on the button, each at a battery-sagging diminishing pitch. We’re running out of attempts. Evie valiantly pushes at the rear, but we aren’t moving. Change jobs! Swap back!!!
So, if you were the 4x4 behind us today, I hope you enjoyed your prime view of the comedy. Evie hops in, and I push recalcitrant car and driver up to the toll booth. In goes the ticket, “Get Ready!!!” comes the shout. Like a Le Mans flag marshall preparing to start the 24hrs race, I offer up my credit card…
Accepted. Go!!!! The light goes green, the barrier lifts as I run to the rear, shove with all I’ve got to get us under it before whatever sensor or timer installed gives up on us. We clear the boom moments before it drops, an executioner’s sword damning our pace. Evie steers for the safety of the far wall. We’re picking up speed. I’m almost running now, so shout “Bump start! Now!!!” Despite traffic now coming around from all sides, Evie hears me and intuitively does exactly what’s required. Ignition on, clutch down, second gear, clutch up, rev… and against her evident wishes, TS2 catches. I nearly fall on my face as TS2 carries Evie to the edge of the road.
By the time I reach them both, Evie’s understandably way beyond cooked. She’ll drive no further today, and sits motionless in neutral whilst holding TS2 at a safe 1100RPM. Considering the cumulative stress, the next few steps flow wordlessly. We operate as a well-practiced bomb disposal team.
I open the door, reach in with my hand, and fix the accelerator in position. Evie gently lifts her right foot, slides out of the seat, walks to the opposite side of the car, and reintroduces her foot from the passenger side. I ease into the driving seat without disturbing Evie’s position and apply matching pressure to the outside edge of the accelerator. Evie withdraws her leg, and our engine note is unchanged. TS2 doesn’t know we’ve swapped. I gently ease her into gear, and without noticing the change of seat position, she pulls away.
The next half-hour passes without any words.
Things cool. Evie’s smile returns. But the day isn’t quite done with us.
Traffic builds on the final approach to Merano. We circumnavigate the Aurora hotel twice trying to find the designated parking lot. The congestion in town is crazy. Evie phones the hotel reception to get directions, but it’s too much. We really need to stop. TS2 is hot again. Edging out into the path of a police car, we try to look less psychotic than we are feeling. Anywhere will do now. Getting funnelled into an underpass on the wrong side of the river, we spy a subterranean parking sign with “1 POSTO LIBERO” lit up and agree “That’ll do. We park here, find the surface, walk to the hotel, move the car later.”
Of course, it’s not that easy. The one assured space has a moped smack in the middle of it. Ever my saviour, Evie spies a family in the next aisle approaching their vehicle, and we quickly spin around for an approach. We line ourselves up for the spot. Of course, TS2 won’t idle without constant throttle input. If we stall, there’s no hope of securing the space or our sanity. I imagine we looked fairly threatening, sitting at the end of the row in semi-darkness, watching them load their shopping, revving. Bulbs glaring in the dark with the rising engine note.
Either way, they left. Evie ran to the space and stood guard whilst I parked.
When we finally reach reception, the lady on the desk asks if we had any issues locating the customer parking. Apparently it’s underground, and on the other side of the Passirio. Against the odds, we’ve abandoned TS2 in the only legitimate space on offer.
Some you win.
Becoming human
We check into our room, and opt to head into town to decompress. Merano is a curious mix of tourist tat and eye-wateringly expensive fashion, much of which is every bit as hideous as it is costly. The Italians appear to follow an inverse bell curve of style: clothes are either beautifully tailored or catastrophically awful. Nothing in between seems to exist. Nonetheless, Evie finds a few items to inform a ‘Tilly Masterson’ likeness ahead of tomorrow.
I ping Rob and Mark an exact pin, along with a description of where to park. By the time the others begin to arrive, Evie and I have recovered enough to be of use to the group again. It’s our fourth day of travelling independently from Rob and Mark, and we are surprised to find Rob has again managed to land an overnight space directly beside us.
The day has one more surprise in store: another team, Martyn and Carol, are also staying at our hotel. They, too, have been tripped up by the parking. Their MK2 GT6 is running perfectly well, but the arrival into Merano and the business of finding somewhere to put it have clearly taken their toll. They are having a hard time, so we invite them to join us for dinner.
Evie has taught me that nothing restores a person quite as quickly as helping someone else. She’s proven right again. Having spent the event being helped, we now find ourselves helping others. By the end of the evening, company has transformed the trials of the day into raucous anecdote.
