Our map showed an interesting twisting road. We lost count of the first gear hairpins. One bend required a five point turn to get the TC around. It was a worry, the road was narrow, one car width in places, crumbling away at the edge, often with no guard rail and a sheer drop of hundreds of feet. It was like driving up a staircase. Views of the lake would have been stupendous if we’d had the courage to look. It’s an easy hop from Lake Garda to Gabicce Mare on the Adriatic coast for the MG European Event of the Year. Two hundred cars converged for the event from as far afield as Finland and Denmark. Three cars were shipped from Queensland Australia - an L type, a J3 and a TD. For six days all the cars drove in convoy on long runs either down the coast or inland on circuitous routes. Sadly, the L type broke down on the first day (universal joint on the prop-shaft rear). The nearest we have come to being in control of an L type was at the end of our tow-rope. Mountains and hot weather have a way of exposing overheating problems, even in the modern MGF and its derivatives. Medieval politics and an overwhelming desire for good defensive positions mean that most interesting Medieval villages and towns are located at the top of these mountains/hills. Boiling water and hot oil used to be chucked down on the enemy; the same two substances caused a lot of problems for MGs struggling up these hills. We’ve never driven before in such close convoy escorted by BMW police motorbike outriders with a police Lamborghini lead safety car. After the event we carried on to Rome, a must to avoid in a car. We camped just off the outer ring road and took a train to the city centre. In Rome, driving is gladiatorial. A green light to 3 lanes of traffic means "on my command, unleash hell". Nothing and no-one is safe. Do they have such a thing as a driving test in Italy? My money says not. Road signage can be pure fiction, tarmac surfaces poor. Whatever Italy spends its money on, it isn’t road maintenance. We escaped with a ding in the TC driver door, courtesy of a supermarket car park.
We did the usual tourist stuff – the Vatican, Colosseum, Trevi Fountain etc. We continued along the tourist trail to Pompeii and the Amalfi coast. Pompeii turned out to be much larger than expected; it takes a full day to get round it all. The people of Pompeii forgot Golden Rule One of volcanoes – there is no such thing as an extinct volcano. The Pompeii that was destroyed was a prosperous town with many large luxurious villas, beautifully frescoed and with mosaic floors. The modern town of Pompeii surrounds the old with camp sites, cafes, street markets, hawkers, touts, tour buses, hotels and heat. Litter is as ubiquitous here as anywhere in Italy along with graffiti (yes, even in Old Pompeii). In fact, Italy is the most graffiti-ridden country we have ever seen. A disenfranchised youth with a can of spray paint is hard pushed to find a decent bit of wall to deface these days. The Amalfi coast is a tour-de-force of natural beauty and human ingenuity. Villages cling desperately to precipitous cliff faces, narrow roads twist and twine, barely wide enough for one car at times. Sparkling azure sea dotted with expensive motor launches, tiny sand coves and exclusive hotels make the Amalfi coast a playground for the rich. The sheer quantity of tour buses negate any need for speed reduction measures. The drive to the port of Brindisi was a hot and sticky affair, the ferry to Patras in Greece crowded, the Med like a millpond. If Italy was hot, Greece was scorching. Shade was as precious as cool water. Olympia, the site of the first Olympic Games, was the highspot of Greece for us. The Olympic torch is still lit and starts its journey from here. We saw much of the coastline of the Peleponese dotted with pebbly beaches alongside beautifully crystal clear sea. Travelling in the TC in heat gets to be a sticky affair when the air temperature tops 34C. It’s at this point that the temperature in the footwell reaches 50C. It’s obvious that Greece has social and economic problems resulting from vast debt levels. It has the air of a second world country, a siesta state struggling out of a peasant economy and wanting to be taken seriously. As well as the copious amounts of litter, air pollution - especially in Athens - hangs like an opaque ochre wash across the landscape. The Acropolis was barely worth the effort of getting into a strike-ridden city on public transport through filthy, congested streets. We also learned that Greeks don’t talk to each other, they shout. Has anyone explained to them the difference between a mobile phone and a megaphone? The Parthenon atop the hill of Acropolis is a major tourist trap, a modern building site with overhead cranes repairing weather-damaged stone, crowds of hot frustrated tourists being encouraged to keep moving along designated paths. The museum adjacent to the Acropolis is entirely different, air-conditioned, large and airy, full of incredible artifacts, statues and friezes, built atop a glass floor revealing excavations of civilizations older than the Athenians. This museum was worth the effort. Our drive north and west through mountains towards Igoumenitsa and the ferry back to Ancona in Italy showed us a quieter, rural Greece with wonderful hilltop villages. It is too hot and the ground too stony and dry to grow crops; goats and sheep dominate the landscape. Sheep and goat milk products, olives and olive oil, plus dried fruit must comprise most of Greece’s exports. Up in the mountains donkeys are still a common means of transport, people still practice a shepherd economy.
Our ferry docked in Ancona in a downpour. We’d had a minor problem with a snapped bolt on the clutch chain. Bob much preferred the bit of wire that had served as a temporary repair prior to finding a welder. A couple of miles from the ferry terminal, in torrential rain, on a busy 4 lane highway, the weld gave way. Bob reverted to the bit of wire. This bit of wire held firm all the way back home. Our route took us back up the Adriatic coast to Venice (astonishing), back through the Italian Alps via Brescia and the Mille Miglia museum, then over the Stelvio Pass and Rambo Pass into Austria. Both passes are serious driving routes and not for the faint hearted. Our route through clean and tidy Austria took us to Lermoos, where we stumbled across and became entangled with the Arlberg rally. The TC rubbed shoulders with Lagondas, gull-wing Mercedes, Jaguars and other exotic motor cars.
We picked up the Romantica Strasse in Southern Germany, a quiet road winding through pretty gingerbread and Pinnochio villages set in rolling verdant farming country where crops of solar panels are nearly as common as fields of strawberries. This part of Germany is off the tourist radar, which is inexplicable. Our route home took us through Frankfurt to see our MG friends Dieter and Shinae Wagner. They have a superb cycle wing TC with a sweet-running engine (as you would expect from a well-engineered German restoration). The two cars came together for a Sunday car rally held at the old Opel factory grounds. Over 2000 cars of all marques turn up each year with a good representation by the German MG car club. It’s unlikely that our two TCs will meet up again if our next big trip comes to fruition in 2011. The TC got us home and did us proud, apart from the snapped clutch chain bolt. After all, the bolt was 62 years old so we couldn’t expect anything else but metal fatigue. Our TC has also covered 110,000 miles since restoration in 2000, so ten out of ten for TC 6834. Lynne Douglas |
