Swiss Roadtrip!

By fletch Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

EDIT See Nicks brilliant pictures on dischord.

This weekend was brilliant. It began just after 3AM outside The Batcave (DJ Towers Underground Carpark Lair) where four awesome cars lined up, ready to set off on a 1600KM blast to Lausanne, Switzerland!

Let me introduce the teams in order of their arrival!

The hostess with the mostess was Mr Aaron Ross, who had absolutley hammered into me and Matt that we simply must not be late for the 3AM kick-off. The constant assurances that we’d be ready on time were met with mockery and derision. Even the fact that the starting point was our flat did nothing to strengthen our point and so it was with some considerable glee that he was the first to arrive LATE in his 745 at 3.04AM with Faz, Vicks and Asheley.

The gate didn’t even have time to descend before Sean and Rach arrived in Seans 3.0l Z4, hood-down of course! Both cars parked up next to Matts Z3MCoupe which Anastacia would be occupying with him.

Bringing up the rear came Nick Jones who’d been hit with the curse of tom-tom en route and as such was even later. The bacon butties kept everyone busy though and then the sight of a 5.0l V8 M5 pulling up behind us on the road (where we had all re-convined by this point) was more than enough to reprise his reputation. Clearly I jumped in, and we were off!

After a reasonably relaxed trip down to Dover we pulled over to get our papers in order, everyone sailing through customs and immigration except for, you guessed it, cousins Jones and Fletcher in the M5.

“Where are you going”
- Switzerland
“What for”
- Sightseeing
“Right. Is this your car?”
- Yeah
“How long have you had it?”
- Three months

All fairly standard we thought, until:

“Is that a combat jacket you’re wearing?”
- eh?
“That jacket”

Nick is wearing a hooded top, with a very vague sort of cammo design on it in light grey and a sort of orange.

- What’s a comba… [looks at me] what’s a combat jacket? it’s just a.. [pulls at top and inspects it] eh? It’s not.. What?
“On your way”

I thought we were about to be detained and anally probed. Luckily that was that.

The first couple of hundred miles were a mixture of ‘ments – excitement and disappointment. I was very excited because we were off across the continent in sports cars but a bit disappointed as well because France was grey, Belgium was grey and Germany was grey and wet. There was even a fair amount of traffic around – so much for the famous autobahns.

Looking back, it wasn’t exactly pissing it down and there was a good old amount of banter going on over the radios. I serenaded each car a number of times in order to ward off the rain and it’s not as if the speed limits on any of the roads really had much effect on us ;)

My favorite part of the journey down there was probably in the Z4. I drove it last after a sizable stint in the MCoupe and a blast in the M5.. but everything came together at once in the 4.

Top down, approaching the swiss border at dusk with a crazy russian at my side, a freezing 130MPH wind blasting an inch above our heads , tunes pumping out and heaters on full-blast. Awesome.

Friday evenings entertainment was a restaurant – where horse seemed to be the order of the day and I’ve got to say, it’s quite nice. Most of the crew hit the sack after that but Adam (who’d flown over from the north), Chris (driven over from Chamonix) and the DJ Towers posse (Anastacia, Cook and Myself) headed out to a club called “The Loft” where the early hours were drank and danced away. We had become at this point, a 15-strong posse!

When we all finally exited the Hotel at 1PM I decided to stay in Lausanne rather than go razzing around the mountains, so a few of us (including Swiss Andy from Montreal! Who’d made the trip over) went for a crepe, a walk around the lake and then hired a couple of speedboats! (Pictures here). It was wicked to see Andy again just shows you how easy it is to keep in touch if you can be arsed.

Fondue was the order of Saturday night and many many beers were consumed along with a ton of cheese. Punishments were handed out for anyone losing their bread in the bowl resulting in a couple of casualties – notably Tom and Rossa – who you will shortly be able to see on YouTube.

Again the evening ended in a club, underneath the towers of the cathedral. It should be no surprise that the 8AM planned meeting time was made only by Nick and Matt. The rest had, one way or another, slept through.

The journey back was good, beginning with a slightly manic edge due to the just very barely sober state of the drivers. Air horns were out of the window at every opportunity. The idea of the Nurburgring had been abandoned at breakfast so there was really no rush and we arrived at Calais at about 7.00PM, just missing the that ferry but in plenty of time for a priority boarding of the 8.00PM – straight into club class, where champagne and bloody marys abounded.

Brilliant. What else can I say, a quality weekend :) Check out the photos.

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Hello! Fletch.cx has been going since 1999 in one form or another, yep incredible, when will it end? For more of my bullshit see last.fm, lluckj.com, facebook and if you really want a constant avalanche of musings, observations and lies then follow me on twitter..