Paulo P

I did wonder about luggage space because the car looks like a good tourer apart from that. At least you've found a use for the rear seats now I always wondered what they were for because they don't look like you would even get kids in them.

Paul Eggleton

Fantastic trip, would love to do that. The mountain roads look immense

Porkie

iTrader: (1)

Cant believe I missed this!

what a wicked write up and great photos!!!!!!

awesome

Looks like you had a great time!

P.S take that fooking S badge of your car you mongoloid!

did your old Saff have an RS500 badge on it as well?

JjCoDeX75

Hi Porkie

Interestingly, we took the S badge off before I bought the car only to find the paint had not faded quite as much behind it, and it was also covering a very slight mark. So we put the bugger back on again!

Ill just have to drive it twice as hard to compensate

Porkie

iTrader: (1)

Cool

Just don't go to any PCGB meets with the S badge on... I've seen men killed for less!

You think some RSOC owners and people are petty and sad? well you ain't seen nothing yet!

by the way mate... the Pirellis you have are WANK! wait till you get some decent tyres on it... different car!

Michelin Cups if money no object and track alot
R888's are 99% as good as 99% cheaper!

or Michelin PS2s for an alrounder.

Pirellis if you are a chimp mine came with them on as well by the way! pooooo!

JjCoDeX75

Funny you should say that ref tyres, I have just priced up a set of PS2s which will be the next rubber!

Agree bout the cups, though they were absolute wank in the wet, and the the nurgy is my next track day in Oct - long way to go if it rains and u r on cups!

Ref the badge, I know u r right. I have a few marks on the car. Eventually I will need to get some of them sorted. When I do, I will prob get it whipped off at thr same time! I prefer the real 's' cars to know that they were just whipped by a std car!!!!

JJ

Porkie

iTrader: (1)

I got a full set of 19' PS2's for £400....

Sweeeeet

Will stick them on for the winter as the R888's do give me the heeeby geeeebys when there are huge puddles around!

Paul Eggleton

Where, where, where??????????

JjCoDeX75

Ditto! 400 is less than half what I am having to pay for std size!

Also, how are the 19s working out?

JJ

Porkie

iTrader: (1)

awesome thanks. Martoons arch roller didnt fit the stud pattern of hubs...

but his mallet was a perfect fit

Chip

iTrader: (3)

JjCoDeX75

ROFOL - Fair play chap! Any pics?

JJ

philram

iTrader: (3)

My new desktop..

JjCoDeX75

Cool

JJ

_DAN_

Brilliant read.

timb551

Come on JJ whens the next update, i itching to read it!

JjCoDeX75

Hi

Sorry - all the photos are at home, and I have had works dos both last night and tonight! I will be back on it tomorrow to finish, I promise!

JJ

rs shawn

Fantastic pics mate Even though it looks like it was worth it, I bet you spend a fair bit overall.

Look forward to part 6 or whatever it is...

Nicole

Wow, looks like an awesome road trip! And both you and Rachel look lovely as ever

I am also a little jealous as i love road trips

JjCoDeX75

Hi Nicole,

Long time no speak! Rach sends her love. How is life as an expecting mum? Hopefully Stu is spoiling u rotten!

More to follow on the thread soon!(I promise!)

JJ

JJ

Nicole

It's not what i expected it to be James as you know!! But it will all be worth it in approx 9-10 weeks!!! Very excited and scared!

Stu is a star, but then you would expect nothing less! He is coping with my hormone changes very well i must say!

rapidcossie

Looks lke an awesome experience!

NEEDFORSPEED

absolutely amazing! write up, pics everything good effort. would love to do this one day. extremely jelous!

vroooom ptssssh

Amazing! what a trip....pics are great also!

SS1

iTrader: (3)

FLAWLESS thats got to the best road trip on P/F

JjCoDeX75

Kind words from all. Nearly done the last bit - will release tomorrow, then all done!

JJ

JTECH James

iTrader: (13)

looks fun mate!

great write up and pics too

JjCoDeX75

Onward with the hols.

I have to say, the holiday was neatly divided into two main sections - week 1 which was all about the driving and the getting there, and week 2 which was all about where we were going. So the bulk of the car stuff by this point was really done. With that said, the places along the south coast of France were ace.

As soon as we hit the med, the clouds disappeared, and the temperature sky rocketed! We didnt see a day where the temperature dropped below 30 deg c. Hot enough for anyone!

Cannes


Cannes is only a very short trip from Monaco, lying just west of Nice. So after a leisure drive, we found ourself in the heart of the host of the legendary film festival.

We were only here for one night, and wanted to take as much in as we could.

The first visit to the beach was greeted with the view below -


Not our hotel, but a big ass one on the sea front (the Carlton)


In a nutshell - shit loads of big-ass boats!

This part of the beach is divided up into sections, each with a restaurant, followed by some seating on the beach, then the sea! It is kinda wierd. Each of these sections are allocated to one of the hotels, so walking down the beach is not really possible.

Rach and I saw through this little problem by cunningly spending a shit load of money on a meal in one of the beachside restaurants. There - that'll show em!



I have to say - the water was super clean, and really warm. Not anything like the water that surrouds our fair isle!




The cars around the Cannes area were not up to the overall level found at Monaco, but there was plenty of money around, and the below is just typical of the cars near the big hotels and shopping area...



The shot below is one last one of the beach and area - note the total lack of clouds!



Not really a great deal more to say about cannes to be honest - Rach loved it because there was much shopping and beaches. I kinda found it a bit boring.

With that said, Ninja Rach and I covertly managed to defy such laws and go for a paddle!




Antibes is a small town just East of Cannes, and we only day-tripped there. One of my regrets is that we didnt spend a little more time there. It was a tiny little walled town, surrounded by a newer town that should be ignored wherever possible.





The gem for the petrolheads (of the boating variety at least) was the marina however. I have never seen so many boats in one place at one time. It was astonishing!

Rach managed to find a boat she felt she could just about live with....


I suggested this one, which Rach suggested was a little more 'tender' sized!


And finally, for the man that absolutely has everything - note the helicopter wrapped on the back



A couple of snaps of the old town....






Avignon

From now on, I have to say they may look a little more like usual holiday snaps, so many may choose to sign off at this point, and I wouldnt blame them! For others - read on!

Soo after having endured about as much sun, sand, and beautiful people as anyone can possibly deal with, it was time to make our way slightly inland, but further west.

For those that dont know, Avignon is an ancient city with a fairly interesting history. Much of this would be fascinating to us all, but to be honest, Google and I suspect Wikepedia will provide a better job of explaining it all. So I will focus on the important bits.....

The road there....



The best thing about Avignon is that the old part of the town is surrounded by a fantastic city wall. Why is this fantastic? Because it allows you identify the shitty bits from the good bits! Keep inside the wall and all is good.





We stayed in a fabulous hotel. It was called the Hotel D'Europe. It was one of the older buildings in the town, and it got us the chance to actually experience something a little nicer than the average travel lodge type hotel. Once used by Napoleon so they said!

Best of all, they had a nice garage for the porsche! A good thing, because the French seem to take the definition of bumper rather literally.

The outside


The courtyard and breakfast area




The bedroom...




You will note the two doors either side of the bed that look like cupboards. The one on the left is actually to the bathroom! How cool eh!


JAMES' ATTEMPT AT AN ARTY SHOT -

crap eh!! LOL

Other hotel snaps





Some other piccies of the city.....


Some nice cafe type places near the hotel


Popes palace - massively impressive building to be honest! Kinda what you would expect all things considered.


Some posh looking building!


View from palace! Not bad eh!

Inside the city wall


Outside the city wall


The other noteworthy thing at Avignon is the half finished bridge - has an interesting story, but basically, the bit that isnt there any more was washed away by massive flooding. The river is the Rhone, which is a pretty impressive thing.






I have to say that Avignon is a pretty amazing place to visit, and I would recommend it. It is a very picturesque place, and truly lived up to the recommendations. If you are in the area - check it out, even if it is for a day trip!

After this, we then headed to a Gite (Self Catering Holiday Home) and hitched up with my folks and a couple of their close friends for a couple of days. By now, the weather had reached loony point - 30 degrees on the cooler days, and no wind whatever!

The Gite was dead impressive, and another opportunity for me to take snaps of the car! Hurrah! LOL











I also managed to minaturise Rachael to make the Fireplace look really massive!


The pool was pissing important, as the place didnt have air conditioning - This meant that alcohol was necessary to assist in sleeping!

Yet another James arty piccie

I call this "Red clouds and some stuff in the front"

We visited a place called Arles for the day, which can be found south of Nimes. Most interesting thing I can find to say about Arles is that it has this arena that looks a little like a mini-colluseum. Otherwise, it is kinda more of the same. Couple of photys!







The last part of our journey took us to a place called Narbonne. It is a funny place really - very clean, but not a lot there. There is a place by the sea that should be avoided at ALL COSTS! It has a beautiful beach, but they have pampered to the worst kind of tourists - the British!!!! LOL. It was unbelievably crappy.

With that said, I have to say, the road to the place was just stunning (one of the best we found for a quick blast!) And the jewel in the crown was a small Chateau that we fell across quite by accident. Sadly we didnt have the camera, so I cant really share with you this part of the holiday. This is the website for the chateau, which has many nice piccies to give you an idea though if you want to know!

http://www.gerard-bertrand.com/

Soo after a brief stay in a travel-lodge type hotel, it was time to pack the car up on to the train, complete with us! This was one of the most nervous times for me - handing over the keys to a complete stranger to load the car up onto the train!

I was very very scared, but so far as I can tell, they treated my baby with complete care and respect!

The car on the train.......


Rach enjoying the last of the sunshine!


The cabin was somewhat dated, but we had our own, it was airconditioned, and also, it had beds! What more do you need!





So there we go! After a quick breakfast, it was back on the Chunnel and back to Exeter!

Total mileage covered by the car - around 2,500 miles thereabouts

Total mileage by train (from Narbonne to Calais) - around 700 miles.

Total journey from Exeter to Exeter therefore around 3,200 miles! And every mile was fantastic!

Total cost.... - Dont ask! Too much!!!!
Total space occupied by photographs (so that you are all grateful that you were not subjected to all of the photos!!!!) 12Gb!

Thank you one and all for sharing in our experience!

The floor is now open for questions! ROFOL

Oooo - Special mention to Tiny Bear, our faithful companion who tirelessly guarded the car whilst we couldn't!

JJ

rsnissan

iTrader: (9)

great trip and write up just like Holiday 2008

.......just shows whats possible when you have a reliable car to do it in

respect for not going for a boring "traditional" break I am sure you will take away more experiences from this trip than you other wise would have!

Cossie Helen

iTrader: (1)

Really cool write up and photos

saff_cossie

An awesome write up, thank you. Really enjoyed reading it and looking at the pics, really well written too

Am currently entering the final week of a 3 week trip around America, will put some pics up when I get back if people want. Used to really enjoy Stu's trips too.

Very nice car too

JjCoDeX75

I look forward to it!!!!

JJ

groomers

very nice mate would love to do something along the lines of this some very nice photo's
as porkie said pcgb members can be very fooking anal not wanting to leave cars at the dealers or let anyone drive them etc
weirdly remember doing a used car check or pdi on yours whilst i was working at porsche think it may have been a demo at exeter as remember the reg for some reason!

JjCoDeX75

Good memory - it was originally the MD of the Exeter porsche branches car, so I guess that would be that!

For clarification - not a member of pcgb though! LOL

JJ

Charlie Chalk

iTrader: (1)

Awesome stuff mate, Very envious!

Steven_RW

Awesome write up - that sort of holiday must be ace.

I usually end up flying somewhere far away but have always wanted to take part in my own decent Eurotrip.

Cheers

RW

groomers

think it would have been the first turbo i drove properly so will prob always remember it!

Rides

iTrader: (1)

cool some very nice places... way better than a normal holiday.. deffo a good idea driving ? you say it cost too much.. but how does it compare to an normal holiday price wise?

JjCoDeX75

Hi mate

To be fair, a lot of the big costs were controllable - our route was pretty uncompromised, in particular the bit that went to Monaco. If you were to leave that bit out, the costs would have come down significantly.

Lessons learnt -

1. DO NOT BUY A LONG TERM RETURN TICKET WITH EUROTUNNEL!
We learnt this the hard way. Our return chunnel ticket cost us around £200 (or just under). I consequently learnt it was cheaper to buy two One day return tickets! This would have saved us in the region of £100!!!

If you do the above, make sure that you use two different cards to buy the tickets.

2. IF YOU ARE USING THE MOTORRAIL, BOOK EARLY, OR REALLY LATE
We found that basically the train that we originally wanted (which went via Avignon) filled up really quickly! This is a really popular service, and as such you cannot rely on there being last minute seats. With that said, if cost are more important, they do some very last minute deals to put bums on seats.

Our costs for the motorrail was around £460 - expensive, but the price is per car, and not per person.

3. Monaco - go with money in your pocket, and live with it, otherwise you will just not enjoy it.

Costs for Monaco bit alone (bear in mind this was for three nights and three days).

Hotel - £630 for three nights (bed only)
Typical meals - ranging between £30 and £45 per person for evening meals. Lunch typically £25 - £35 per person. This is assuming that you completely avoid the really expensive district (the bit around the Casino). If you venture there, then you can add at least one 0 to the cost, if not two!

Costs for the other hotels that we stayed in varied greatly, but generally you could average them out for about £100 per room per night. Also bear in mind that we were the freeloading guest at the Gite, so this cost nothing (thanks to parents and friends for their hospitality!)

Fuel costs varied depending on where we were! Got pretty terrible mileage at the ring! I would guess that we spent in the region of £500 on fuel, though this is not particularly scientific!

Sooooo this would summarise to (bear in mind guesses not fully accurate)

Accommodation (including Monaco) - £1,630
Fuel - £500
Transport (trains) - £660

Total £2,790

This I guess is the closest to the figure that you could compare to a usual holiday, which would have to include any car hire and fuel costs. So still expensive, but I would emphasise it could have been done quite a lot cheaper than that.

JJ