Embrun to Moutiers - 153 miles
Anyone who has read this far is probably getting very bored of my American-style cheesiness and I'm afraid there was more today - sorry about that.
Today was the start of proper alpine hairpins and twisty mountain roads. The day started off cloudy which kept it cool, then a bit of drizzle and then full sun, with the temperature reaching 31 degC.
Beauty and the Beast both had problems today; the Beast continued to boil its gearbox oil so there were a couple of stops for this:
...and I had a problem with Zedster's bash plate. It covers the protruding bellhousing and has always been pretty rubbish; it was very difficult getting rivnuts into the chassis rail under the car when I only have axle stands. They don't get the car up high enough to give you the leverage to use the rivnut tool properly, so they've never been in well. Looks like one bolt vibrated out of one side and the other fell out the chassis rail, rivnut and all, so the plate was hanging on with the 2 bolts on the other side but it had dropped down and was scraping on the road.
I didn't have any spare bolts so the old, faithful gaffer tape was brought out:
This worked a bit but gaffer tape never works well with heat, so the plate kept dropping down a little; I had to push it back up at every stop. I'll try find a garage tomorrow and see if I can scrounge a couple of bolts which will do until I get home.
The rest of the day was glorious, flying along twisty roads with HUGE drops to one side; so huge that you couldn't see the bottom; it felt like you were driving on the rim of a bottomless pit. The views were amazing - proper mountains are so impressive and the top of one pass still had chunks of ice on the side of the road.
Towards the end of the day, we came up behind a trio of German Renault fans (who knew?), two Clios and a wonderful sounding 80s Renault 5 GT turbo. All had roll cages and were certainly not stock - we chased them for the next 10 miles; me just being able to keep up and the Beast chomping at the bit to get past me and fill their mirrors. The road was narrow and twisty as hell; it was brilliant and exhausting fun.
With so many hairpins today, I have almost perfected my rear wheel slide and there were a couple of them I actually drifted round sideways, smoke from the tyres (well, a little). These Avons are so bad that they let go quite easily...
The hotel in Moustiers was a welcome sight - I was knackered.
Map of the route:
Video of the day:
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