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Nothing handles like a rental - Monte Carlo and bust !


theduisbergkid
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Full story and more pics here > Nothing handles like a rental – Monte Carlo and bust! « Suck Squeeze Bang Blow +++

If you want something enough, you can find a way to justify it, just apply some man-maths and away you go. In my case the something was an epic hoon similar to last year’s Stelvio trip and my man-maths calculation went as follows :

( EasyJet + Rentalcar + €20 to reduce insurance excess to zero x 24 hours) is less than (Eurotunnel + 3000Km drive + inevitable damage to my own car x 4 days.)

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EasyJet from Stansted to Nice is simple enough, collecting a car when wearing a t-shirt with the slogan ‘nothing handles like a rental’ less so, but after downgrading from a Ka to a Twingo (when in Rome) Dr Octane and I escaped Nice airport and headed for the hills, followed by a rag-tag bunch of fellow man-mathematicians with real names I cannot reveal due to a super-injunction.

We stopped at the foot of Col de Turini to fit the V-Box Cameras to the rented Twingo. Mr Tipex stopped to apply some vinyl stripes to his own rental car, instantly turning into a hot ‘Gordini’ version. The Col de Turini runs up rather overgrown mountainsides, meaning that you focus on the endless switchbacks, instead of gawping at the med far below. The roads were deserted and the VBox recorded a max speed of 46 MPH on this ‘stage’, a little way short of the WRC boys, but they aren’t saddled with 75 BHP of screaming French diesel. The peak is 1607m and noticeably colder than the coast, after a quick stop for some narcotic strength coffee, we headed further inland.

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Next up was the Col St Martin. Slightly faster roads, still climbing, past some impressive old gun emplacements which seemed to be facing the opposite direction to Germany for reasons best known to French military tacticians. We only saw one other car up there, a UK plated Elise steaming past us the other way. Steaming as in driven quickly, not steaming as in K series failure, for the record.

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Our original plan had been to attempt the Col de la Bonnette, Europe’s highest road, a few metres higher than Stelvio. Unfortunately it was closed so we headed east and took the Col de Cayolle that runs roughly parallel to it, and at 2326m, nearly a kilometer higher than the mountain we’d just driven up (!) At this point, TomTom’s optimistic ETA at our Hotel for the night was exposed as pure electronic fantasy. When the total distance to destination is nearly three times the distance as the crow flies, you know you’re in for some switchbacks, and so it proved. Dr Octane and I taking it in turns to drive hard and make each other honk, climbing utterly deserted mountain roads, understeering into every hairpin and smoking the tyres out of them.

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The VBox is a great bit of kit. It starts recording to the SD card when you move off or press the start/stop button, has one low-res camera inside the cabin, one high-res forward facing camera and two mikes. One capturing the screaming engine and tyres, the other the screaming driver. You can tailor the system to record your position on a given circuit / road together with any number of other features such as speed, RPM, G force and so on. OK, shameless plug over, back to the Col de Cayolle.

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The summit was postcard-perfect, but as the temperature plummeted (20c colder than when we left Nice) and the light started to fail we barely had time to stop. Above the treeline and with snow almost encroaching on the road the early start and hard drive started to tell. The final descent into Barcelonnette was recorded on the V-Box, a fast drive on a single lane road down steep sided canyon, over tiny bridges with 90 degree approach angles, as the light faded and the ‘Bond Themes’ CD repeated itself for the third time that day. Did we make it in time for a beer ? No. We made it in time for 2 beers and a pizza topped with what the menu described as ‘rape cheese’.

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After another early start the cars were looking almost as knackered as we were. We couldn’t hang about though, after the previous day playing at WRC drivers, we were off to Monte Carlo to play at being F1 drivers. Back up the Col de Cayolle as the sun rose over the mountains was mesmerising, so mesmerising that we nearly had a head-on with startled looking Gendarmerie driving a Police car the other way on the single track road. If that wasn’t enough we nearly collected a bonnet ornament in the form of a large animal that looked like a cross between an otter and Sandy Toksvig. Over the peak we stopped for a group photo, at which point the Twingo’s dash illuminated with ‘le spanneur electronique du merde’, and refused to start as the other guys smoked off down the valley without us. The ballbags. After some swearing we finally got on the move, our route helpfully marked by bits of trim that had fallen off the other guy’s cars.

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There is no way I would want to risk my own P&J in these mountains, the scenery may have been a Geologist’s wet dream, but lumps of granite are to tyres what hot coals are to bare feet and you’re a long way from help up there.

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Driving down the Gorges de Daluis, with tight one-way tunnels cut into the red rock mountainside, we came across Billy2shots and his mate who were struggling with their crippled 3 wheeled Fiesta. Shortly afterwards we caught up with the rest of the group, who were struggling to extinguish a rented VW Polo. The other cars were equally ugly, a Ford Ka that had been offroading, another tatty Twingo like ours, a Peugeot 207 and a particularly hideous creation called ‘Peugeot 206 Plus’, which is the old 206 with a 207’s face grafted on to it. The cars, like Sangria, that Greek dance and Pedalos were great in the sunny Med, but you don’t want to be doing it back in blighty.

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A liberal interpretation of the speed limits back to the coast found us entering Monte Carlo. Dr Octane committing an act of road-rage so funny I laughed so much I nearly rear-ended a Porsche. In response to a local with no road manners he adopted a faux-frog accent, opened a window and shouted “Ferk You! You an’ your 5 brozzers make zer sex with zer tortoise! AT ZER SAME TIME!” :roflmao:

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We had intended to meet in Casino square but the top-hatted concierge waved us on, so we parked up in the harbour and for a glorious moment pretended we were obscenely wealthy and owned one of the massive yachts. With the Monaco GP due to start shortly the barriers and grandstands were all in place so with Murray Walker in my head I set off for a few laps. Dodging the hypercars and mopeds was challenging enough but a bejewelled über-cougar being dragged onto the track, sorry, road, by an inbred dog really dented my progress. Lewis doesn’t have this trouble. Despite hitting 86 out of the famous tunnel (KPH, sadly, not MPH), my best effort was just under 9 minutes. The whole circuit is incredibly narrow, with turns like the Grand Hotel hairpin very tight in a Twingo, let alone a GP car. As always there were some awesome cars on display, sadly none of them will ever be used to anything like their full potential. A white McMerc SLR with Russian plates driven by a leather-faced lothario with a barely legal blonde in the passenger seat kind of summed the place up.

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€43 of gazole filled the Twingo, we gave the cars back to the bemused rental office staff, checked in and flew home. The whole jaunt including flights, hotel, car, booze, fuel and baguettes come to well under £200. We had some feedback following our previous ‘nothing handles like a rental’ trips ( Abarths at Applecross and Stelvio), asking for a few pointers, so…

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Start with the flight. For the cheapest flights book with SleazyJet or Ryanscare, fly mid-week and out of season which will not only keep costs down but ensure the roads are quiet when you arrive. Take only hand baggage and decline the airline’s insurance and overpriced coffee. Book a car from any of the big companies in increments of 24 hours, and make sure you use your allotted time, ie book to pick up at 1500, return at 1450. If you run just 5 minutes over your 24 hour slot you will be charged an extra day. They will not guarantee a particular Make/Model but if you get an early arrival they can sometimes swap it for something less **** than a Peugeot if you ask nicely. There is a way it can be done, but I’m not telling you lot how, sorry. Take the extra insurance. Your car will get battle scars on these roads and the rental companies will dry bum you when they find the damage. Make sure you return the car full of fuel and ask for a final invoice on the spot when you return it to avoid any nasty charges later. Then look at your route. www.alpineroads.com is excellent for ideas, Google maps is pretty good (and will help you find a Hotel in the right spot) and you can use Streetview to plan your photo stops in advance. Remember the weather might be crap up the mountains and that Hotels in places like Monaco will be cripplingly expensive, so stay out of town and near a bar. Above all, remember, nothing handles like a rental.

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When I got home the current Mrs Duisberg was fawning over a £200 handbag she had just bought because “it’s a nice colour”. Apparently ‘wimmins-logic’ trumps ‘man-maths’.

The Duisberg Kid, May 2011.

Going mental in a rental were : The Duisberg Kid, Dr “I’m on a WRC stage” Octane, Omi (who took the most awesome pics), Fizz, Billy2Shots, Tipex avec Gordini stripes, Gay Luke, Straight Luke and crazy bastard Osama. Please destroy all evidence. Thanks chaps.

Edited by theduisbergkid
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Ta. My bloody camera packed up but fortunately Omi took some utterly breathtaking shots to go wiv da wurdz wot i dun rote. Not much time for a piss-up as usual, maybe that was a good thing, some hard driving at speed on both days needed a clear head. :eclipse:

Col de Turini was fun, col de la Cayolle was biblical, easily better than Stelvio. Col de la Bonnette was re-opened on the day we left and is definitely unfinished business. I'll be headed back there this year as I need another Alpine fix. :crackpipe:

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Love the write up, sounds like cracking fun, would love to do something like this, money's not the issue, it's convincing the wife to let me leave her with the kids for a few days :(

Man up Stoo, we left home Monday morning and were home Tuesday evening, just tel her you're nipping to the shops ;)

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That quick eh?

Hmm, wonder if I can convince her i'm being sent to the med on work :)

ps - you've not met my wife, wolf in sheeps clothing, quiet and timid around people she doesn't know. Psycho at home.

I hope I didn't leave this logged in on the home PC :uhoh:

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