Qui Me Comitat Vincebit
Back to Back TOPS Touring
The Vernasca silver Flag Hill climb, 2004
(report 2003 is at the end)
The Trophees Historiques de Bourgogne Dijon
If you have a solution for why my pictures do not show on the website since changing to XL and 2000 please, please, let me know – that is the reason there are no pictures with this article – I can make them show with a hyperlink but not without clicking on them. Help needed! email: (Trisha) Tops@topsclub.com.
Wednesday 31 June…We set
off from Wales at the crack of dawn with Llewelyn’s new toy in the trailer
(Cooper T45) for the mid-day ferry from Dover, owing to slight detour as the
motorway connecting the M25 and M20 closed, we missed the boat so we were
running late to connect up with rest of TOPS Touring Team, Trisha & Richard
in the Monza Alfa, Alannah & Kirk Rylands in XK 140, Sandy & Chris
Wilson in a Lancia Stratos and new tourees Lucy & Clive Robertson in their
pretty AC Ace Bristol …We met up with them all at a Restaurant recommended by
Nicole and Bernard Bonoron our hosts at The Château de Beauregard who joined us
along with a couple of their friends who lived nearby in an even bigger
Château….The food was fantastic starting with a local speciality of eggs
poached in wine from the region on a light potato crust and a reduced wine
sauce that was awe inspiring (poached eggs will never be the same again!) The
evening was punctuated by very loud banging which apparently was a large wild
boar sow who seemed to live in the farmhouse behind the restaurant….we returned
to the Château and much needed sleep…
Thursday 1 July….After a wonderful breakfast in the Family dining room, we compared route maps and set off for Switzerland,. our next overnight stop. The Pilks having deposited their luggage in the tow vehicle owing to problems with fumes, from the engine not their clothes! Skirting round Beaune we set off along lovely yellow roads….After an unusually late (for Trisha) coffee stop we arrived at the French/Swiss border at a small crossing at La Cure; with a lake side stop agreed for lunch, we waved the rest through as we had to stop on the French side and open the trailer for the Gendarmes to look inside. The FIA papers for the Cooper were due to meet up with us via Martin Grant Peterkin at Dijon so JVL produced all the documentation that came with the car when bought through Bonhams the previous Autumn (advertised in the brochure as tax paid on import from Australia). An over zealous lady Gendarme found a small entry for tax paid on the invoice of 00.00…aha…..could we prove that the tax had been paid as we were about to take the car out of the EEC?...so a phone call to Bonhams from the little glass hut…they were about as much help as an attack of boils…no-one seemed to have a clue or know anyone who had a clue, we were passed from one young man to another with no sense of urgency…then they all went out to lunch…we were kept in the glass customs hut for 5 hours…at one point someone from Bonhams faxed out a totally illegible document, which when confronted with this fact said that it was illegible before they sent it!!.. Madame La Gendarme eventually wanted to go home so we were given our passports and all our paperwork back and sent onto the main Douane in Geneva…we had to take the long way round so as not to leave France. I left John to do battle (one glass hut a day is enough for me!)..After about an hour he returned triumphant…having first been told that they had shut for the day JVL looked crestfallen (I must say crestfallen at that point would not have been my expression!)…another lady Gendarme took pity on him and disappeared with the illegible fax and went over it with a magnifying glass, highlighting some numbers she found, and seemed happy to suppose that that was the TAX PAID…at last, some 7 hours later we were free to go on our way…..we stopped near the Mont Blanc tunnel in one of those wonderful French hotels where they tile the floors and carpet the walls, had a delicious meal and pondered the Pilks luggage!
Friday 2 July…we did the Mont Blanc tunnel and blasted down the Italian motorway to catch up with the rest at our hotel just out of Piacenza and reunite Trisha and Richard with their luggage. Nick Rossi in his Jaguar C type had joined the party at the overnight stop at the Italian border, which we had missed….Having just unhitched the trailer and dropped our bags in our room we were off on the weekends activities which started with a visit to Veleia Romana. In it’s day this had been a flourishing community bordering on Parma, Piacenza, Liberna and Lucca…standing round the ruins in the searing heat drove quite a few of us inside the small, cool and fascinating little museum and then the church which had a floor tapestry up the length of the isle…our tour guide was a pretty little Italian girl who spoke so fast that you wondered if she ever came up for air!.. we retired to the bar for Parma ham, salami and Frizanti. The evening meal was at an outside café nearby….Pasta , Parma ham and more Frizanti, this had to be cut short by a sprint indoors when the heavens opened. We met up with the rest of the TOPS group - 3 Duncans and Roger Deans plus Barry Cannell, Graham Burrows, David White and various friends who had already done their own rally (didn’t trust Trisha!) and were due to fly home after this event and then out again for Dijon with different cars.
Saturday 3 July…The day started overcast and humid as we made our way to Castell’Arquato, the start point for the hill climb. The run, a demonstration, is 8 kms. The first 4 being on the flat and level with some tiny chicanes strategically placed to slow you down before the sharp lefthander in the village of Lugagnano then climbing the last 4 kms made up almost entirely of hairpin bends, to finish in the square at Vernasca. Parking was at a premium but TOPS had a pre-designated area, ….as the day got hotter we retired for the lunch provided by the organisers in a beautiful garden restaurant up - literaly!! in the village.. we had slight difficulty in finding it owing to too many navigators…
There was to be one run in the afternoon and as the Cooper has only one seat I hitched a ride as shotgun with Rossi in the C type, a fun ride, we only knocked over one bollard - must try harder tomorrow and see how many more!..
The Gala Dinner was in the fabulous setting of the square at the top of the narrow streets in Castell’Arquato. With the swallows diving above our heads we got started on the Frizanti..again. While we ate pasta and various different hams and salamis we were entertained by a group of people dressed in medieval costume and musicians playing strange looking instruments, they were joined by a jester and a juggler who I must say was brilliant, what he couldn’t do with a Diablo wasn’t worth writing on a postage stamp…the diablo’s got smaller and he threw them higher and higher, then he moved on to six glowing balls! All of which he seemed to keep in his codpiece!..so that’s what it’s for!!! This was followed with the prize giving, a novelty to have it before the event…Clive and Lucy kept the TOPS end up by winning a prize for dressing in costume suited to the date of their car or maybe just being there…At about midnight we left with the Wilsons before the final two courses arrived and stopped at a lively bar on a crossroads en route to the hotel for a Grappa. We were quickly joined by the Pilks, Rylands and the Prize winners who said that we missed the juggling with fire and sword swallowing! Damn…The party pooper was Rossi who shot across the junction and disappeared into the night (dreaming of bollards!).
Sunday 4 July…Very hot, but thankfully not too early a start. It is such a wonderfully laid back event that just seems to happen…The first run produced lots of squealing of tyres and scattering of bollards -.lunch was up in Vernasca, the square of which soon became a sea of red!.. Then back down the hill to wait in the heat for the second run…on the final run my driver seems to have got the hang of the bends, much to the enthusiasm and encouragement of the crowd…a cool beer in the square at the top whilst waiting for the rest of the entry of some 180…the return down quickly reverted into a race with several short cuts being taken. Supper at the hotel with Pimm’s provided by Clive and mixers (whatever could be found) by Kirk, the Pimm’s and iced tea was interesting but I don’t think Pimm’s and coke will catch on - I hope!..Then Nick Rossi produced a small bottle of bright yellow liquid made by the monks in the monastery next door, it was 90’ proof!!! It was good for any sort of digestive problem known to man, cleaning engine parts or paint stripping…the monastery is a silent order or maybe they just lost the ability to speak through too much yellow liquid. After dinner we declined the offer of more Yellow liquid but a young English chap at another table took down a whole shot in one! He sort of took on a glazed expression and said very little for the rest of the evening. We did not see him the next morning.
Monday 5 July…Lucy and Clive left early to head for home…we resumed communications with Bonhams, as the only person who knew anything about tax was back from holiday (in Italy funnily enough)....we were to cross into Switzerland the next morning so a bit more proof would be useful. Heading for Lake Como we all got separated in deviations, but we spotted the others just in time to stop at a truckers café for lunch. The hotel in Varenna, on Lake Como, was beautiful with views of the water from ones’ balcony, although parking four classic cars, an Isuzu and trailer was obviously too much for the hotel staff and traffic warden, after much back and forth, a serious sense of humour failure being narrowly averted, we had a most enjoyable evening on the lakeside.
Tuesday 6 July…Taking the ferry across the Lake we headed up into the mountains and Douane, fingers crossed. Clutching a letter of authority we were not even stopped!..Onward and upward over the St. Gottard Pass, all but the trailer combination took the old road to the top. Setting off then into the mist we missed the official route and ended up doing the Susten Pass instead of the Furka and Grimsel Passes. I must say, however, for future reference, the Susten is a spectacular drive. We ended up lunching separately from the rest by some half a mile…Regrouped we blasted along the motorway to Bern and Biel, then took a lovely alpine route to the border at Goumois, sailing through both sets of customs, we somehow managed to get ahead of the party and arrive first. The Hotel must have sussed us out as they put us in an ante-room for dinner, which was delicious and noisy.
Wednesday 7 July…Rossi departed for home to prepare his 1750 Alfa for Phoenix Park. Sadly the one day Trisha had organised a leisurely, picturesque drive it poured with rain most of the time with hail stones the size of golf balls...we were smugly glad to be in a tow vehicle. Arriving back at Château de Beauregard in time to deposit TOPS motorhome and the Wilson big red truck at the circuit just north of Dijon. After a luxurious bath we were entertained to dinner by Nicole and Bernard, the language barrier diminishing the more wine taken onboard, Bernard describing Kirk as ‘Toujours le Bouffon’ meaning always the joker.
Thursday 8 July…Alannah and Kirk left for what turned out to be a very wet drive home. We decamped to the circuit, via a huge supermarket shop, to put up awnings, bag space and erect TOPS flag, which done in a high wind is interesting in anyone’s language. Tania arrived with her Cooper and we supped in the nearby village.
Friday 9 July…Weather brighter but still cold. The paddock had filled up considerably since the night before, mostly British, it was more like an away day from Silverstone than a meeting in France! There were practice sessions for the Coopers and the McLaren from our camp. After a barbeque at the track we made our way back to our hotel near Dijon.
Saturday 10 July.. Practice for all who didn’t the day before, then an excellent lunch provided by Stella of the HGPCA in the Wilson big red truck...Racing, for us, stopped abruptly with clutch failure on the Cooper just two laps into the race, there was much encouragement for a paddock repair but as it was having other problems John put the new toy back in it’s box. Tony Bianchi broke the steering wheel on the Allard Farrellac but managed to find a friendly welder and he and Alex Boswell managed to finish the Sports Challenge race. There were quite a few cars that had to be taken home for a Summer rebuild, one particularly squashed one was the Lola T70 Spider of Richard Styles (who had t-boned Pilk in the Wilson Ferrari in SA.). The day’s racing finished with the Gentleman Drivers GT and Sports Endurance. Another TOPS barbeque in the cold, thank goodness for the Vernasca RoadMap fleece!! The Wilsons, John and I departed late to try to remember where our hotels were, leaving the Pilks to turn in, only to be disturbed by the Boswell/Bianchi rival barbeque with Charlie Dean in tow obviously looking for mischief. Apparently the rest of the evening degenerated into a cherry stone spitting contest against the back of our trailer, which was won by C. Dean Esq. after a stewards appeal into difference of height, the other finalist in this mamouth E distance spitting event being Tony Bianchi. There was definitely an unusual patina on the tail gate the next morning and stones everywhere! I can see a new TOPS Challenge evolving, please no-one suggest avocados!
Sunday 11 July…The temperature perked up a bit. John and I arrived just as the Top Hat Touring Race finished and in time to catch Richard out in the Talbot Lago in the Voitures de Sport race for cars only with drum brakes, ably won by Bianci in the Allard, second place going to an Aston Martin whose drum brakes apparently bore a remarkable resemblance to discs, so I overheard. (He was later disqualified which left Pilk 3rd) after Adrian vd Kroft. After another ample lunch we stayed to watch Chris and Richard in the Group 4 Sporting Challenge said our goodbyes and headed for the coast. The others had another barbeque - this time with the vd Kroft’s and Nuthall’s team
Monday 12 July…Caught a morning ferry and eventually arrived back in Wales, late afternoon.
I
must say you need stamina to do a back to back TOPS tour, we won’t weaken, more
please.
C. I’A
Vernasca - 8th Silver Flag Historic
Hillclimb
13th – 15th June, 2003
Being
tired of towing and too idle to drive HWM 1 all that way, we left Crookdake at
8 a.m. the Sunday before and drove our XK 140 420 miles and straight onto the
3.15 Dover/Calais ferry without even stopping on the dock as we followed the
Pilk’s Frazer Nash on board. A
comfortable night at Béthune then a long day before a really good stop in a
secluded Alpine village at Wolfach, south of Strasbourg. We were heading for Torri del Benaco on Lake
Garda but by the ‘scenic route’ which caused the XK to boil over a minor pass
and so we approached the Timmelsjoch Pass at 8000 feet with some apprehension
but there were far fewer large Germans dawdling along in corpulent cars so we
had no trouble keeping the needle below 90.
The solid walls of snow right down to the edge of the road probably
helped. We arrived at Torri at about
8.30 p.m. feeling pretty used up. We
expected heat but not 100+. John
Venables-Llewelyn was there to greet us with a large beer, he and Carolyn
having towed the P3. Lake Garda was fun
for a couple of days but it was a little warm for us northerners.
The
event started on Friday afternoon with a visit to a museum in Piacenza which
had its moments – an interesting collection of arms and armour and a great
collection of horse-drawn carriages but the pictures were a little stolid. Dinner was at a re-created mediaeval village
which didn’t really look much different from many Italian hill villages until
we discovered a bicycle made for six and a fascinating collection of old farm
machinery which the girls sadly missed due to their unseemly haste to ‘get
their feet in the trough’.
The
refreshingly laid back approach to the whole show was beginning to be
appreciated as we had to sign-on and be scrutineered any time between 9 and
12. The range of cars was considerable
and much wider than we usually see.
There was a beautifully made baby Ferrari fifties GP car with a Fiat 500
engine that went very well.
The
oldest car was a 1913 Bébé Peugeot and the youngest a 1992 Maserati. Plenty of Abarths, Alfas, Lancias, Ferraris
and so on. Not many Jaguars but a nice
C type replica that was beautifully turned out but wouldn’t have fooled a blind
man on a galloping horse. Showing an
interest, I asked the Swiss owner who had made it. ‘Jaguar I hope’ was his
sharp reply.
After
a good lunch with plenty of wine, we had our first run up the 5½ mile hill
which runs between Castell’ Arquato and Vernasca. The first two miles are pretty flat and the quick boys in single
seaters and Le Mans Porsches etc. were pulling 160+ between chicanes. The instructions suggest an average speed of
35 kph (22 mph) but nothing is timed and so the authorities seemed happy with
the Policia entered in an old Alfa Giulia TI police car.
It
was 110 in the shade on Saturday and after our trundle, we returned to our
air-conditioned hotel to prepare for the Gala Dinner which was beautifully set
out in the mediaeval town square.
Having
waited ages, food did arrive but after two sorts of pasta and ‘prosciutto’, so did
a very strong wind which blew bottles and glasses off the tables and really
raised the dust. Then the cabaret – the
mother and father of a thunder storm which cleared the square in seconds. It was like a scene from a Fellini movie
with sheet lightening, forked lightening and tremendous crashes of thunder
right overhead. We thought it great fun
and grabbed a few bottles before sheltering under the arches to watch the fun
but for all practical purposes, that was the end of dinner though some
retreated to a restaurant for the main course.
Sunday
was almost cool at about 90 and after a leisurely start, we had a run up the
hill before lunch in Vernasca and another run after lunch before the
prize-giving at 4 pm. Various people
got prizes for reasons none of us understood or indeed cared about but John
V-Ll deservedly got a prize for bringing his glorious P3 all that way, breaking
a half-shaft on the line at this first attempt but fitting a new one and giving
the crowd a thrill with his other two runs.
The man with the ‘1953’ plastic C type also got a prize but we know not
why and Corrado had three even though he was not at the prize-giving and had
not done the last climb. It was sad
that John Fitzpatrick who had shipped his ex-Summers Delage all the way from
Australia for the event was not acknowledged – so we all had to drown his/our
sorrows later on.
All
the TOPS members were very well looked after with three nights (free) in a
decent hotel plus all the food and booze and very friendly people. Good fun and no hassle – pity a few more of
you didn’t come.
With
both us and the Pilks needing to get home, we set off at 9 on Monday morning
and headed for the St. Gotthard Pass, 7000 feet, and after 526 miles that day,
spent the night in Arlon, just north of Luxembourg, then 657 miles back to
Cumbria on Tuesday – a fair days march in an old car. Home to home, we clocked up 2811 miles but 800 of those were in
the UK.
JKR
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