after nineteen hours of driving from calais, with a stop over night in dijon and a variety of twiddling we’ve arrived in Morzine in the french alps, about 70km outside geneva and sitting at about 1500m we’re sat drinking coffee in a snowy wonderland.

the journey was generally uneventful, the first day was almost completely driven in the rain but day two of the drive, Dijon to Morzine via some of the most fantatsic tunnels was much better with warm sunshine and amazing viustas over valleys and mountain ranges.
the samba generally behaved itself, the only real problems being the lack of clearance between the fonrt arches and the huge snowtyres meaning that unless the road were perefectly smooth paul had to sit in the back and entertain himslef with the huge array of stills cameras, video cameras, digital gear, camera clamps, lasers and computers we seem to havre brough t with us.

the oher problem is a bit of a leak from the flywheel oil seal, about a litre every 2-300 km, it’s not a problem so far, it just means that there’s a bity of oil contamination in the clutch causing clutch slip in higher gears.

all in all it was a fairly easy journey, we even had heating for the journey!

the last section of the journey after we turned off the autoroute, (about 20kms short of the MOnt blanc tunnel – signposted for TURIN!!!(how tempting is that ??)) ran through the lower sections of the tourist industry and little villages looking very cute in the snow, then higher in LesGets and getting into really snowy territory and rather vertical. i bought snow chains on the way down at one of the service stations but they werent neccessary, the road was generally clear and as the sun was still high the risk of ice was minimal.

rolling into morzine was an unbelievable feeling. I came here in the summer and to see it again covered in snow rather than all green is wonderful. the feeling of parking up and looking back at VWSP97, my race car ! is hilarious….

wth some runnign around to find accomodation we weresettled in and the bus parked, awaiting the first covering of snow.

roll on new year !

🙂