This is a bit late to appear after all of the excellent reports so far but this is down to the fact that the Irish "convoy" only landed in Rosslare this morning. For us the event really began on Monday 25th May when the outbound ferry trip set sail for Cherbourg. These are the cars waiting for the security check before commencing the long drive south to Dijon to meet up with the English "convoy".
First pit stop for fuel.
The trip to Dijon took some time because of varying cruising speeds and heavy traffic around Paris. In fact we didnt arrive until after dark around 10.30pm when after quick hellos it was straight to bed ready for an early start the next day.
Tuesday the 26th was a highlight for me as it was the first time travelling in a group of 131s and as the weather was perfect and in ever improving scenery, the anticipation of the event just grew larger. Especially as we knew that later in the day the 4 cars would become 8 as we planned to meet Albert and the German convoy later that day south of the Alps before continuing south to Torino and the birth place of the Fiat 131.
In this garage we fitted the excellent event plaques prepared in advance for all participants by Theo.
We got some great shots of the cars as we swapped positions on the Auto route. Despite giving away some 70/75 bhp to the Sport and Abarth I was very pleased with how my "weedy" 1300 twin cam kept up with the other cars even on the long inclines - Easily accelerating up to 140/150 km/h when asked.
Check out the overhead sign..
Before climbing to the Mont Blanc tunnel...
Having gone through the tunnel and now in Italy...