Anniv8a

The hotel at Monchengladbach was comfortable and we had a good night. We made a very leisurely departure the following morning to the Meilenwerk Classic Car storage facility in Düsseldorf, having been there before on a previous JEC trip. It was still an eye-watering experience seeing all those wonderful classic cars and particularly the XKSS Jaguar, registration 4XK. It was then only a short journey to the DB Autozug terminal for the overnight train to take us to Villach in Southern Austria. A late lunch in the hotel nearby and a very long wait to load the car then ensued. Loading was finally completed and we set off, mostly following the Rhine for the first part of the journey.

The compartments in the train were “compact”, but functional and we particularly appreciated the small bottles of wine supplied as part of the service. Suitably fortified, we had a pleasant dinner in the restaurant car and then retired for the night. I felt like an acrobat after having clambered up the ladder to my bunk: and what a hard bed! I don’t think any of us slept particularly well and it was quite a shock to be disgorged at Villach at 07.00 hrs into the bitter cold of a glorious sunny day. I gather that this is a skiing area and at quite a high altitude.

We were away very promptly after disembarkation and our first stop was at the service station on the A1 motorway just inside Slovenia. I had already obtained a motorway “vignette” for Austria (purchased on the Internet from home) and we now needed one for Slovenia. The weather was improving nicely and we seemed to be making excellent progress. However, it was not to last as we soon became stuck in very heavy traffic. After being stationary for some time, I decided to get out and put the hood down. It took over an hour for the traffic to clear and start to flow again. The sight of me sitting in my bright red Daimler convertible wearing my Panama hat and listening to twenties music, resulted in some smiles from our fellow travellers. We later discovered that some of the others in our group were held up for much longer than us.

From this point on, we didn’t see any of the other tour cars until we reached the hotel on the beautiful island of KRK. The journey was relaxed and most enjoyable. We saw a couple of British registered MGs travelling in the opposite direction at one stage. The wind got up towards the end of the journey and the car was well coated in salt spray as we went round the bay, shortly before crossing the bridge to the island. It was rather a surprise to find so much traffic on the roads, particularly on the island. It is clearly a very popular holiday destination judging by the number of foreign registered cars, caravans and camper vans.