The GTS Chronicles - Getting Two/True Sportscars - Delivery Adventure - 2020-2023

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Friday, August 4th, 2023 - SwissItalia

A Final Foray Into the Alps

With the disaster of the lost camera bag fading away nicely, we awoke with fresh enthusiasm for the days ahead. We were in the picturesque country of Switzerland, with two beautiful Carmine Red Porsche sportscars, fully-broken in, and we were ready for some countryside cruising and a good dose of some heavy-duty twisties. Our "bag retrieval day" yesterday had deprived us of some planned good alpine twisties; but I had decided that we had enough time to make one last overnight dip into the Alps to get a final taste of mountain goodness.

Swiss Cleanup

After locating a self-serve spray wash to pretty up the Cayman and the Boxster (where we shared stalls with a forest green-ish 997-generation 911 turbo), and after popping into a corner store for some lunch picnic food, we charted a course generally southward through the Swiss countryside, initially staying off of the Autobahns and trying to experience the classic picturesque, quaint beauty of the Swiss countryside and its hamlets. And, if there was a curvier or twistier variation of road that revealed itself on the map display along the way, we chose to follow it. Classic road-trippin' exploration.

I chose a route that led southeast through the Toggenburg region - an area of rolling hills, meadows, and small towns. The town of Butschwil in particular was quite pretty, and we stopped here for a few car beauty shots in front of the local park and church.

Boxster in Swissland

Butschwil Stop

Historic Butschwil

Down the valley of Thur

St Peterzell

After crossing through the pleasant roads and countryside of the Toggenburg, we descended into the valley of the Rhine river - one of Europe's most famous waterways - and hopped on to the main E43 Autobahn, heading south. I was very familiar with this valley route, having done it many times on outdoor trips and car trips. It is a very logical, straightforward route to take to get from Southern Germany into the central Swiss Mountains and to Italy beyond.

The wide-valley bottom of the Rhine meant that the road here was a wide, dual-carriageway expressway, signed at the Swiss countrywide limit of 120km/hr (the standard limit for all twinned limited access highways in Switzerland). This was therefore perfect for the setting and forgetting of cruise control. It wasn't long before we reached the outskirts of the city of Chur - Switzerland's largest "in the mountains" city.

We did not stop in Chur, but instead continued up-valley. We branched south here, following the Hinterrhien, one of the two alpine branches of the Rhine river. The highway narrowed down to a regular oncoming two-lane as it climbed up into the increasingly alpine valley. In order to better experience the beauty of the valley, and a more fun driving road on top of that, we exited the limited access highway and started following the "original" valley road, which was much more twisty, much more intimate with the landscape. The valley bottom here had narrowed into a steep gorge, and the road wound and bent and crossed clever bridges above the rushing mountain flume of the Hinterrhein. Luke and I had been on this little stretch of road before; it was quite scenic.

Valley of the Hinterrhein

I had it in my mind to explore very special bit of twisty - very special to Luke and I, anyway. That section of twisty was just below a pass on the Swiss-Italian border called the Malojapass. I won't say too much about the Malojapass right now, but just wanted to introduce it. To position us to experience this much-loved twisty, we needed to find a place to stay overnight that was relatively close by.

Fortunately for us, between where we were and where we wanted to be in order to be where we needed to be early tomorrow morning (lots of w-words in that sentence), there was another great mountain pass route: the Splugenpass. The Splugenpass is an of out-of-the-way route that crosses from Switzerland into Italy. Much less-visited and used than the nearby and much-more well-known San Bernardino Pass. Luke and I were already familiar with this pass from our 2018 BMW M2 European Delivery adventure, and we knew it was good. It would be the perfect finish to our day, and would give us a chance to show our new crewmember (sorry, crew-chief) Hatko what a real sportscar is like on a "real" mountain road (and maybe to put him to work a bit, too).

GTS Chronicles ascending Splugenpass

A short way further up the valley road of the Hinterrhein, we reached the turnoff to the small side road that led up to the Splugenpass. Almost immediately we enjoyed well-paved set of hairpins that brought us up into a high hanging alpine valley, where the road flattened out for a while, heading directly south for the valley headwall and the pass at the top of it. After reaching almost to the head of the valley, the road, seemingly with no where to go, makes a fantastic ascent of the right-hand slopes, switching back and forth on perfect, almost rhythmic switchbacks. When viewed from the air, this section of road looks like a perfect drawing of a some sort of spring. Back-and-forth, back-and-forth. Although a bit narrow, the pavement is good and the sightlines are excellent, what with it being all entirely in alpine meadow. Disappointingly, there was more traffic than we expected, so we weren't able to fully charge up the switchbacks unimpeded.

Near the top, the road transitions from switchbacks to a traverse, ess-curving in and out of little hollows, before reaching the height of land - and the border with Italy - at the 2114m (6936ft) high Splugenpass. We stopped here for a break. I brought Hatko - with camera gear - to a good lookout over the spaghetti-like hairpins we just ascended, and instructed him to film and photo us. We then did an additional down-and-up run with the Porsches. Such mountain-road beauty must be captured!

Splugenpass

Splugenpass setup

Splugenpass twisties

Splugenpass Hairpins

Back and Forth

Shooting Debrief

Luke's Thoughts

[on the snaky Splugenpass...]

We reach some familiar roads from 2018, and drive right past the BMW dealership where we took Andrew's M2 for its first service. Somewhat fitting. Then it's time to climb into the mountains, via the Splügenpass which joined Switzerland in Italy. I remember it from last time. It's spectacular. Time now to spend a lot of time shooting video of the amazing esses and switchbacks. It's busy, traffic wise, for a while, but we just work on getting things set up for effective filming. Cameras, GoPros, tripods, mounts, etc. and pretty soon it thins out enough to do our runs.

Splugenpass stop

We continued south. Now in Italy, we started to descend into the Spluga Valley. The road on this side of the pass was as fun as the narrow spaghetti twisties had been on the Swiss side coming up, but of a much different character. The road was much wider, and with more infrastructure (railings, armco and such), and the nature of its twisties were different: less rhythmic and more a mix of different kinds of curves.

A few hairpins descended us down to a hamlet with strangely dilapidated buildings on the shore of a high-altitude reservoir. The road then flattened out as it skirted this reservoir, before starting another descent with another set of nice twisties. We stopped partway down this bit at a nice Punto Panoramico and had our mid-day picnic/lunch break. Hatko, being in his spare time a sort of ... what shall we call it ... a "foodie", had purchased and prepared us a little gourmet repast.

Valle Spluga picnic

Alpine picnic

Up to the Splugenpass

After our alpine picnic lunch, we continued south down the Val di Spluga. The next "step" downward in the valley necessitated a fairly rapid descent in the road, and here, it does it with gusto - a very tight - almost laughably tight - set of hairpins and twists dropped us down through forest - sometimes in short sections of tunnels. The hairpins in this section of road were so tight that you actually needed to use almost full-lock to make it around the turns. Any vehicle with any sort of longish length or wide width was going to have difficulty. Fortunately, the nimble and small platform of the Porsche 982-generation Cayman/Boxster had no problem with these turns. If any turns could be considered "first-gear" turns, these were.

Below the super-tight turns, the road again levelled out, and we trundled into a pretty little mountain town known as Campodolcino. Now, I haven't told you yet, but I had secured lodgings earlier in the day in this little town. The place I had found had been very reasonably-priced, and seemed to have good parking for our pretty cars. And, of course, we were not far from those twisties I told you about earlier. So, all was good, yes?

Sort of. As it turned out, we had a devil of a time finding the place.

So, the place on booking.com was listed as Ca' De Val - which at first glance was a rather generic name. But ok, Ca' De Val. Then I got a booking confirmation email that said that my booking was confirmed and that "Valdigiust" was expecting us. Valdigiust? What was that? Was that an alternate name?

Well, I figured, let's look at the address listed in the email: Via Don Romeo Ballerini. Hm. No address number. Just a street name. Well, I thought, maybe the street is so small, it'll be obvious.

Ca' de Val

Well, it wasn't. Between the confusing and changing naming, and the unspecific address, I couldn't find the location. We cruised up and down through the little town, but couldn't identify which of the buildings was our accommodation. I stopped and checked out google maps. How was it that I couldn't find a hotel that was clearly named on google maps?

I decided to fall back to the little thumbnail of the building in the booking email, which showed an orange taller-than-wider building. I thought ... "maybe I can match that to images in google street view". There weren't that many streets in this town, so I figured eventually I would find it. Street by street, I panned around.

Eventually, We found it. Turns out, the photo in the email matched one of the buildings behind the town's main church - a tall, narrow, orange building, situated right in the crook of a side street that hairpinned all the way around it. That in turn narrowed our focus and soon we realized that the building next to that building was *also* part of the same complex, and it was that other building which was the main one - the one you had to go into to check-in. That's part of what made it so difficult to line up with the details in the email. Wow. Never had such a difficult time finding a place before!

With the hunt now successfully over, we parked in the generous lower parking area, right behind the main church of the town, and went inside. A bit of basic Italian helped a lot, and soon we were guided to our room, which turned out to be located in that smaller, taller orange building. When we opened the door to our room, we were pleasantly surprised. It was actually a little suite, with two separate bedrooms and a little common area. Really quite generous for the 99 Euros (all inclusive, including taxes and fees) we paid amongst the three of us.

Checking in at Ca' de Val

We inquired at the front desk as to the "private parking", and I was given instructions to park in a small area between the upper and lower building. This turned out to be exceptionally nice for the cars, as it essentially amounted to a fully-protected private two-car spot. And it was steps away the bedroom windows of our little suite. Sweet! (Suite, Sweet - get it?)

Rock star parking

Safe in Campodolcino

GTS Chronicles at Campodolcino

Although there was a restaurant in the main building of the Ca' de Val, it was now too late and it had closed up for the evening. This was not an uncommon occurrence for The GTS Chronicles, and we quickly pivoted to the tried-and-true scan-the-map-and-walk-to-the-closest restaurant methodology. This landed us at a small pizzeria restaurant called La Cantina, perhaps a fifteen minute walk away from us along the town's main drag.

La Cantina

Dusk was approaching as we walked down the street towards the restaurant. The evening was damp, cloudy, and cool, and a slightly brisker walk helped stimulate the generation of heat to ward off the chills. The entrance to the restaurant immediately led downstairs, where it was actually quite busy and close. We noticed there was an outside patio area - a covered patio area - and even though we knew it would be a little cool, it seemed better than the crowded and stuffy lower dining area.

I'm fairly sure we ordered pizzas, and I'm fairly sure Mr. Hatko commented on the quality of said pizzas (as he is wont to do), but I don't remember the specifics, so I'll leave it at that. I do recall that the outside temperature was perhaps a touch too cool for comfort, sitting up here in our patio area, and also that the staff continually referred to us as the stranieri for some reason (the "foreigners"). I guess perhaps that meant that this was a place mostly frequented by locals, which is generally a good thing. I mean, I found my pizza to be pretty good, all things considered.

Roman Bridge Wave

In the dark of the fully-gathered evening, we walked back to our lodgings. There was a small mountain stream that bisected the center of the town, its rocky bed well below street grade and firmly constrained by high, sturdy stone walls. The main highway crosses over this mountain stream on a modern, standard type of bridge.

At the upper end of this straight tract of the river, just before it emerged from a gorge in the steep hillside, there was a really neat historic point of interest - an ancient stone-arched bridge, spanning the river. Clearly this bridge was the way people got across this watercourse in times of old. In fact, the bridge is apparently Roman in origin, meaning it must be at least 1,500 years old. It was only a few metres away from the building containing our suite, in fact, and it was a no-brainer to walk over to examine it. In the dark of the night that had now fallen, the bridge was lit up dramatically by some floodlights put in place by the town.

Check out the picture of Luke and Chris posing and waving from the center of the span. Spooky!

Luke's Thoughts

[on the day's drive...]

I don't fall asleep right away though as my brain is buzzing along accessing the memories from the day. One of the best ones for sure so far I think, the combination of good moods, some extensive fun filming, and of course those roads. Something I'm noticing is how the tires really come alive when they warm up a bit. Not that there is no grip when you first start off and they are cold, far from it, but there is definitely WAY more grip after you have been pushing it for a little bit. With every kilometre traveled, I'm getting more and more confident in the car, and in my driving. My inputs are getting smoother, and I'm feeling the reaction to those inputs instantaneously.

(to read more of Luke's thoughts from this day, check out his blog post)