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

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Saturday, July 29, 2023 - Castle Goodbye, Brian Hello

A Brown-Connell Swapover, and a stay at a Flower-Power Rifugio

I awoke early after a great sleep in our kingly suite at the Castello Malaspina. Luke and Andy were still sound asleep. I wanted to get a little photo processing done before the day started. Outside, the sun was just rising, and the view out of the window over the nearby terra-cotta rooftops of Gambaro - and the old church's bell tower, was sublime.

Santi Pietro e Colombano

Grand bedroom

My compatriots were up and ready for breakfast by 7 a.m., and we headed down into the dining hall of the Castle. It was beautifully refinished, with dark brown wooden beams in the ceiling, smooth finish on walls and a colourful dado band on all four walls, and up and over the entranceways and windows. Three small coats-of-arms or family crests were mounted on the far wall. Laid out before us was a table full of fresh continental breakfast items; the other tables were carefully laid out with linen, plates, cutlery, breads and jams.

Castle Breakfast

Valentino and Clara tended to us as we had our breakfast. There was friendly banter amongst all of us, and much gesticulating and voicing of appreciation of the great hospitality we were being shown, and of the wonderful structure we were in. We learned quite a bit about the castle as we ate; Clara was a former high school teacher of history, and knew much about the history of the area and of the castle. It was explained to us that the castle was first built in the 15th century, and control over it transitioned from noble family to noble family over the centuries: The Malaspina, the Nicelli, the Sforza, the Landi di Rivalta, and the Bacigalupi family (some of the coats of arms of these families were the ones hung on the dining room wall above our heads).

Luke's Thoughts

[on breaking fast like a knight...]

I wake up in the morning early after another solid sleep. That's two nights in a row and part of it I put down to the utter silence both camping and 'castleing'. We breakfast in a giant room that has me picturing a raucous group of mediaeval knights. We are hardly that, but we do manage a nice chat with the owners. They really do have something special here, and so we spend some time soaking it all in.

The castle then became a seat of office for various powers, at times a commissioner's office, at other times a town hall (for Napoleon, no less), a then a municipal seat for Dukes, and then finally ownership by members of the nearby town of Ferriere. From there it became a farm and then was gradually abandoned, and fell into a state of disrepair. And then one day, Valentino saw an internet ad where the castle had been put up for sale, and he and Clara decided to take the plunge: buy and then refurbish the castle, and open it as a boutique hotel and as a place to host art and cultural events. Valentino explained how it took six years and more than a million Euros (I'm probably lowballing that number) to reconstruct collapsed roofs, broken walls, and upgrade and retrofit modern electrical and plumbing. And then all of the final refinishing, woodworking. It sounded exhausting. An amazing achievement.

Castello di Gambaro

Generally, I had been trying to be organized and to get away earlier with each subsequent day of our trip, but here at the Castello Malaspina, I decided to make an exception. This was such a location of beauty, history, and uniqueness that we felt it worth a bit of extra time to absorb.

So, we spent a bit more time exploring the castle and its immediate environs, both inside and out. I really wanted a good record of this beautiful place - its architecture, quality of restoration, the records of history hung on the walls, and on its shelves, the surrounding buildings in the little hamlet of Gambaro. All of it.

Spacious hallway

Storia di Castello

Entrance Table

Back Courtyard

Regional Plaque

Front Facade

Castello from behind

Castello and Chiesa

Tower against Hills

After completing another outdoor walkaround of the castle and surrounding area, I asked Valentino if it would be ok to position the cars of The GTS Chronicles near the main entrance and then take some aerial shots with our drone. He graciously agreed.

Castello from Above

Carmine against Stone

Earlier during the morning, I had been poking around a bit more near the back part of the castle. I noticed a secondary entrance - which was open - that had what looked like a welcome table and guest book just inside. I asked Valentino about that and he said that this was the entrance to the exhibition/gallery part of the castle. And he offered to show it to us.

We followed him through the door, into the lower bowels of the castle, where various cellar rooms of various sizes and shapes had all been restored, save for one small section. In the restored areas, natural wood flooring had been installed and attractive lighting had been wired up. The rooms did have some art on the walls and some artifacts on display, including some historical clothing that apparently had been hand-made by Clara (she was a historical clothing buff as well). When the area has art events, they are sometimes held in these areas. Very impressive.

Art in the cellar

Beautiful basement state

Untouched chambers

Medieval Clothing

Artrooms Guest Book

On the way out, after finishing with the cellar tour, I left a note in the guest book. Something to commemorate the visitation of The GTS Chronicles to Castello Malaspina di Gambaro:

Andrew, Luke, and Andy:

Very interesting, very authentic, very hospitable - many, many thanks!

(gtschronicles.com)
July 29, 2023

Our extended morning visit started to approach lunchtime, and we really needed to be heading off, especially since we had a hard deadline to pick up Brian, who would be re-joining us for the next phase of the road trip. We loaded all of our gear and clothes back into the Cayman and Boxster. It was now time to delicately make our way down the steep entranceway, past the tricky change in angle with the lower laneway.

We started off with the Boxster. Luke felt more comfortable letting me do it (perhaps my previous desert rock-crawling experience?), and so I spent a few moments re-surveying the lay of the entranceway, before hopping into his car.

Luke's Thoughts

[on reversing from a Castle...]

From here it's time to carefully back down the castle driveway to avoid 'scrapeage' and be on our way. I'm definitely not yet comfortable with the dimensions of the car, and once again my nervousness comes to play, and I end up getting Andrew to back the Boxster down the driveway to safety. Need to work on my gumption!

I decided it would be less risky if we went backwards down the laneway. The ramp angle at the back of the 718 is much more forgiving than at the front, and this way, any possible grazing of the front lip would be in the backwards direction, from underneath (and therefore much less likely to score the visible part of the front lip). I adopted a pose I often use in 4x4 rock-crawling, which was a half-in/half-out of the seat pose, with my head up and over the side of the car, where I could directly view the ground and front and rear wheels. Slowly, we inched the Boxster down into the laneway without incident. I then repeated the process with the Cayman, choosing a slightly different angle that was actually a bit worse - I grazed the front lip just ever so slightly at one point. But given the reverse direction, the touch point was restricted to the flat underside of the lip, and there was no visible scoring.

GTS Chronicles at the Castello

Careful Backout

Valentino and the Chronicles

And that was that! The cars of The GTS Chronicles were safely back on public roadway, packed and ready to go. We shook hands and profusely thanked Valentino, who had come down from the castle entrance to watch the careful maneuvering of the GTSes. He had shown friendliness and trust and hospitality to a degree I had not often seen. I promised to send him some pictures and share my account of our visit (in fact, if you are reading this right now, Valentino - grazie mille, ancora!).

As a final footnote, I am somewhat sad to report that - as of November of 2023 - The Castello Malaspina di Gambaro is no longer hosting visitors for overnight stays. Apparently they had simply grown weary of the work involved and had decided to retire; a sort of "second retirement", you could say, since they both had had careers before taking up castle restoration and hotelier-ing. I am a touch sad that I will likely never stay overnight in this wonderful building again, but am very glad that I got the chance to experience doing so this one time. Perhaps if I am in the area again someday, I will stop by and say hi to Valentino and Clara again - maybe bring them a little gift from Canada. I hear maple syrup is a very popular delicacy in Italy.

Departing the Castle

Radios fired up and comms checks completed, we slowly drove away from the Castle and the little hamlet of Gambaro. There were some particularly juicy-looking mountain roads just to the south of us, but reluctantly, I had to turn north. We had a 4pm appointment to meet with Brian at the train station in the Po valley town of Tortona, and seeing as it was now almost noon, we could not spare the time.

We drove north, down the now familiar stretch of the SS654 between Gambaro and Ferriere (we had driven this four times now, twice in the Porsches and twice in Valentino's little Fiat Panda). We passed by the entrance road to the excellent Chalet Rocca dei Folli Pizzeria. In Ferriere, the only town of any size in this part of the valley, we parked briefly and did a little snack stock-up at the local supermarket. We then headed out of town, headed northwest on the SP50, which would take us about a quarter of the way towards Tortona.

Bye Bye Castello

Valley of the Nure

Northwest on SP50

The day was sunny and warm; the traffic on the SP50 light. The landscape continued as it had for much of the last few days - modestly-high wooded mountains, with patches of farmland in the valley bottoms. Had I planned a bit better, we probably could have charted routes that took us to the highest peaks along the crest of the Apennine Range, where there would be more dramatic scenery and some genuine alpine terrain, but it simply had not worked out that way, thus far. Part of it had to do with overly-optimistic assumptions on my part, coupled with sluggish, tardy morning starts.

Curves of the SP50

The SP50 was a fun road. Mostly it curved moderately as climbed up to the low saddle of the Passo del Mercatello (elev 1060m / 3424ft), then traversed along northwestward, maintaining roughly the same altitude while curving in and out along the sloping mountainsides. Although decently paved, the SP50 was rather narrow; along many stretches I would consider it one-and-a-half lanes wide, rather than two lanes wide. Mostly there were good sightlines and this wasn't an issue, but there were a few turns where staying right on the edge of the pavement was required if there was oncoming traffic. Fortunately, there was very little traffic, so this did not happen often.

After about half an hour of pleasant curvy driving, the SP50 finished its long traverse, descending down to the bottom of a prominent valley at the town of Marsaglia. We stayed in the valley bottom for a bit here, following the SS45 north to the next town - the town of Bobbio. The highway through here was much more arterial - although still curvy - following the twists and turns of the deeply entrenched Trebbia River. Arterial meant more traffic, and mostly we couldn't experience the handling prowess of the Boxster and Cayman GTSes along here.

Castelcanafurone

Open farmland twisties

At Bobbio we left the busy SS45 behind, turning west and following a couple of different - sometimes quite narrow - highways up to the Passo Vallette di Ceci, at a fairly high 3750ft / 1150m elevation (at least for this area). From here we turned north, starting a nice higher altitude traverse, sometimes in a bit of open grassy landscape. I was aiming for a stretch along the side of 1250m-high Monte Alpe. There was a road here I had identified in my "good roads" database that seemed fairly intriguing.

Luke's Thoughts

[on being the tail gunner...]

I'm enjoying being Andrew's tail-end-charlie (something that is my usual position on most of our jaunts) - given how practically identical our cars are, it's comforting to see Andrew rip through a particular set of corners knowing that if he can do it so can I!

The car is starting to 'unlock' to me, as I get more and more comfortable with how it feels under my inputs. It is shrinking around me, and feeling nimbler and nimbler the more we drive. The power and braking are both quite staggering, but it's the transitions from left to right that have me grinning the most. It's as nimble at least as the S2000 but more composed, and I can feel my confidence growing.

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

The highway - now designated the SS641 - started a long traversing descent of the wooded slopes of Monte Penice and Monte Alpe. The roadway here was definitely wider, and beautifully-paved, too. Well-defined marker lines, tidy verges. And some really good curves. Since it was a traversing route, the curves were mostly of the back-and-forth in-and-out variety. Some were nicely sharp, and others more sweeping in nature. The forest itself was often fairly open, meaning that we had fairly decent sightlines. The only downside was a moderate amount of traffic, including cyclists, where we had to exercise some extra care. The degree of care was slightly a point of argument with Andy - who, as an avid cyclist - has a strong affinity for pro-cycling behavior (don't get me wrong, we did not crowd out or carelessly blast past cyclists).

Roadside lunch

Partway down this excellent road, in a steeply sloping area of open forest, we came across a nice picnic area. The parking for this area was a bit narrow, necessitating careful maneuvering to get the cars off the roadway and not scraping on the steep ground. I did unfortunately manage to slightly scrape my front lip here, but fortunately not to any degree that one would notice it from farther away than a foot.

Picnic time

We broke out our recent supermarket snack purchases here, fixing ourselves up a nice batch of Panini sandwiches, all the while watching the traffic zoom up and down the roadway below us. It seemed that most of the volume today was from recreational traffic - primarily sportbikes and cyclists. I suppose it was a nice-weather summer weekend day, so probably not too surprising, especially given how nice this stretch of road is.

After lunch, I decided that this would be a good spot to do a little automotive action shooting. The location of the picnic area was such that we could see a fair bit of the highway both uphill and downhill of us, and some of the sightlines from up here nicely lined up with a view directly down a snaking stretch of the roadway. And since we were already out of the cars and I had my camera gear handy, we were already basically "set up".

Spirited Driving

I had a little consult session with Andy, explaining what kind of sequence I wanted to capture, what settings I wanted to use, and from which direction we'd be coming. Luke and I then hopped into the cars and we headed a short way up the highway. At the next higher pullout, we turned around (after waiting for a suitable gap in traffic) and then did a sporty run downhill and along the curvy bits below the picnic area. Hopefully Andy had caught that!

Turns out, he had indeed (captured the footage I had envisioned), and soon we were motoring away from the picnic spot, completing the last bit of descent along the SS461, reaching the town of Varzi. We had now reached the bottom of the valley - the valley of another Apennine Mountain stream - the Torrente Staffora. And, like many we had seen so far, it was a gravel-choked trickle of water. At some point (maybe in spring, most assuredly in big storms) these lazy little waterways must become raging torrents. Hm - perhaps that is the etymology of the word "torrent"? Let's look that up ... yep - sure is:

torr·ent
Origin: late 16th century: from French, from Italian torrente, from Latin torrent- 'boiling, roaring', from torrere 'parch, scorch'.

Farmlands of Lombardy

Now running parallel to the banks of the Torrente Staffora, the SS461 completely changed in character. No longer a winding forest road, it was now a placid and mildly curvy valley way where one could use cruise control. On the right side of the valley, the landscape had transformed to gentle, rolling fields of green and gold.

The landscape continued to mellow as we continued northwest down the SS461. The Apennines were melting away into the wide, flat valley of the Po.

At the town of Rivanazzano Terme, the foothills had entirely disappeared and a wide, flat plain stretched away to the north. We turned west here, now only a few short kilometres from the city of Tortona, where we would be meeting up with Brian.

Crew Swap-over in Tortona

We had chosen Tortona as a meeting point for a number of reasons - it was somewhat along our planned itinerary, and it was on the major rail route that runs between Milan and Genoa. That meant it was well-served by lots of trains and was well-connected with the larger European rail network. Brian's particular train was going to arrive around 4pm. We pulled into the plaza in front of the main train station at about 3:40pm, giving us plenty of time to park and wander over to the station platforms.

Tortona Swapover

The 4pm train soon glided into the station, and shortly thereafter a relaxed-looking Brian - fresh off the saddle from a bike trip around Lake Constance on the German-Swiss border - walked up towards us. We held another ceremonial passing-of-the-camera from Andy to Brian, signifying an official GTS Chronicles crewmember swapover. Andy was now free to go!

While Andy made busy with a ticket kiosk (he was now going to do a little solo travelling before heading back to Canada), we brought Brian up to speed on all that had happened since he had left us back in Leipzig. Oh my, Leipzig! That was so, so long ago - eons in our minds. Countless interesting events, thousands of kilometres of interesting and often spectacular roads - in spectacular cars - had transpired. We told him of the stormy weather of the Dolomites; our Venetian lunchstop; the Senna memorial; the crossing of the Rubicon; the Porsche car-camping; and, of course, the wonderful stay at the Malaspina Castle. And a ton of other little events, of course. And to think - we were only halfway through our trip at this point! What further adventures would come our way?

To the Foggy, Flower-power Rifugio Pratorondo

It was time to move on. Andy had his ticket now, for the next northbound train to Milan, and we had to find ourselves a place to stay. I took out the laptop and did some searching. I thought, we hadn't been to a rifugio in a while.

Instead of scanning through travelocity or booking.com, I instead panned google maps over the section of Apennine mountains to the south of us. I've found if one sufficiently zooms in, you can see icons representing the various mountain huts ... ah yes, here we go: Rifugio Casa Giumenta, Rifugio Monte Beigua, Rifugio Pratorondo, Rifugio Argentea. There were lots of them, really. It was simply a matter of finding one that was (a) along a paved road, and (b) had availability.

The Rifugio Argentea didn't have a paved access road ... the Monte Beigua seemed more like a restaurant than a place with rooms ... ok, on to the Rifugio Pratorondo: paved road, check. Rooms, yes - double-bed rooms, quadruple-bed rooms, dorm rooms. 23 beds in total. Hmm.. decent size. Normal pricing. ok, let's give'em a call. A voice on the other end answered. I asked for disponibilità per tre, and ... yes. Yes, yes, they had room! And dinner from 7 to 8pm. Done, and locked-in. The Rifugio Pratorondo: our destination for the night of July 29.

High speed on the plains

A quick check with google maps revealed that the on-road distance from the train station to the rifugio was seventy-five kilometres. It was now 4:30pm. This seemed quite doable, but not if we dallied. We waved a final goodbye to Andy, and headed back out to the Porsches. A quick stop at a gas station (after our near-empty experience back in the Dolomites, we were better now about doing top-ups when we were down in populated areas), and then we headed off south.

Helping us immensely, the first half of our 75-kilometer drive to the rifugio was on divided Autostrada, where we could comfortably cruise at the 130km/hr speed limit, or even a touch higher.

It took us only twenty minutes to cover the first forty of those seventy-five kilometers. We were already starting to re-enter the foothills of the mountains when we exited the E25 near the town of Ovada. From here, we drove on a secondary road essentially underneath the autostrada for a few kilometres, then turned off onto a winding, narrow side valley that led upwards.

The rifugio was situated right on the crest-line of the Apennines, near the summit of nearly-4000 foot / 1100m- high Monte Beigua. From the satellite view, it seemed like it was just high enough to sport some sub-alpine meadows. It probably had a view of the Mediterranean Sea! I was looking forward to that. Maybe we could have a nice sunset walk after dinner.

But first, we had to get up to that summit. The route was a mix of different highways, all strung together by google maps. These were small little backway highways, but highways they were, with Strada Provinciale designations. In places the roadway was quite wide and generally quite curvy and fun, and rowing up and down through the slick gearbox of our GTSes was a joy. In other sections the roadway was narrower and a patchwork of repaired pavement. Still, good enough for our purposes.

At one branch, the way was not obvious; the better roadway continued off straight and the side road - which was the correct way to go - was small, rougher, and had one of those big red circle "O" signs, which usually means "no vehicular traffic", except if you read the fine print, which said "in case of snow". Not to mention that there was no signage for the rifugio or of Monte Beigua. Needless to say I missed this turnoff, which incurred a little bit of delay and backtracking. However, once on the proper branch, I felt pretty confident. There were no more turnoff or junctions, all the way from here to the rifugio. Our timing was looking perfect: it was 6:53pm, and we had only about four kilometres of driving left to go.

The road that led us uphill along this final stretch was a narrow one-and-a-half lane wide strip that had seen better days, with the classic crumbling and tiled cracking you see in old pavement. It had a bit of a long-forgotten feel. Surprising that this actually carried a provincial highway designation (the SP57).

Spooky summit fog

Thus far, it had been a warm and sunny day. But as we continued to gain elevation and as we neared the peak of Monte Beigua, we could see mist ahead - thick mist. I knew immediately what this was: it wasn't mist per se. It was a cap of cloud, no doubt from the warm sea air that was flowing up from the mediterranean, over the summit, and condensing.

In moments we were fully in this cloud cap. It enveloped the terrain. The bright day turned dim, then downright dark. We had to turn our headlights on, and we could barely see more than ten or twenty metres ahead. This was full-on pea-soup territory.

On this narrow road, with crumbly pavement and near-zero visibility, we inched along slowly. This was starting to feel like a remote backcountry adventure, rather than a happy sportscar drive in the mountains. It was a slightly anxious feeling. What if I had made some sort of navigational mistake?

First and foremost, regardless of anxiety, this was pretty damn cool. It was hours before sunset and it felt like the dead of night. The thick cloud turned the surrounding forest - which consisted entirely of smooth-barked beech or birch trees, into a close, silent, spooky room. Sounds were muffled. Everything was damp.

Ghostly Rifugio

We inched along at a walking pace. The road had now flattened out now, meaning that we had reached the crest of Monte Beigua massif. We still saw no sign of the rifugio, even though google maps now reported it as being less than a hundred metres away.

The road curved to the right, and then ... a slight brightening of the gloom on the right; a sense of open space. A wooden fence, and an entranceway into that fence. A parking lot and a few cars. And then, ahead of us - finally - the general 2D outline of a small and a large building formed. We had arrived at the rifugio Pratorondo.

Rifugio Pratorondo

We parked the cars safely at one end of the parking lot, and then loaded up our packs with the basics for an overnight stay and headed towards the main entrance, which led directly into the main dining area and adjacent bar. It was bright and warm and lively inside, with a reasonable scattering of people about.

I went up to the bar and announced our presence and number (and my last name, which is how I made our reservation). We were given a key and instructions to our spot on an upstairs floor. As we ascended, I got a bit of a sense of the vibe of the place. Each step had some sort of wellness-type mantra painted onto it, and the decor was decidedly ... nature-focused. At the top of the stairs, we turned down a long hallway with numbered doors on either side. We turned into our room. It was basic - four single beds and some dressers and a few chairs. Basic but functional. The bathroom was a shared room at the near end of the hallway.

After unloading our overnight items, we returned back to the main dining area for some supper. It was standard Italian rifugio-type fare, and of decent quality. As we ate, I took further note of our surroundings and the people within. The building itself had a sort of institutional-like architecture, with speckled poured concrete flooring and spare furnishings, like what you might find in a boarding school from the 1950s. Overlaid on top of that basic structure was a layer of ... hippyness? yes - a hippy-type vibe. The decorations - as mentioned before - were sort of nature-focused, flowery, mother-earth gaia, that sort of thing. Around us, at the various tables, young people predominated, seemingly mostly Italian, and of a type that leaned a bit more towards careless vagabond than extreme sports overachiever. Certainly very different than the polished, perfectly-restored historic opulence of last night's Castello Malaspina.

After dinner we decided to get a little fresh air. Perhaps the cloud cap had evaporated away, or perhaps we could walk a little farther or higher and emerge out of the clouds and out into a beautiful undercast scene.

It was nearly fully dark outside, and still everything was enveloped in thick cloud. We decided to walk along the little thread of road, which continued beyond the rifugio and headed west along the crest of Monte Beigua. Mostly the road was empty and quiet and very dark, with only an occasional late-arrival to the rifugio driving by. The road climbed through thick forest, of which we could see very little owing to the darkness and cloud. We continued on until we reached a highpoint in a clearing - still being able to see nothing except for the tips of our noses. Didn't look like any sort of view was going to happen for us. We turned around and retraced our steps to the rifugio, and called it a night.

Interactive trackmap with photo points - July 29 - click map to view

Interactive trackmap with photo points - July 29 - click to view

July 29 - Drive Data

Start Time: 11:48a.m.

End Time: 7:14p.m.

Duration: 7h26m

Distance: 193.06 km (119.96 mi)

Average Speed: 26.0 km/hr (16.1 mph)

Start Elevation: 2840ft (866m) *

Max Elevation: 3782ft (1153m) *

Min Elevation: 338ft (103m) *

End Elevation: 3658ft (1115m) *