Pictures: 2017 Finalgear Medium Roadtrip - The french connection

lip

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Joined
Sep 2, 2005
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3,499
Location
Switzerland
Car(s)
Renault Twizy
Part 1

My part of the Roadtrip started at Friday August 4th at my holiday place in Locarno. From there it was all Italian Autostrada through Milan, then Turin, and from there towards France. - Man, the Italians are still the kings of the middle lane moron game. Then and there I set a new personal record on how many cars I could undertake uninterrupted in one go, it's now at 12 cars, while the leftmost lane was clogged up. Just baffles the mind. - Anyway, on to some pictures:

First bigger stop near the french-italian border to give my legs some welcoming movement.
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First alpine pass of the day: The Col d'Iozard
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Afterwards a nice stretch of faster road (Castle Queyras in the background)
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The next alpine pass: The awesome Col de Vars
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You can't beat sunset hooning on empty roads
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That magic hour light made even the Barkwagon looking good
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Third alpine pass of the day: The long but tight-roaded Col de la Cayolle
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By this time darkness was setting in giving the next stretch with its many small tunnels quite a creepy feel
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But hey I had tons of fun. Since I was mostly alone on this road I basicly turned all the tunnels into concert halls.
(Listen to this video with something that has a bit of bass)
0:03 "Thunderbirds are go", volume up to 11, 0:16 and 4:17, as you can hear I really had fun, man that bark sound will never get old. :mrgreen:

I took the night on the side of the road somewhere along the route, simply bunking in the car as soon as I felt too tired to drive on.
The next day, Saturday August 5th: Tearing through the french countryside. During the morning hours I made a big loop around the Lac de Saint Croix.
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I had to be before 14:00 at the campsite to grab a pitch for the rest of the roadtrip crew. But when I turned up at 13:00 there was already a line of people, all with the same idea...
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...and sure enough, there was no space anymore after the first few people in the line got lucky. Crap. So I went to a few campsites more and finally found a pitch at the 4th site I visited. The late incoming roadtrip crew paid my meal in the evening as a thank you for the effort. Nice of them. - There you go, here's your room for the night, Sirs. And lady.
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End of part 1

- - - Updated - - -

Part 2

The next morning, Sunday August the 6th, back in my hotel room I woke up to a strange sound. Sounded like rain. - And sure enough: Ack, come on!
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Happy days at the campsite! ;)
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Anyway, soon enough the weather cleared and it would become a truly great first day of hooning around
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Now that's what I'm talking about!
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Midday pause in the small hill town of Sigale. Meet the crew: Icebone, MWF, LadyMFW 3.0, Eye-Q
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I just love these french villages
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That day most roads were on the tighter side of the scale. Eye-Q, as my passenger for the day in the Barkwagon audibly prefered the more open roads. So it was soon clear that he would take his own car the following day, mostly to avert to be passenger again with a certain swiss maniac who likes to go fast as hell regardless of the width of the road. Thehe. ;)
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Anyway, was a great day
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End of part 2
 
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Part 3

The next morning, Monday August the 7th, again a first glimpse at the weather...
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Now see, that's more like it. Yes!
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Already underway as a group on the road along the Gorge du Verdon...
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...with a truly magnificent wiew
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A more elaborate cars shot near the Artuby bridge...
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...and then another sort of group shot ;)
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Man, these roads were truly awesome:
4:58 "I'm enjoing this", 5:09 "It's a stupid way of wasting money, but it's great". The things you say when you forget that the dashcam is running. :lol: - Also listen to the radio comments near the end of the video. It was quite clear that everybody was in love with that road. - Sadly the wide angle lens makes it all look slower than it actually was.

Bigger pause for some stroll around in Comps-sur-Artuby, looking at other fast cars...
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...and some posing for a Rosbeef gag. :p
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Shortly after it showed itself clearly who was the gas guzzler of the group. - My V8 however was very frugal. As long as I went and filled it up every morning. ;) - Anyway, wait for it...
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...and there it is, the teapot. Thehe. :lol:
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Because of the fuel stop and because I wanted to have a video with the other cars in it I found myself on the back of the group for once, which I soon wasn't all too happy about. But that was probably safer for the rest of the group, because while I was good at overtaking I wasn't so good at using the radio afterwards. Too busy driving, and at a certain point you're already too far ahead to give safe comments. - Anyway, nice group overtake at 1:23
0:34 " Yeah later we have to go to the front again, this isn't... this isn't what I want". :lol:

Sometime afternoon we reached Castellane, ready to have a picknick by the river...
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...which great water quality soon got ruined forever by a pair of british feet...
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...and then some photographers will go through anything just to get a good shot. :lol:
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But soon enough, more driving, more awesome roads and scenery
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Just beautiful
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Another pause on the scenic ring road over the Gorge de Verdon. Only in a shot like this you will notice how compact Icebone's A4 actually is in comparison with my S6 and MWF's Ibiza. :blink:
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Scenery deluxe
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Aww :)
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Nothing to see here, just some people having a nice roadtrip
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After we reached the main road again I still hadn't enough of speeding for the day, so I blasted off and force-overtook a long row of cars, leaving the others stuck behind it. Only to park up somewhere later to pose next to my car with a book in the hands a la "what took you so long?". You're good to know that that gag didn't go down too well with the others according to the radio comments afterwards. Thaha. :lol: - Anyway, great cooking at the campsite later on. Thanks to the cook! MWF that is.

End of part 3
 
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Part 4

The next day, Tuesday August the 8th, when I came up to the campsite there was already some french national sport going on :lol:
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It had rained a bit during the night, sure it was drying up already, but the roads were still quite damp. Which is like driving on soap for cars like mine with fat tires...
Overtaking at 1:20 and 4:50

This was the first transition day towards the Ringmeet, so the route was basicly straight northwards from here on, leaving the more curvy pass roads aside. But still, quite some good stuff:
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Ahh, the french. You can't get more french then them. :lol:
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Roadtrip Fahrgef?hl :)
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Sadly we had some intermitted rain on this stretch and I think at 8:16 was the only time on the whole trip that I had to close the windows

Just love the french house style and scenery
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Just great
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Last picknick together, after this the group would head northwest towards the Ringmeet in Germany, and I would head northeast back to my holiday place in Switzerland
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But soon enough the rain came again and stopped our picknick at the Lake de Serre-Poncon in it's tracks. So we packed up, made a last car group shot and said goodbye :)
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On my way home I took the alpine passes Col de Vars and Col d'Iozard again, bunked up for the night in a hotel in Briancon and then drove on the next day back to Locarno
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Ah, back home in Switzerland. Isn't it lush!? ;)
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Fin.
 
^ There was a second bunch of FG roatrippers (DaBoom and Tobias + more?), but the went to northern Italy.
 
So jealous.
Seems like a nice roadtrip. :)
 
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What's happening? Everybody had cameras, phones, gopros, and whatnot out during the trip. But it seems I'm the only one who is actually able to post some picture and videos afterwards. :lol:

Post your stuff, gentlemen. Come on.
 
What's happening? Everybody had cameras, phones, gopros, and whatnot out during the trip. But it seems I'm the only one who is actually able to post some picture and videos afterwards. :lol:

Post your stuff, gentlemen. Come on.

Editing takes time. Actually, getting yourself to do it takes time hah
 
The french seem to love the C5 S6, lip. So many spotting nearby you always had to stop to photograph one.
 
Great photos lip, looks like an excellent roadtrip. The noises your S6 is making in the videos is pushing me closer to making an order for a straight-through exhaust for the V8. :D
 
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Editing takes time. Actually, getting yourself to do it takes time hah
I strongly assume it's the latter. ;)

Great photos lip, looks like an excellent roadtrip. The noises your S6 is making in the videos is pushing me closer to making an order for a straight-through exhaust for the V8. :D
Go on. Do it. You know you want to. Go on. Do it. :mrgreen:

The french seem to love the C5 S6, lip. So many spotting nearby you always had to stop to photograph one.
Yeah, happend daily. - Here's an example: Sure you can't see because of the rock, but this one had french plates, 120% true! :p
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Contrary to you the rest of us didn't bugger of on Tuesday, instead we went on to the Ringmeet... :p

Here is a selection of my pictures:

On the way down to Millau at a campsite near Dijon on Wednesday August 2nd - it was on a hill so the first 6 km of cycling that evening was good, but then the rest was uphill which we don't have at all in northern Germany so that was pretty gruesome...


On Thursday the 3rd I cycled the ~8 km from the campsite to the bottom of the highest peer.


Then I met up with IceBone at the campsite, we managed to arrive at the campsite at exactly the same time...


On Saturday the 5th MWF and HWF3.0 arrived, we had lunch, went to a parking space where you can see almost the whole bridge and of course got pictures with the cars. :)


Afterwards we drove over the bridge once and went on via B-roads and some motorways to Verdon where we met lip who reserved us a spot at a campsite and patiently waited for us to arrive pretty late, thanks again for that. On Sunday I went as a passenger with lip, we did the first loop. That turned out to be not a loop at all since part of the planned loop had been closed so we took the detour which put us on the road we intended to take in the afternoon. Because of lip's insane driving style many of my potato pictures were blurry or taken at the wrong moment since my potato needs some time to register the press of the trigger...



On Monday the 6th I took my own car again, this time I drove back to the campsite after lunch since the others intended to do a loop which led through the same town we did the lunch break and I didn't feel I wanted to do that loop. On the way back there was the site where Clarkson started his "race" in the RS4 against the speed climbers. On the way to that spot there were many viewpoints, I stopped at one where many eagles flew by. For a potato the picture of that eagle (cropped, otherwise unchanged) it pretty impressive...


At the starting point of the RS4 vs. speedclimber "race"



In the night at the campsite we met a new friend, the cricket "gaz" whose name derived from the fact that he climbed up the Campingaz cooker to sit down in the light of the Winbiza's foglight. He was a pretty chill dude, and even though we intended to not kill him MWF almost managed to kill him twice by stepping about 5 cm next to him. :shakefist: The next morning there was another cricket sitting between the tents and the cars.
 
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I totally didn't post this in the wrong thread the first time around...

First panorama!




Click for full 16k resolution, but I recommend you download and view offline. Browsers don't like images of this size without dedicated viewers.

- - - Updated - - -

Second panorama!


Same procedure as before, it's 16k.
 
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Contrary to you the rest of us didn't bugger of on Tuesday, instead we went on to the Ringmeet... :p
... to get rained on. :p

Great pics! Oh, and I looked up the word "insane" in the dictionary: As far as I understand it seems to be some sort of a compliment. Thanks! ;)
 
Sorry I'm late, but I only now got home from Germany (second trip) with all the video files from the roadtrips. Here's the first part:



 
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If you want to watch the best part: go to 0:33:25. :)
 
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Second part of the first day:




The climb starts at 15:27, before that it's the last third of the previous video, backwards.
 
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Great, I loved that road!
 
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