We had come a long way already, some 1,700 miles in 3 days since we started
from the Brooklands Motor Museum on Sunday Morning (31 Jan). Under clear
skies, that first day had been a breeze, fast and easy over mostly straight
roads, and adrenaline had overcome thoughts of sleep as we drove further into
the night. The Triumphs heater was working well, so it wasn't until midnight
approached and we joined a long queue (line) for petrol outside a little cafe
in Erize-la-Petite that we realised how cold it was - minus 11 degrees
Celsius, someone said. We could only wonder at the fortitude of the Vintageant
crews in their open topped monstes; catching them on the road, we'd first see
a pair of tiny glimmering rubies in the darkness, the a great black Gothic
shape silhouetted against the moonlit sky or the yellow aura from two giant
headlamps. As we overtook these bellowing beasts, which took every ounce of
the Triumph's performance, we were overwhelmed by their sheer size, their hub
spinners whirring past somewhere above our heads. The heroism of their pilots
was captured in an unforgettable, other-worldly moment at Erize-la-Petite,
where in the shadows beyond the cafe's warm light, I glimpsed two Titans clad
in heavy fur-lined leather armour leaning motionless against an outlandishly
long-tailed 4,479cc 1938 Lagonda Le Mans, the whole frozen ensemble looking
like a giant cast-iron monument to speed, power and endurance. How they coped
with the wind chill, I cannot imagine; just after we reached the snow line, we
realised the Triumph's heater didn't work at less than 60 mph. Soon after that
we encountered our first snow and realised, as we sat broadside across the
road, taht our tyres didn't work either ...
We had feared as much. The chaps at Racetorations in Gainsborough,
Lincolnshire had called me a few days before the start to say the flexible
winter tyres originally fitted didn't suit such a quick little car on dry
roads; in a last minute panic, we fitted Avon CR6 tyres, which were fabulous
on Tarmac, wet or dry, but whose ZZ tread pattern stood a snowball in hell's
chance when the going got icy. We carried snow chains, of course, as is
compulsory in France, and had practised fitting them in historic rally expert
Mark Tipping's warm, dry and well-lit Weybridge workshop. It was dead easy.
But now we were driving a GT6 loaded with spares and luggage, and the rear
wheels had disappeared into the arches, along with any hope of fitting the
"rapid-fit self-adjusting" chains in less than half-an-hour, while wearing
gloves, or without losing a good deal of skin in the process.
More in part 4 (tomorrow)
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