Report from Brett and Sally Morris
Once fed and with the car loaded up we set off on the next part of our adventure and this really was an adventure as soon as we set off our Sat nav stopped charging, it had been playing up for a while but now refused to work so it was back to the map for the fist time in over five years. It is surprising how much we rely on Sat navs for arrival time, even more than directions, we pressed on through lovely scenery with only a few wrong turnings. A few phone calls revealed that we were further behind than we thought so we pressed on. Although we had been to Cortina twice before this was a different route in and the pass had some steep climbs with a lot of tight hairpins.
We pressed on to try and catch the rest of the group as we had established that Dave and Tracy were ahead of us, as were Pete, Jim and Bullet. After 20 odd miles of hairpin bends the brakes started to feel a bit iffy, we then caught up with several very slow coaches too big for these passes and also a huge amount of cyclists which caused us to do a lot of braking. Eventually we had no brake pedal so stopped for a few minutes, a call to Dave and Tracey and another look at the map told us we still had over 15 miles on difficult roads, so I decided we would proceed but at a slower pace using engine braking and occasionally the handbrake to stop us going over the edge! We eventually got to Cortina with maybe a few more grey hairs than we started with. The scenery coming into Cortina d’Ampezzo was absolutely stunning.
We arrived in Corsa Italia to see several other cars we had not seen on the rest of the trip. We arrived at the meal a bit late and met Jim and Bullet for the first time, it was also very nice to meet Darren who had travelled down with his wife in a very nice white 1600E and was staying in Cortina for the week. After the meal it was also nice to meet Hans who had travelled from Austria with his dog, the lovely Vasco, in a stunning mk2 estate.
After a fantastic group lunch laid on by Rosa and her team at Hotel Cortina there was a small presentation when Graham swapped gifts with local Alessandro Broccolo.
The first day in Cortina was fantastic with all the cars lining the main pedestrianized street, we saw many cars and people we had not seen before including a white mk1 from the Czech republic. It was great to see so many Cortinas and meet so many more enthusiasts, it was also great to meet some friends from previous trips including Geoffrey and Nigel who were in a group that had taken a different route to us sailing from Hull and also Ron and Audrey who had just been to the South of France in their mk1 Crayford and had included this in a month’s travelling holiday.
After a very exciting day we set off to find our camp site to spend the next few nights camping in stunning scenery with Jim and Bullet as neighbours. The camp site was a very pleasant 25 minute walk from the town where we headed out for the evening to meet up with everyone again and exchange stories of varying degrees of brake failure over a meal and several drinks. Although some of us were slightly later than planned we had all reached our destination and this was one of many fantastic days on a great trip.
Day 9
All photos © Cortina MkII Owners Club LTD
