If you seen last week’s blog then you’ll know that Aaron and I successfully completed the 12in12 Rally, but the car didn’t survive unscathed. The alternator wasn’t working properly, and we needed to get it replaced before the long journey home. We did originally have plans to visit Turin, but in our current state that looked unlikely. In the interim we stayed with rally organiser Tony in Bra and his Italian language skills proved handy for our visit to Italian Euro Car Parts. What didn’t help was that they initially ordered the wrong part for us so we had to wait an additional day before the car could be back in working order. This had swallowed two days and are hopes of making it to Turin had truly been dashed, at this point we needed to get back on the road to France.

Still, we managed to get quite a bit done whilst the MGF was out of action. Tony owns a one-of-a-kind concept car called the Michelotti Pura, so we spent time doing a photoshoot on that (the article will be out in Auto Italia at some point next year). In addition, we also went to Enrico Fumia’s home (who you’ll remember as the guest of honour at the 12in12 rally after party) to interview him on some of his life’s work as well as his thoughts on the current motoring industry. It was a very fascinating and interesting conversation with a man who has so much knowledge & experience. I’m looking forward to seeing that in print next year as well.

It was now Day eight and we really needed to start making progress back. We left Bra in the morning for a return journey through the Alps and back to the France/Swiss border. The spider-web of roads that run around Turin were not the easiest to follow and the road surface left much to be desired but before long we were back in the mountains. This time we favoured the faster main roads over the slower Alpine passes, but we couldn’t resist a quick detour on the D1006 which gave Aaron a chance to push a now fully working MGF round the hairpin bends and took us past the lake with the bluest water I have ever seen, Lac du Mont-Cenis. It looks almost artificial, but I swear that is the colour you saw in real life. With a long winding road adjacent, it provided another good stopping point for photos.

The rest of the day produced steady progress, with the only mishap being that we almost lost the rear license place which had worked itself loose. Nothing a bit of duct tape couldn’t fix. We stopped at Fort Victor-Emmanuel for lunch which gave us a bit more time to appreciate the landscape and had another quick break at Lake Annecy. Unfortunately, the latter was less exciting as the lake was just one large, flat expanse of water with few interesting landmarks save for old castle. The city itself looked beautiful as we drove through it, but sadly we lacked to the time to explore on foot. Another couple of hours and we had arrived at our Airbnb for the night, which was tantalisingly close to the Swiss border, but just a bit too far to walk. Alas I will have to wait for another opportunity to set foot in Switzerland.

Day nine and we were leaving the mountains behind for the flat arable land of mid France. It’s never fun when you are driving away from the great scenery, but it was still a real treat to see more of the quant villages and gentler rolling hills that punctuate this part of the nation. Not going on the péage certainly kept progress slow but that would have been really dull and exhausting. However, with issues with the car behind us we now had another conundrum, getting a Covid test in France so we could return home to the UK. We’d tried and failed to get a test at a pharmacy local to where we stayed the previous night and, with neither of us being francophones, we were struggling to understand where we could go and how we could book one. Thankfully we were saved by our final Airbnb hostess, who I messaged ahead of our arrival to explain the situation. She booked us into her local pharmacy for the following morning, and we could breathe a sigh of relief. All we had to do now was enjoy the rest of the day’s journey. Lac du Der proved to be more interesting than Lake Annecy (and somewhere I need to come back to for a bit of birdwatching) and on the final stretch of road we were driving side-by-side with a French Triumph TR4 in great condition.

Day ten, the final day was here and the first thing we had to do was get our Covid tests. I was a bit nervous as I had developed a bad cold during the middle of the trip, which I saw this as being rather ominous. I didn’t fancy self-isolating in France for the next seven days. Thankfully both came back negative, and we could rejoice in the prospect of actually going home that day. After breakfast we went and visited the old pit lane of the now defunct Circuit Reims-Gueux, a road race that hosted Formula One up until the 1960s. Sitting on the side of B road, it fell into disrepair for many years but since 2004 has seen a group of volunteers painstakingly restore it back to its former glory. Removing overgrowth and repainting the buildings, most of it now looks as fresh now as it did when it was still in operation. I’ll talk about this place more in a future blog.

There was one final task we needed to complete before we got back on the ferry, and that was to buy a bottle of champagne from the Champagne region of France. It would be a crime to be here, having come all this way not to do that. We arrived in Reims itself for a city walkaround but being France, all the champagne shops had now shut for two hours during lunch. Not to be deterred we drove through the regional park south to the town of Épernay which has long held significance in the Champagne industry. Home to the well-known Avenue du Champagne. It was here we found the perfect shop with an owner that could speak English to guide us through out purchasing decision. Our luggage a bit heavier and our bank accounts a bit lighter we employed a bit of clever packing to pack the bottles into the MGF and we began our final drive in France back to the ferry port at Calais. Thankfully this was nice and easy, taking the péage all the way from Reims to the coast.

We arrived in good time to catch an earlier ferry and it meant we could stand up on deck and watch the sun go down over the water as the ship prepared to leave. It had certainly been an amazing trip, but it had been a tiring one, by now Aaron and I just wanted to get home to our own beds and rest. It was slightly weird to be back driving on the otherwise of the road in the UK but being late in the evening the roads were clear and we were able to make it home by midnight. Mission success.

Looking back at my photos a few months later it seems strange that not only I was there but that I was also the one to actually take them. Travel is starting to look like a distant memory again with another variant of Covid rearing its ugly head so I am glad I made the most of the moment to go when I could. Let’s just hope a trip like this will be possible again in 2022.

With special thanks to Tony Calo for organizing the main rally and putting us up for a couple of day in Bra whilst the MGF was out of action. You can find out more about the 12in12 Rally by visiting https://12in12en.mystrikingly.com/ or by e-mailing him at 50passesin5@gmail.com. Also don’t forget to check out the latest issues of MG Enthusiast and Auto Italia to get both Aaron and Chris Rees’ perspective on the event, which you can find at https://shop.kelsey.co.uk/issue/MGE and https://auto-italia.co.uk/latestissue.asp respectively.

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