Update: See Fletch’s write up over here!

On the face of it, 1600 miles of driving in three days across various parts of Europe (France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy) might seem a bit crazy. But when you do it in some of Bayeriche’s finest (an E39 M5, a Z3 M Coupe, a Z4 and a 745i) and cover some of Europe’s best roads you start to understand the appeal. The roads and views we encountered have to be seen to be believed, and thanks to the miracle of technology that is the Internet you can right here. They’re up on Facebook as well but that does a pretty good job of mangling colour profiles and compression so they look a bit cack. I’ll whack them up onto Flickr too at some point just for good measure.

I didn’t take as many shots as I like as I spent approx. 99% of my waking time over the weekend behind the wheel but there’s a few good ones in there. Fletch took a shit load as well with both his camera and mine, and he’ll no doubt write something more descriptive fairly shortly. All in all it was an amazing weekend, great roads and good people to be on a road trip with. Highlights for me had to be Faz’s physics-defying driving in the 745i, Fletch’s ability to control the weather by singing various songs, Matt’s psychotic overtaking manouvres, and the views from along / around Great St. Bernard’s pass.

So when’s the next trip? :-)

After two years of talking about it I finally went out and bought an E39 BMW M5, which I picked up last Friday from a BMW dealership in Maidstone. It’s a 2002 with 55k 56k miles in Lakeside Blue, black nappa leather interior, satnav, and a bunch of other extras. I’ve spent all weekend cruising round with the biggest smile on my face as it’s nothing short of immense to drive, covering roughly 800 miles in just a couple of days.

Unfortunately, that smile didn’t last as it broke down earlier today just as I left the M4. I was actually on my way back to the dealer to get something minor checked out when I pulled off the motorway at the exit, engaged third - or attempted to - and went precisely nowhere. The engine revs fine, but the clutch doesn’t seem to engage at all. So that was that, I sat at the side of the road somewhat nonplussed with the odd random past driving beeping their horn at me (another problem with owning an M5…) whilst waiting for the rescue truck to take the car back to the dealer.

No idea what it is yet but the premium for purchasing an approved used BMW has already saved me, with the recovery being free as well as the courtesy car (a very nice new 320d Touring), and the work done will be under warranty so I shouldn’t have to worry about any kind of obscene bill. One of those things I guess….