Sometime over the weekend of 18-19 June 2005 I had a hint from Sarah that John was thinking of driving to Nordwalde, near Münster, in north-west Germany and that I might be invited to accompany him.
A little background information is required here. John is building a ‘project’ car in his garage, at home in Woking. This started life as a 1978 VW Polo which has been stripped down to the bare bodyshell. This has been repainted in a very attractive bronze and is now being fitted with very special suspension, wheels, racing seats and with a Polo G40 supercharged engine which John has stripped and rebuilt with all new components, pistons, main and big-end bearing shells, valves, springs, cambelt and much more.
The item he needed was a ‘roll-cage’, the steel-tube reinforcing structure which is fitted inside a competition vehicle to protect the occupants in the event of the car rolling onto its roof. Acquiring this essential item had given him a problem for some time, as a new one was only made in Germany, cost about £600 and the manufacturer would not export it to England. Success came when he saw a second-hand one advertised for sale on Ebay. This was manufactured by a company called ‘Matter’ and was an original VW-approved competition example. John and the vendor, a German chap by the name of Christian finally came to terms and struck a deal. This in itself was quite difficult as John does not speak German and Christian has no English. They called on the assistance of Sarah, who writes German and was able to provide email contact, even though she is not confident of conducting a telephone conversation.
Another problem now reared its ugly head. Neither John, in Britain, nor Christian in Germany was able to find a company who would undertake to deliver such a bulky package. OK, said John, in his matter-of-fact way, I’ll drive out and collect it.
The final arrangements were put in place by Sarah’s friend Suzy, who is pretty fluent in German and who spoke to Christian on the telephone at about 9.00 pm on June 20th. John would pay €200 for the roll-cage and would collect it, the next day from Christian’s home. Just one small point, Christian would only be at home for lunch between 12 noon and 1 pm, local (Central European) time. He would not wait! I was told at about 10pm to phone John and arrange a time for him to pick me up the next morning. We agreed that we should leave by 5am from our home in Five Oak Green, which meant that John had to leave his home in Woking at 4am.
I arose bright and early at 4 o’clock and, having completed my ablutions, had a light breakfast and was ready for the start of this somewhat adventurous day. John arrived in good time and we stowed our supplies in the car, extra clothing, drinks, packed lunch, for there would be little time to stop, and documents. Already in the front passenger seat was my intended companion for the day, John’s Apple iBook, running Route 66 Europe Professional, a route-planning programme which shows all the streets of Western Europe, down to house numbers!
The car in which we would be making this high speed dash was John’s Volkswagen Bora 2.8 litre V6 4-motion, a businessman’s express par excellence.
We set off before 5am and after an uneventful journey along the M20 were in good time for our 5.56 check-in. The shuttle train we boarded was due to leave at 6.20, but actually left at 6am on the 35 minute journey. If the reader has not crossed the Channel by this route I urge you to try it. Our experience is that check-in is quick and easy and waiting-time to be called forward for loading is not too long. You drive your car onto the closed double-deck train and remain in or with it for the crossing. We agreed that it was like being gently shaken in a big machine for thirty-five minutes and when it stops you drive out and you are in France.
After refuelling just outside the terminal we set off on the serious part of the journey. The smooth and wide autoroute A16, or Euroroute E40 soon saw us speeding eastwards towards the Belgian border, which we crossed after 37 miles. The local route number now changed to A18 but we concentrated on E40 until we reached an autoroute junction as we passed south of Gent.
At this point we turned left onto the E17 and headed north-east towards Antwerp. The onboard computer showed that we were nudging up towards the 60 mph average speed that John had warned me we would need to maintain if we were to keep our appointment. The road surface was quite acceptable, but did not have the billiard-table smoothness of the French section. Everything was going to plan and Route 66 was keeping us on track as we approached Antwerp, the average now being up to 60 mph.
On the outskirts of Antwerp we came up to the rear of very slow-moving traffic but a quick look at the computer map showed that we were being guided off to the left, whereas the traffic was on the right-hand fork. A short distance further on we made a right turn along ‘Charles de Costerlaan’ which led us through the Schelde Tunnel. Emerging from this we turned right and joined a wide dual-carriageway boulevard and began looking for the N12, which should shortly turn off to the left. This was where the trouble started!
The far carriageway, which we would need to cross to turn left, was a mass of rubble along its whole length, with no access either to it or to streets beyond it. Route 66 had not prepared us for this! The carriageway on which we were driving was also littered with all the paraphernalia of massive road reconstruction. We had not heard that Antwerp had returned to WW11 conditions, but that is what it resembled!
I have to confess that I now found myself in some difficulty in trying to extricate us from this loss of position. The street nameplates were all very small, white on blue, mounted high up on the buildings and rather dirty. Whilst my varifocal specs are very useful in enabling me to see close-up and distance I fear they are not quite suitable for viewing the screen or reading a book. For this purpose I have reading glasses, which is what I was wearing for the map-reading. Reading the map and then trying to see street name plates involved changing my glasses to and fro, which was clearly impractical.
John soon pulled off the road into a side street and took the iBook from me, surprisingly patiently under the circumstances. Having established our exact position he plotted a course to get us back on track. This proved successful and we were away again, picking up the E34 at the outskirts of the city. This delay having cost us twenty minutes the average speed had fallen to 57 mph and we had some catching up to do.
We continued on the E34, and after 130 miles in Belgium, crossed the border into Holland at Weebosch. The Euroroute continued as E34 and we pressed on at a good lick, gradually raising the average speed toward the required 60 mph. After an uneventful 47 miles we left Holland behind and crossed the border into Germany close to Venlo. John now breathed a sigh of relief and pressed the pedal to the metal, as a good proportion of Germany’s autobahn network is not speed restricted. The needle climbed to 120-130 mph and the average became better than the required 60 mph for the first time.
In the vicinity of Duisburg the E34, having been taking us steadily eastward, now turned north, which involved a clockwise loop around a vast cloverleaf junction. That manoeuvre being achieved we followed the long, sweeping curves of the E34/ E35 until the latter branched off to the northwest, whilst our old friend, E34 curved right and we resumed our progress to the east.
Route 66 now advised us to turn north on the A52, which has no Euroroute number. This would entail leaving the autobahn towards the right and recrossing it in order to achieve a left turn. Now things became complicated! Approaching the map location of this junction we were shunted across to the opposite carriageway and into a very narrow contraflow. There was just enough room for the enormous trucks in the right-hand lane and cars squeezing past to overtake them in the left-hand lane. The carriageway from which we had been evicted, was now a mass of churned up concrete with gigantic earthmoving machinery laying waste to vast swathes of the adjacent countryside. And I was desperately looking for a junction, which would lead us onto the A52!
After some miles of this mayhem I saw roadsigns, which confirmed that if there had been a junction I had missed it. Back to Route 66 and a new plan. It was obvious that we had to leave the E34 at the first opportunity, as it was leading us inexorably to the east and I knew that we should by now be turning northwards. When I zoomed out to get ‘the bigger picture’ I saw that the next junction was with the A43. If we turned north there we would pick up our intended route when the recommended A52 would join us from the left. I could see now that A52 would merely have been a slightly shorter route to the A43, which we needed to be on.
At the junction with the A43 we pulled into a service area for what is now euphemistically known as a comfort break. John went into the loo first, leaving me to look after the car. Then it was my turn and, as you may expect, this provided an amusing story. There was but one cubicle, which was set up for disabled use as well as for the able-bodied. The cubicle was large enough to easily accommodate a wheel chair, and there were handles either side of the toilet pan. The whole area was spotlessly clean and sweet-smelling. I used the facilities and then looked for the flush. Nothing! I searched high and low and tried moving the support handles, but no go.
In some embarrassment I realised that I could not stay in there all day, so I opened the door to come out, whereupon the toilet flushed!
We now resumed our journey in a generally northeasterly direction, noticing the recalcitrant A52 joining from our left after about twelve miles. Thirty-four miles after joining the A43 we came to the A1 or Euroroute E37. After going north on this for five miles we turned northwest onto the B54 and left that after about eight miles, turning right onto the L555. Two and a half miles and we were in Nordwalde.
Route 66 guided us to the development where Christian lived, which consisted of several roads all having the same name. The houses were all large, detached, chalet style, of typically German appearance and all were surrounded by large gardens, with the curving roads being of brick paving, the whole area having an aura of space and opulence.
The presence of a VW polo gave us the clue as to which was the right house, but there were posts set across the road and we would need to find the way round if we were to get the car to it. We decided to park where we were and walk through, as it was now 12.47 pm and Christian would go back to work at 1 o’clock.
John knocked and a smiling young man emerged, extending his hand in true Germanic fashion. John said, “Christian, I am John”, and little more passed between us as he had very little English and we were similarly short of German.
We followed him along the side of the house and, turning through 180 degrees, down a flight of steps into the basement. Having agreed that the proffered roll-cage was correct in all details the three of us gathered up the various parts and carried them to our car. The agreed number of euros then changed hands and with further handshakes Christian said, “I must work”, and was gone on his bike.
We were now left to solve the Chinese puzzle of getting the component parts of the roll-cage into the back of the Bora. Even with the rear seats folded flat this proved impossible, so we resorted to cutting the two longest pieces with the hacksaw we had taken with us. The marker pen was also put to good use, marking and numbering before the cuts were made, to facilitate accurate re-welding back in Woking. The parts were soon packed in and padded with various old coats etcetera and we set out on the return journey.
This was, of course, simple, as we merely had to retrace our steps, except at Antwerp, where a new route had been requested of Route 66, avoiding the roadworks, which had held us up on the outward journey.
We stopped outside Nordwalde for a much-needed rest and to eat the sandwiches that Sue had provided for us. When we set off again I got it fairly badly wrong and had us travelling the wrong way along the B54 dual-carriageway, confused as I was by the continental habit of driving on the wrong side of the road!
We came off at the next junction and immediately the warning tone from the dashboard area drew attention to the fact that the fuel tank was in need of replenishment. After a circular tour we arrived back in Nordwalde where we found a petrol station. This was where John’s straightforward approach to life once more came to the fore. “I don’t know if they will accept my credit card here” he said. “That woman watching us from the window looks rather suspicious. Never mind, I’ll fill up and argue about it afterwards!” Fortunately there was no problem and we made another attempt to set out for Calais.
The return journey was pretty much a straightforward reversal of the outward trip, but we managed to avoid the mayhem of Antwerp by taking the southern section of the ring road R1. This road has two numbers, R1 for the clockwise carriageway and R2 for the anti-clockwise. Avoidance of known trouble spots is achieved on “Route 66” by zooming in to the area concerned and applying a ‘roadblock’ in the strategic spot. The computer will then calculate an alternative route, which was how we came to be on the ring road. This section was relatively free flowing, but the opposite, anticlockwise, carriageway was at a standstill for most of its length. It was the end of this permanent traffic jam that we had come up to on our outward journey, before turning towards the city centre under instruction from our electronic route finder. Unfortunately this did not work, as I have already described.
One of the things which causes panic when map-reading on the continent is the vast distances involved. You might be bowling merrily along on, say, A43 when you are instructed to take A1. As you are joining this new road at mid-point on its length you have a choice of directions to take. This choice will be two towns, possibly hundreds of miles apart at either end of your new road. If you are familiar with the relative whereabouts of these two places then you have no problem. Quite likely though, as a foreigner who travels on the continent only occasionally, these will be little more than familiar place names. You are looking at a fairly small area of map in order to find your next road junction and suddenly you need to know whether you should head towards Lübeck or Saarbrücken. What’s more, you need to know now, because the slip road, which you so confidently followed towards the A1, is now dividing just ahead and you have no hiding place!
Travelling southwest on E17, we reached the junction with E40, where our choice of directions was E40 towards Ostend or E 40 towards Brussels. I correctly chose Ostend, this being one of the easier choices, and we sped on our way towards the Channel Tunnel terminal at Coquelles, having made one stop at a service area for me to use the loo and John to get sustenance in the form of a choccy bar.
We caught an earlier train than we had intended and were soon heading back to England, in the company of several booze and baccy bandits, their 4x4s and people carriers laden down with the means to an early grave!
Our arrival time back at Five Oak Green was 8.45 p.m. and after unloading me and my belongings John said a quick hello and goodbye to his Mum and Sarah and set out on the last leg of his journey, the 54 miles back to Woking. Our total mileage for the day was, in my case, 750 and 858 for John, which was a stupendous effort on his part, because he did all the driving.
In conclusion it was an awesome day, well planned and well executed and the car behaved faultlessly, as though it knew it was going back to its roots and had a reputation to uphold. For myself, it was exciting, adventurous and slightly stressful. Please can we do it again, John, with a little more time to spare, so that this time I can see something of the countries, which flashed by, outside the windows.