The mission for today was to be the Mountains. The journey through the Alps would be the most challenging of the whole rally. It required an early start. We headed up a short bit of motorway before peeling off and heading right for the heart of the Alps.
In high spirits we started our ascent, following the skunk car with the rest of the convoy behind us. The P4's engine found the steep inclines no problem. We had enough power to pull two tonnes of car containing four full grown adults AND all their luggage up the hills... until it got a bit hot. Then very hot. Then we overheated again. This caused an impressive number of Ramshacklers to pull over on a hairpin bend and wait for us to cool down. We were even joined by a random Dutch car which overheated too!
After topping the radiator back up we set off again. Only to find that a further mile or so up the road we were forced to pull over again. The mountain was putting up a good fight. When we reached a car park part way up we had a meeting with the rest of the convoy. We simply couldn't force everyone to wait for us any more.
We conceded defeat - well, a tactical withdrawl from the mountains and the P4 headed to Bratislava the long way round on the motorways, leaving the rest of the pack to continue on through without us...
We stopped for lunch at a nice place by a mountain lake, then I dropped in on my ex in Vienna to her and her new fella's great surprise. After a quick chat it was on to Slovakia. We did about three laps of the city before we found our hotel and the rest of the rally. The place was an old Eastern Block government building and the decor had not been touched since it was built in the 70s.
I loved it - some of the others weren't convinced. We headed out for food and quite a few beers, prompting lots of shenanigins which can be seen on the flickr photostream before, one by one, people passed out.
