Stelvio 2004 - Tony's SELOC Run

This years event was organised by Tony Chorly but combined with SELOC to offer a one week trip as well as the traditional two week marathon which was always Tony's domain. Both Groups travelled to Stelvio travelling through France, Switzerland, and Austria before arriving at Stelvio. As in previous years another huge reunion of Lotus's from across Europe was planned at top of Stelvio. The combined group then continued across Northern Italy to the Alps Maritimes before the routes diverged. The 'two weekers' continued on to the Pyrenees and central Spain, whilst the others, the 'one weekers', North through the Alps and home.

Day 01: Our assembly point this year was the Pepper Box Public House at Ulcombe, arriving just in time for lunch. An opportunity to put faces to names before we headed off to the ferry ports. This has been the only year that some of us opted for the ferry rather than the tunnel. Getting the cars onto the ferry was a charade, low ride heights and ferry ramps just do not work. After the ferry, a relatively civilised run down to Reims on the auto-routes for the first night stop.

There were a right old gaggle of us this year. The Official Entry shows 41 cars with 21 of them coming from the UK. Must have been a pretty amazing sight with us all in convoy on the auto-route heading south from Calais. The French Police must have been wringing their hands with glee. Lots of new faces, with only a few known faces for me from 2003. Max, who I had run with on most days in 2003, was there but this time in his new Elise S2 111r which he had only bought that year. The run down was fairly uneventful apart from a huge unexpected tail slide on the a roundabout only a few 100 yards from the Pepper Bot pub. Over exuberance and cold tyres is what I put it down to but unfortunately Max and his passenger Adam Stevens were my audience, much to their amusement.

We arrived early at Reims and took Tony's advice to visit the old Grand Prix Circuit at Reims-Gueux before heading to the hotel. Tony had organised this as the main rally point for the run down, so a lot of the Dutch, Belgium and French cars joined the main group here swelling our numbers even further. The GP Circuit at Reims-Gueux has become a regular stopping point for us on the run down to the Alps in subsequent years. A very haunting place of a bygone age which the French have improved over the years with the painting of period Car Industry logos and branding on the old spectator stands and pit walls. This year I believe was probably the year I have seen the most Lotus's lined up in the Pit Lane. A great photo call before returning to the hotel on the roads that used to be the old circuit.

Day 02: A long and challenging second day with 412 miles to cover. We all congregated at the GP circuit again for the mass off, followed by a quick 30 mile blat through the Champaign District of France before joining the motorway for the long haul down to Metz. Then a very, very quick dash cross to Belfort and into Switzerland and through to Lucerne. We then hugged the northern shore line of Lake Lucerne down to Altdorf and on to our first major pass of the trip, the Klausenpass (1,948m) and the hotel at Braunwald.

At lunch we stopped somewhere on the N19 outside of Langres to find Kevin Harvey looking woefully in the engine compartment of his yellow 160. Something had broken and his 2004 adventure was over unfortunately.

Even using the modern day mapping tools on the web re-creating Tony's route was challenging, so I have deep respect for the lead cars in 2004 who managed to navigate this route to Braunwald. So it comes as no surprise that we on a few occasions came off the planned route. On one such a occasion, as is the way with getting lost, we made a huge find. The Balmberg Pass (1,028m) a small pass in Alpine terms but, my lord, was it steep, in fact the steepest in Switzerland at a staggering 25% gradient. It really felt that the Elise was going to topple over backwards on itself.

I remember as the lead car of group of five with Andrew on the maps, we got quite separated in a populated area. Andrew was getting progressively more and more annoyed that the other four cars weren't keeping up with his demanding pace. He insisted that I pull over so that he could express his displeasure to the other drivers in the group. The others, although somewhat surprised, thought this hilarious and Andrew took a lot of stick for his outburst. They mocked him humorously "You vill keep up!" and it took him quite a while to lose the nickname of Little Hilter!!

The Klausenpass is a great tour favourite with its huge drop offs and the cobbled hairpins on the descent in to Braunwald. I also discovered that some of my new group companions were indeed very talent drivers on their first Stelvio. Rob Beeves didn't let me pull out an inch on him as we scaled the Klausenpass.

Day 03: We were now of course deep in Alpine territory and the passes would come thick and fast. Their names, now so familiar, were nearly all new to me at the time and would all become much loved over the subsequent years. As if we hadn't had enough of it - not, back over the Klausenpass (1,948m), then followed by some of Switzerland's finest, the Sustenpass (2,260m), Grimselpass (2,164m), Furkapass (2,429m) Oberalppass (2,044m), Albulapass (2,315m) and finally the hotel at Obergurgl. There was a longer option to take in an extended loop into Obergurgl via the Brenner Pass (which is all auto-route) followed by the Jaufenpass (2,094m) and finishing off the loop with the great Passo del Rombo (2,509m) before the hotel.

I haven't any specific memories of this day, suffice to say I must have been totally focussed on the roads. However all my photographs show us all grinning from ear to ear.

Day 04: The Stelvio signature day. Tony's plan for the day took us out of Obergurgl and over the Passo del Rombo and down into Merano and long, what has become known as, the tractor road famous for it terminally slow moving traffic. All the apple growers here in this fertile valley transport their goods on slow moving narrow tractors which creates havoc for the traffic flow.. Then the northern ascent of Stelvio Pass (2,757m) which is much twistier than the southern side. A Tour lunch at the summit, then onto the Passo de Gavia (2,621m) via Bormio for my first time and the northern shores of Lake Iseo to the hotel for the night.

Although I had, at this stage, never scaled Stelvio from the North, the thought of revisiting 'Max's Tunnel of Love' was just to great a pull. Max was in my group that day and it seemed rude not to. So we headed further down the tractor road, towards Zerner, before taking the Munt La Schera Tunnel through into Livingo. Although we didn't know it at the time, the Northern Ascent of Stelvio can be fairly slow-going if you get caught behind traffic. It was, therefore, more than a fair exchange, as we were able to negotiate two additional Italian passes, the Forcola di Livigno (2,315m) and the Passo di Foscagno (2,291m) along with a tank of 'duty free' 100 Octane fuel from the Shell garage at Livingo before we scaled the southern side of Stelvio.

My only concern was that we would miss the Tour lunch and have to contend with a stream of fast moving Lotus's coming down as we were beetling our way up. Never a comforting thought! As it happens we only met Yvo Tuck and his band of merry Dutch guys in full flight on our way up, thankfully on one of the more open sections. Yvo and his group where doing 'very-much-their-own-thing' this year and didn't do the Tour lunch, which we only made by the skin of our teeth. As with every Stelvio run, there is a tour recognition speech and this year it was done at Stelvio rather than the last evening. Video below, supplied by Graham Walsh.

That afternoon was all about the Passo de Gavia in the fog and what a fabulously technical and but-clenching pass that proved to be. Certainly a pass I keep on coming back to time and time again, both on Stelvio runs and in my dreams back in the UK.

Day 06: The day the two groups went there separate ways. The 'one-weekers' headed back north via the the southern side of the Gorge du Verdun and on to Guillaumes and then Col de la Crayolle (2,326m). The Col de la Crayolle leads to the red-rock Gorges de Daluis. The part of the road inside the Gorges du Bachelard, is one of the most famous balcony roads in the country. A balcony road is a hair-raising lane cut into the sides of sheer cliffs. It’s a kind of road not for those who fear heights. There is little room for error on these roads. It’s normal for your palms to sweat looking at those photos, imagine what it must have been like before the barriers. From there the route took us to the Col de Vars (2,108m), a very high speed open pass, as it is part of a whole series of high paved passes, that spend a majority of their asphalt above treeline. Then to Guillestre and eventually Gap for the night.

Both Andrew and I were looking forward to his particular day. Our driving companions up to this point were 'two-weekers' so we joined a group of 'one-week' first timers, Jay Tilson and his father Frank, Graham Walsh, Emma and Ben Rye. We led the group out of Moustiers St Marie on a beautiful Alpine blue sky day. Now on our sixth day we were well into our pace and very happy to lead. Then it all went terribly wrong.

Just outside Aiguines, not 10km from Moustiers, we overtook a group of German bikers. One of them then accelerated and re-overtook us again. He flagged us down and pointed to a trail of damp patches on the road surface from where we had come, which were leading to my Elise. We pulled over with our new group who threw themselves into establishing how to fix the issue. It became apparent that the coolant pipe in the drivers side sill had fractured. A known problem on the earlier Elise's and it was now my time to experience it. Unfortunately it is a fairly specialised repair and not something that we could do on the side of the road. So for Andrew and I it was game over, we waved farewell to our group and called the AA Fivestar helpline.

The AA arranged for the car to be picked up by and transported back to a garage in Moustier. When we arrived, they got the car up on the ramps and quickly came to the conclusion this was beyond their capability. The AA then informed us that they wanted the car transported, with us, to the nearest Lotus Dealership which was in Nice, a couple of hours drive away. We eventually pitched-up outside a very swanky Ferrari and Masserati Dealership in Nice which out of 30 odd cars in their showroom there was one solitary yellow S2 Elise.

Andrew and I were looking a complete mess, unshaven after six days on the road, filthy from spending a good couple of hours underneath my Elise in a gravel lay-by. The car was also looking as bad after six days on the road too. The owner of the dealership asked us to get the Elise into their maintenance garage which was underneath the show room and involved Andrew pushing the Elise down a ramp with me at the steering wheel. What we rolled into was an immaculate garage with tiled flooring, bright spangly tools hanging on the walls and mechanics in clean ironed red overalls...somewhat like an operating theatre. We looked a complete mess. To make matters worse, this was the first time since the breakdown that the car had been pitched forward. So the remaining 3 or 4 litres of coolant fluid leaked out onto their pristine floor. As the puddle of yellow coolant started to spread from underneath the car, it was if my poor Elise had pissed itself in awe of such prestigious company! The look on the Mechanics faces were priceless!!

We were then hotelled in Nice for the night care of the AA. We were provided with a diesel hire car, a Peugeout 607, the following morning and then lay chase to our group who were waking up in Gap. Although we gave it our best shot, we arrived back in Calais some two hours after our group had left. My Elise was eventually transported home four weeks later, repaired when back in the UK, ready to fight another day.

To access the 2004 Tour TomTom Itinerary Files
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