Germany 2018 - An attempt at valid journalism.

[Conquistador]

An enjoyable few days with good company, good cars, good food and drink.

Started with a nice cruise over to Eindhoven on Thursday afternoon. The hotel there was excellent and makes a good stop off location if you are getting an evening ferry/train and have a long onward journey east or south to make the next morning. We continued our journey to Kassel late Friday morning after Bert and Charlie's arrival in the Subaru support vehicle with Tjalling joining in his D2 W12 and Fred in the Audi Cabrio joining the convoy. Not too much excitement to be had on the autobahn and major roads when we hit a couple of slow patches and eastern European lorries are more than happy to just pull out into your lane ahead when you are doing 100mph.

Saturday's boat tour on the meandering Edersee lake was interesting and very civilised, taking in the famous dam, and then continuing our journey to the toboggan.

I missed the prize giving ceremony as I was having a few extra runs on the toboggan but Ray won furthest distance traveled, with Dean winning best car overall and both picking up handsome trophies so well done to them. The BBQ and buffet laid on at the toboggan area was fantastic. Less fantastic was the wasp problem! One obvious observation about the cars is that the Germans certainly aren't afraid to modify their 8's whereas we seem to prefer to keep ours stock and original. Spoilers on a D2, 22" Range Rover wheels and air-ride on a D3, full custom paint on a D4... anything goes.

Sunday morning we all departed for Dunkirk in convoy. Lorries cannot transverse the country on Sundays (I think I've got that right?) and cars on the autobahn were quite sparse in places so when a lovely straight piece of road ahead presented itself I took it as an opportunity to stretch the car's legs . I got to 177mph which read as 285kph on the digital display and don't mind admitting I got a bit scared and only lasted a few seconds at that speed but the car was still wanting more. I backed down to 120mph or so before a British Prius pulled out on me and put an end to that fun. I did find something in VCDS a while ago which lifted the speed limiter 1mph at a time so my tinkering with that has obviously worked. It leaves me wondering what the true max speed is though...

I selfishly didn't take many pictures because I saw lots of others snapping away and taking videos so knew there would be some good memories of the weekend appearing soon after.