Syd Stelvio Peking to Paris 25 - Day 34 – Keszthely to Salzburg – 502km
With every day the finish, and home, gets a little closer. As the clock ticks down the countries and places become more familiar, and those wild places where we once trod feel like an eternity ago. A week ago, we were still travelling through Turkey, and a week before that we had just spent the night at our final camp of the rally, in Kazakhstan. Today, we crossed the border into Austria, and would finish in Salzburg, a mere ten-hour drive from Paris.
It's incredible how quickly the time has passed, but the line isn’t in sight yet and day 34 was another 500 plus km day, with plenty of transit and a pair of regularities to enjoy once we were over the border. The crossing itself was little more than a nod in the direction of the long-abandoned border post, which was well on the way to being reclaimed by nature, the hold ups today would come in the form of traffic and the general public having accidents, an indication of how much busier the roads were beginning to get.
Even when travelling away from the main highways, the increase in those enjoying the same routes as us was compelling, and after being so used to little to nobody interrupting our STC’s and Regularities, it was a shock to the system to be sharing the stunning mountain roads of Austria with cyclists, walkers, motorcyclists and other motoring enthusiasts, largely in machines much cleaner than ours!
This didn’t seem to cause too many issues across the closely spaced regs though, with both taking place in the Graz Highlands, the lower slopes of the Styrian Mountains. The first was a 9km hill climb, running between the trees and pistes of the hills, whilst the second followed a similar pattern, with a portion of this on a gravel climb.
There weren’t too many talking points, save for John Henderson and Lui MacLennan dropping 43 seconds at the final timing point of the first reg, injuring their bid to finish top of Class 6. Tony Rowe and Mark Delling also picked up more time than they would have liked, with a scrappy end to the second reg, and across the day they would haemorrhage 1:20s to Tony Sutton and Andrew Lawson in the battle for the overall win. Nobody would quite repeat the single figure heroics of the previous day, but Jorge and Cristobal Perez Companc came closest, posting ten seconds of penalties over the day, top of the daily charts again and perhaps leaving them thinking of what might have been.
The majority of the rest of the afternoon was spent on the Austrian highways, including runs through many of the long tunnels that punch holes through the ancient rock of the Alps. Whilst the roads may not have been too exciting, the scenery was incredible as we passed lush green pasture, dense pine forest and soaring rock peaks.
In the midst of the motorway driving there was a detour over one of the passes in the Gesäuse National Park, with a steep climb and even steeper descent into the town of Admont, famous for its Abbey, which at over 1000 years old is the oldest remaining in Austria. Any competitors with brakes on the less than healthy side may have been uttering a few supplications to their chosen deity themselves, and I’m sure our pair of Rolls Royce driving crews were amongst them. The occupants of cars 2 and 8 squeaked their way slowly down the descent into Admont, being careful not to get themselves into a ‘two and eight’ and a situation where the Phantom and Silver Ghost became more roller than Royce.
Thankfully they made it down the pass, and this meant that everyone would later be able to thank Steve Kiss, driver of the Phantom, for a thoughtful gift of some specially bottled wine, produced by his Hungarian vineyard, a lovely act of generosity on his part.
After a few more motorway miles there were some more mountain roads, allowing us to enjoy the views over the ultramarine waters of the Attersee and Mondsee lakes, glistening in the sunshine and packed with people enjoying the water. This should have been the final act on the run into Salzburg, but there was some unplanned chaos for some of the crews as they attempted to enter the subterranean carpark at the hotel. The ticket machine had run out of tickets, and so the barrier would not open, causing a tailback that was blocking the streets around the hotel. The car park was privately run, as well, and so nobody at the hotel could solve the problem quickly. I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a machine running out of tickets, it must be rare, never mind doing so when 70 odd vehicles are turning up in the early evening requiring the car park. You couldn’t make it up.
Tomorrow is the penultimate day of competition, and it is a big one too with a further two regularities and a test, as well as 665 km of driving. The results may have been fairly settled for the past few days, but one can’t help but feel that with such a long day in prospect, there might just be a twist in the tale of this year’s P2P yet.
Syd
