On one occasion we came around a mountain hairpin to find a huge scoop missing from the road. It looked as if a giant had taken a snack on the tarmac. The other half of the road was intact. ‘What do you think?’ asked Dan. ‘Er . . .’ Going through my mind was the alternative of a 40km (25-mile) loop around the hill we were attempting to cross. This fact far outweighed any sense of danger on what looked like a perfectly serviceable half of road. ‘Go for it, but don’t hang around,’ I said. We backed up about 20m (65ft) and lit up the wheels. We shot over without a problem, save for a muffled rumble behind. Our route immediately looped around to the other side of the ravine, so we were able to look back across to where we had just passed. ‘F--k!!!’ said Dan in a higher pitch than normal. It was a bloody miracle we’d got over. Earth and rubble was still falling from under what was now the wafer-thin strip of tarmac that remained. It looked like a magic carpet slightly buckling at the edge and hanging in the air. We were clearly the last beings who would make it over. Even a pedestrian would have brought what remained crashing down some 80m (260ft) to the valley floor. We didn’t say much more to each other that night.
But the most spectacular decision to plough on regardless happened outside Naples, where our satnav had a nervous breakdown. Dan was delighted that our escape from a bowl-like finish zone had beaten the suckers queuing to escape on the official evacuation. While they grumbled in traffic, we were flying up a reasonably good-looking road that no one else seemed to know about. Merrily we pushed on as Dan mentioned how weird it was that this road was not on the satnav. We soon found out why.
The sight that greeted us was truly weird: what can only be described as a rucked-up tarmac carpet. The road had literally slipped back down the mountain and piled up in a multitude of folds at the foot. We stared at it a while and figured that if we pushed on over the mound we could then crest the peak and see what lay ahead. It might get better on the other side.
Bouncing our poor Fiat 500L over the messy bit, we pushed on over the rough foundations until we reached the top, where we were pleased to find a road surface heading down the other side that appeared good. On we went.
The Italian government is said to spend precisely the same amount of money per capita on infrastructure in all its regions. The way this money is spent, or goes missing, varies dramatically throughout the nation. The Italian Tyrol in the north is like visiting Germany; everything is clean and works perfectly. Trains, trams, roads, bridges, lighting, you name it – are all impressive. Then you begin heading south – and the further you go, the worse it gets.
So there we are, heading down from the top of the mountain. What we discovered when our car limped into the village down in the valley ahead was that we had just experienced the mess of a dual contract. Two villages were each given funding to build the road. The authorities divided the money so that contractors from each district would be employed. All they had to do was build their half of the deal and meet in the middle. The village we ended up in had the task of building along the valley bottom and halfway up the slope we were on. The town we had left had funds to build up and over the top and halfway down. The two contracts would be complete when the roads met halfway down the north side of the mountain. Well, the first part of our journey clearly showed that those foundations were non-existent. The village we ended up in had done a proper job. They had dug in their road properly. So when the two parts of the road met, there was a problem. One half differed in height from the other by a margin of around 1.25m (4ft). I know this because we got airborne where the roads met.
Dan Lloyd is a decent driver and, I have to add, a half decent pilot. If time stood still as we sailed through the air, it went even slower when the nose of the car slid a full 20m (65ft) along the surface at perhaps 65km/h (40mph) with no wheels in contact with the ground. How we didn’t flip over, I will never know. During what must have looked like a remarkably well-delivered stunt, we each uttered a different but equally short word, drawing both out into very long words due to sheer terror. My S--T!!!!! merged with Dan’s F--K!!!!! We now knew why this road was never opened.
‘This trio of pairs.’
During the 2016 Tour, the organisers, in their wisdom, decided to evacuate the whole shebang from the top of a mountain through an enormous borehole that was being constructed for a hydroelectric facility. As the cars and trucks tried to descend the steep gradient of around 25% through a dark tunnel of around 15km (9 miles) in length, Sean commented what ‘total idiots’ all the other drivers were. Their brake lights were ablaze. ‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘They’re using their brakes and they are going to fail. The only way down this safely is to be in your lowest gear.’ Sure enough, cars started to bump into each other as the brakes wore out. It was a miracle no one was hurt. If there had been a fire, just about every TV commentator, pundit and podium girl would have been dust. The
