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Just to make you all aware…. this is going to be a long one. It wasnt necessarily the longest part of the trip but it was where a lot of memorable stuff happened…
We left the Gasthof on the Monday morning at about 9AM to try and get a reasonably early start on the last leg of the southbound Journey. I took this particular leg and Alison was happy for me to do so, particularly as the conditions were a little wet; there had been some slush overnight and while it wasnt sticking, it was plain that at any point, we could quite easily find ourselves in a position where we would have to stay in Austria a further night until the weather passed.
As mentioned before, I was very conscious of the XJS not having snow tyres and I had no comprehension as to how zealous the local police were going to be. We slipped out of the car park of the Gasthof and turned right towards Innsbruck Sud, along the E45 and one of the first things we saw as we came up the ramp to the E45 was a cop car on the other side of the road, blue and red lights going, who had pulled someone for an unknown infringement. Alison and I exchanged a look of “…thank christ for that, its not us…”, I exhaled loudly with a whistle of relief and we carried on our way.
We proceeded with the journey down the E45, mostly dual carriageway very much like sections of our own A1M or M45 or the such like. This carried on for about 30-35 minutes at a gentle, regular pace until we came to the turning for the Brenner Pass. The views of the Austrian Alps to our right, as we were travelling, were still there, still impressive, but not as dramatic as they were in the distance, some miles away and also that there is a lot of trees and vegetation by the side of the road, so the view is not quite as uninterrupted as it was.
The E45 then becomes the A13 in the same way that the M5 becomes the M42, as a spur off the regular carriageway; this then becomes the A60 and then the A13 once you do not take the Innsbruck spur and the signpost is then for Brenner.
This goes on to an elevated section away from the rest of the road which proceeds towards Innsbruck Sud and bends away and becomes the Brennerautobahn. And, in its initial stages is quite benign quite ordinary and flat for the first few miles and while the roads were a little damp, there had been some snow overnight and there were the odd few flakes by the side of the road, but nothing to cause us any trouble. This went on for a few more miles until we actually started the long climb up into the Brenner Pass.
The thing is, once you’re past the Innsbruck Sud turn off and heading up to the first of the Service Stations on the Pass, you’re starting a noticeable climb. Not like a one in four or ridiculously steep climb, but you can absolutely tell that you’re climbing up and increasing in elevation. One of the thing that makes this more obvious at that time of year, is the amount of slush on the sides of the carriageway. And while it stays on the sides of the carriageway, its fine. Pirelli P6000s can deal with water on the roads thats not a problem.
What is fun is that the higher you climb, the more the slush encroaches on the sides of the carriageway that you’re driving on and gets closer and closer to your lane to the point where you start running through it because you cant avoid it because while you’re trying to take it easy and stay out of trouble, transcontinental freight and articulated lorries have no such time for such niceties. They have to be somewhere in a hurry. The lorries, being taller, just sweep out of the way what is in their way and leave the slush behind either to the sides of the road or in the centre of it. The XJS, being much lower slung, ends up running through some of that slush left in the middle of the lane, you can hear it sllllllosshhhh off the underside of the car and it gets, putting it politely, a bit squeaky bum time.
So, unless you’re particularly bold and experienced in driving in snow in a rear wheel drive GT car, you have to be somewhat more pragmatic. That was the choice that I elected to take as Duty Driver that morning.
But the more the snow and slush encroached on my carriageway, the XJS couldn’t hide that while it could do the job that it needed careful and sensible handling. So it came to be that I did most of that journey up the increasingly steep Brenner Pass at about 50mph, in the slow lane with both of my hands having an increasingly vice like grip on the steering wheel, with the radio off, and being hyper-alert for any twitches from the back end of the car. White Knuckle Airways, as we used to call that style of driving in the RAF days…
The last thing I needed was any kind of step-out from the back end or worse, a swapper or a spin. Not on a snowy mountain road, while still in Austria and not on snow tyres and with steep drops on either side. As you climb higher up, about 5 to 7 miles in, it goes from 2 lanes to 3 to accommodate heavy freight traffic which I really tried to keep out of the way of, but considering they’d already cleared the majority of the slush, the slow lane was really the safest and most sensible place to be.
When you get the Schoenberg loop and you start to get into the elevated mountainside parts, the game is really on. And, by this point I wasnt scared, but I was hyper-alert and on edge, for certain. Still taking the signs for Bozen/Brenner, the A13 winds its way south through the mountains and as you bend your way around Schoenberg, you then come up on the first of the Toll stops along the way.
After the toll, you’re still in Tyrol, still in Austria and you start the next climb up south and the Italian Alps/Dolomites (cannot ever remember which is which, LOLZ) come into view and you can see the ski resorts and the slopes with their ski lifts. Further serves to remind you as to exactly where you are and that you’re not out of the woods yet. The road goes back down to 2 lanes though as the hardest part of the climb has gone for now. The deeper you get into it, the steeper the mountainsides either side of you get, the denser the pine forests on either side are and the more imposing the looming Italian mountains get. It looks fricking beautiful and quite imposing when its grey and cloudy with the white of the snow on the mountainsides.
Eventually, as you get to the Brenner Nord turn off and the Brennersee lake to your right, you start seeing bi-lingual signs in German and Italian notifying you of the upcoming Italian Border checkpoint. This, I do recall there being a relatively short queue for but one that we cleared without any undue problems and was a formality from what I remember, just a case of showing passports and the such like.
And that was the worst of that leg done… and we could relax a little as it was, or at least it felt like, all downhill from there. The road then becomes the A22 Autostrada Del Brennero. This continues to wind its way southwards and it definitely becomes the descent down the other side of the pass and my iron like grip on the steering wheel lessened somewhat and it was easier to relax. The road quite gently flows through this part of Trentino and the province of Piedmont. By this point it was approximately 11:30, so even despite the somewhat twitchy iron-gripped ascent of the Brenner Pass, we hadnt been hanging back that much, particularly once the road was clear and we were able to make good use of the clear roads on the Italian side to make up time.
Before long (about 30 minutes further south) we found our way towards the turn off for Lake Garda at a place called Mori; I was vaguely familiar with this particular turn-off as when the late Mrs F and I had been to Limone before, we had flown into Verona airport and the minibus undertaking the transfer to our hotel had taken this same route, up the Autostrada from Verona, up the eastern side of the lake and thence through the mountain roads into Limone. So, I kinda knew what to expect from this turn off and started looking for the signs to Lago Di Garda Nord. Soon enough, we came upon the exit and joined the SS240, to head towards the lake.
And this is where the Italian countryside becomes quite breathtaking as you climb through the mountain roads – I guess in some ways its very much like the single track – well, I mean regular carriageway roads in Scotland, Wales or even parts of Cornwall. The roads rise and fall as you go through the valleys, you have to have your wits about you, there isnt really time for you to watch the scenery go by, no matter how beautiful it may be, including the wineries that make some of the best Barolo in Italy, all hanging on to the sides of the hills like limpets as you go through the different switchbacks and hairpin turns as you go through . But your passenger does, LOLZ. Your passenger gets to enjoy the whole thing, even if she is on the wrong side of the car.
Eventually, you come out of the wine growing areas and into the more flat, lakeside settlements, the first one being Torbole. I dont recall if Torbole is the largest settlement on this side of the lake or not, but it certainly felt like it as Riva Del Garda and Limone are definitely notably smaller.
On the road out of Torbole, the road becomes increasingly more winding and starts to rise again. We could see the settlement of Torbole getting further away to our left and downwards in the valley before the realisation dawned on us…. Shit, we missed the turning. I mean, I wasnt going to beat myself up too much about it, as we’d travelled the best part of a thousand miles without any errors so far, LOLZ. We found a small spur on the Localita Perino and turned back, slightly chastened towards Torbole to pick up the correct road again.
This time we found our way back onto the SS240 and started the long gliding descent back down to the lakeside. The closer we get to the centre of the town, the imposing mountains appear on our right hand side and no picture will ever do them justice. It really is a striking sight. Duly, we arrive at a Turn off for Riva Del Garda, the next town along the lakeside and the last real major settlement before we get to Limone.
Torbole, in some respects, almost reminded me of an Italian cross between an Isle Of Wight Coastal Resort and a Greek-Cypriot mountain village… somewhat tired and living on its former glories and just needing that missing something to bring it truly back to life. Its not a bad place, it just looked tired.
We continued through the town, over a couple of roundabouts and through a tunnel into the side of the mountain, with the mountain wall on the right hand side, colonades on the left and then the vast expanse of the lake immediately after that. Apparently these tunnels are not that old, they date back to the end of World War 2, or so we were led to believe, I never checked up on that to work out whether that was true or not. But they’re not that wide. They’re almost just as wide as a single train track tunnel and about 16-20ft in height, so if there is a tourist coach or a truck coming the other way, you’re gonna have to give way, LOLZ. Not worth getting into a fight with Italian PSV’s or HGV’s.
Immediately after the second tunnel, you arrive into Riva Del Garda, in the same way that Brighton mostly blends into Hove and increasingly how Coventry blends into Kenilworth. They’re virtually indistinguishable.
Riva is definitely more resort-y than Torbole and has many more hotels, probably to cater for the German tourists that swarm the area from Whitsun onwards throughout the summer. Theres nothing wrong with it, but it struck me that it was much more of a town-of-two-halves than Torbole; the Torbole end is definitely younger, more glassy and new hotel-y than the western side of it which, like Torbole, obviously hasnt quite had the same level of investment.
As your direction changes slightly and you end up pointing more north west than east, the big mountains now are visible more on your left hand side and then back to your right hand side as you leave Riva and continue southwards on the Riva Monte Oro.
Once you leave the town itself and descend back to the lakeside, the road then becomes the SS45bis and you soon enter another tunnel. This goes on for quite some time and feels like it goes on forever. After about 2 miles, it breaks out into the fresh air for mere seconds and then another tunnel starts.
After this second tunnel ends, you’re back in daylight for another 15-20 seconds and then you happen along a much more rustic tunnel (no other way of describing it, no fancy brickwork around it or girders, looks like it has just been dynamited out of the mountain wall and the navvies then moved on to the next job. Again, not a place where you want to get into an elbows-out argument with other traffic. Several more rustic tunnels later, you happen on a series of colonnaded tunnels that if you have watched the Bond film Quantum of Solace, should be very very familiar.
The road continues to hug the mountains on one side and the lake on the other and you progress into the province of Lombardia as you continue south. More tunnels and more pinch points for about another 5-7 miles or so. As the road then becomes the Via IV Novembre, it starts to climb up again and isnt as low to the lake as it has been for the last 15 miles or so.
Within minutes, we see the signs for “Bienvenuto, Limone Sul Garda”. We were almost there, we had nearly made it. Three full days on the road between Aylesbury and here and we had almost made it. We were still a good 10-15 minutes drive away from the centre of the village itself and there were more hotels, walls on both sides of the road, the big mountains on our right and the vast expanse of the lake to our left.
Eventually we come up on a hotel that I recognised as being close to the centre of the village, one of the more salubrious establishments, namely the Hotel Splendid Palace. This was a place I recognised from a previous visit four years before and knew it to be within walking distance of the village centre and at this point, the end of the journey was tantalisingly close. After the Splendid Palace, the obstacles on your left drop away and there is nothing obscuring your vision of the lake and of the mountain on the opposite side in Malcesine, Monte Baldo, and its a breathtaking view. It really is. The SS45 bis/Via IV Novembre goes into a final tunnel which goes through the mountain at the top of the village itself and it suddenly appears back into the daylight, deep into the village itself.
We spied the council offices on the way past (their local Italian equivalent, anyway – where we would have to go in the morning to arrange access to the little chapel referred to in the first part of the story) and we knew that the turn off to the hotel/guesthouse that we were staying in was imminent.
We had tried to book into a proper hotel in Limone for the duration (The Hotel Monte Baldo), but the problem was that we were very much out of season as we were there in March – the season doesnt even get going at all until well after Easter and closer to Whitsun. 200 yds after the council office was a 180 degree turn off to the Casa Albergo Sorriso, which is where we were to stay for the next three nights. This was quite a sharp turn, doubling back on ourselves, and thankfully, there was plenty of space on the cobbled road for the XJS to be able to make the turn without anything embarrassing happening, like having to reverse its arse out into the middle of the road to complete the turn (like what I had to do at least once in Sussex….)…
Onto the Via Capitelli, down a slight slope up to the narrow entrance to the guest house… Over the sleeping policeman and then pulling into the car parking slot on the right, next to a transit van flatbed on my left hand side… which I hadnt quite fully taken in to account when judging the turn...
“Fuuuuuuubaaaaarrrrrrr!!!!!!” came the shriek from the passenger seat – followed by a long low, lazy “skrrrrrrrunch” from the left side drivers door mirror as it scraped against the flatbed of the transit van, which was in the parking bay to my immediate left…. “FACKING HELL” I shouted, “After all that! A thousand facking miles and I run into a facking transit van!!”.
Many other expletives followed. I reversed out gently and slightly and Alison checked the left hand drivers mirror and found it to be another case of more noise than actual physical damage.
As an aside…. Maybe thats the way we used to build cars back those days in that you heard what you thought was damage more than you saw it, whereas these days… you can merely breathe on another car in a supermarket carpark these days and be left with your vehicle scarred for life.
And on that digressionary note… the southbound leg was over. We were in Italy at our destination, and the hardest part was over. We had made it and we checked into the Guesthouse.
It was about 3pm in the afternoon of the 19th March 2012.
I sent my friends and family Facebook messages to let them know we had arrived safely and then once we were checked in and unpacked; we tried to find somewhere in the village to get a simple evening meal and a bottle of wine to wind down as it started to get dark. It hadnt been a huge distance but it had been a long day and certainly felt like a very long weekend.
© text & photos Fubar2 2025
