Sunday morning saw us re-pack our overnight bags back into the car and we left the IBIS at about 10:30-11:00AM.
As we were coming down towards half full and because fuel was relatively cheap in Luxembourg at the time (although I dont recall the price now, it certainly did strike me as notably cheaper) I elected to refuel and take the tanks back up to full, ready for the next leg down to Innsbruck in the Austrian Tyrol. The route would take us around the outside of Stuttgart and down through the Alps to Tyrol, just short of the Brenner Pass which we would use to get into Italy.
We expected to encounter at least one border checkpoint along the way; while France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany were all part of the Schengen agreement at the time, Austria and Italy were not. So, passports were at the ready, plus all the documentation for the vehicle… and as I mentioned some moments ago, a slight degree of trepidation about the lack of snow tyres on the XJS and how the Border personnel may react, if at all. One obviously doesn’t want to look too suspiciously nervous as if one is trying to hide something.
I took the first part, leaving Luxembourg and heading south, once we had refuelled. The route would take us down through the Rhine Valley and around the outside of Stuttgart and Saarbrucken in Germany and down towards the Austrian Alps. As is usually the case with motorway driving through big industrialised areas, such as the industrial heartland of Germany at this time, a lot of it was grey, featureless and sadly forgettable, as is the case in the UK and the US and anywhere else for that matter. There was also of course, a lot of green countryside around us outside of the big conurbations, particularly when we were following the course of the Saar, before came to Stuttgart and its hinterlands.
There were two things that I do remember of that leg though, whilst we were still in Germany; one was the winemaking area in the Rhine valley where we drove for about 10-15 minutes along the Autobahn where all we could see on either side was grape vines, on the sides of the hills, acres and acres of them. Obviously, its not something you see an awful lot in the UK and you certainly didnt back then; so this was quite a novelty for me to see these winemaking areas.
The other thing that I remember, probably with a bit of a jolt, was contraflow, or more specifically, one section of contraflow. This would have been around or just after Saarbrucken and while it was a relatively benign stretch of contraflow, with concrete lane dividers, what I did notice only briefly was that the XJS had a tendency to tramline; that is, if there have been heavy HGV’s on a particular stretch of tarmac and their tyres had made depressions or indentations in the tarmac, unless you kept all four of your car’s wheels firmly out of these tramlines, you would end up falling into them. And, one particular tramline, when I was maybe getting a little complacent thinking this was all too easy, one of these tramlines ran a little too close to the concrete barriers resulting in that awful scccccraaaawwwk sound you hear of bodywork on concrete. Noooooo, god no. We’ve been in Europe less than 48 hours and I’ve bent it already!!
This woke my snoozing sister up with a jolt who thought that I had got so complacent that I had dozed off at the wheel. Not so, I protested vehemently. And its true, I hadn’t dozed off or got distracted.
I still maintain to this day that the XJS found this particular tramline and by the time I realised what was going on, I was already reacting to the after effects. We obviously couldnt stop at this point, in the middle of contraflow in busy roadworks, so we had to press much further on, get out of the roadworks and then find a place to stop and get some coffee and take a closer look.
That point ended up being about 5-6 miles further down the road and we found a truckstop and petrol station and pulled in to take a closer look. Initially, on very first glance, looking around and slightly behind the left rear wheel arch, you couldnt really see anything, but when you looked particularly closely, there was a little scuff mark. Certainly not as bad as it sounded when it happened, I was expecting half the rear wing to be missing. Relieved and definitely feeling more than a little chastened by the experience, we got some very forgettable German coffee and snacks for the southbound journey and filled up again to top the tanks off – one thing about being on the Autobahns is that in something like an XJS, the outside lane isnt exactly purely the preserve of the hypercars, the XJS could easily hold its own. So, we were starting to burn a bit of fuel and given we were going to be going into the mountains soon, it struck us as being a good opportunity to get some more fuel.
At this point, Alison took over for the next leg. Most of this particular road was now simple dual carriageway or ordinary A-road equivalent as opposed to being the autobahn.
Not long after this, we came up to the Austrian border, after we had gone through a tunnel; now looking at that site now, there was a border checkpoint there before but that has now gone and the tolls are collected automatically. At the point we made the crossing into Austria, there was a queue for us to be processed, which for the most part was every bit as cursory as the departure point was at Folkestone; bored Border Guard personnel carrying out cursory checks of passports and occasionally asking for vehicle documentation, depending on how many people were in the vehicle and whether it set their spidey senses tingling, which obviously the XJS didnt.
It doesnt take long on the B179 heading towards Innsbruck before you start seeing the mountains around you as the road threads its way south. This particular road is as you can see from the pictures, just regular two way road, as opposed to motorway or dual carriageway. Also, unlike the return journey, there arent lots of switchbacks or anything like that; most of the road carves its way around the mountains and stays low, rather than trying to climb through them. That is the case of the Brenner pass, but not of this particular road to Innsbruck.
At first, you can see the mountains in the distance and then the deeper you get into the Alps, the closer they get and certainly in the tail end of winter, as we were, the whiter they get, the greyer the skies get, the more imposing and impressive they get.
It was getting on, later in the day and we were almost at Innsbruck by 7pm. Our stop for the night was the Gasthof Badl, a typical Tyrolean Pension or guesthouse. Nice and easy to find and comfortable as well. Certainly had better facilties than the IBIS Luxembourg City.
It has had an update since then but while it was simple and honest, it certainly looks to have weathered well and been brought up to date by its current owners. We found the 2012 iteration to be quiet, comfortable and the Tafelspitz we were able to enjoy that evening was simple, honest and filling. Im sure that it is as good now as it was when Alison and I were there and I continue to endorse the Badl and would be intrigued if any puffins have ever stayed there since 2012.
© text & photos Fubar2 2025
