Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 Another onward journey from Grindelwald

I’ve been a bit busy since getting home last Wednesday so it’s taken a little while to go through photos.

I’m another one that took the scenic route home after the Grindelwald Treffen. My onward journey started with a long run in fairly serious heat across France to Brive la Gaillarde not so far from Bordeaux where a night was spent roughing it in the hotel that is Castel Novel in company with Javier and Ana Maria (Marmota, of this parish) who know their stuff when it comes to travel and had rightly recommended this chateau.


Castel Novel


On the Quinto Real road

Next day was a run over the Pyrenees on the Banca to Quinto Real road to Pamplona with a stop off to visit Steve at M3W services. An anonymous but decent enough hotel in central Pamplona was followed by a night in Fuerte de la Conception, a fortress that was mined by Wellington to stop Napoleon from taking it intact and is now a superb, and superbly strange, hotel that still bears the scars of the Napoleonic wars and sits a couple of hundred metres inside the Spanish border with Portugal near Almeida. This hotel is one of the very few that rates as wonderful in my opinion; peaceful, quirky, friendly, good food and decent prices. It’s another Javier and Ana Maria recommendation and it’s close to one of the main roads to Portugal from Spain, well worth a detour.


Hotel staff at Fuerte del la Conception


The Courtyard at Fuerte del la Conception

A short run from Fuerte de la Concepcion took me to Caramulo for the MotorFestival. Accommodation this time was in Casa do Cabeco an excellent bed and breakfast/guest house a few km down from Caramulo on as twisty a road as could reasonably be fitted in to such a short distance. The weather forecast for the three days of the festival was truly dreadful, crazy amounts of rain in alarming thunderstorms was expected but luckily did not emerge with quite the frequency and duration expected. The event had grown considerably between my first and second visits in 2017 & 2019, and has taken quite a step upwards in size since then with one major change; they’ve introduced organisation! This will sound like shocking news to anyone who has visited before but fear not, the people have held on to the easy going, friendly atmosphere that makes the event what it is. The Friday was the day for “tourists” to do “parade” runs up the hill climb without the chicane and stop box required for the regularity event. These runs had a bit of a mix of mainly people having a blast up the 2850m course (145m climb) with a few people who had managed to find the rules for the regularity event, who understood them and had the ability and stop watches to allow them, to rehearse their timings. This did lead to occasional moments of getting half way up the hill before rounding a corner to find a 911 doing the required average speed on the exit of the corner. I kind of lost count but think I got 6 runs up the hill. All good fun. Parked just across the paddock (better known as the hotel car park by the start line) from me was the 1929 two speed Aero three wheeler of Iain and Graca Stewart which is a remarkably original machine for a three wheeler of that vintage For the competitive runs up the hill on the Saturday and Sunday I rapidly reverted to “having a blast” mode since I remain clueless about what timings I should have been aiming at for the regularity side of things not to mention why! This was all fine till in the line up for my last run on the Sunday afternoon it started to rain and then about half way up the hill it turned into full tropical thunderstorm levels of deluge with added lightning and thunder. A very slow run was had with great difficulty seeing where I was going never mind trying to avoid aquaplaning into the armco. Another six or seven cars set off up the hill after me but then word was received at the top of the hill that the event had been halted and then that there was a tree down on the course with a spectator injured. We were stuck at the top of the hill for a fair while these things were dealt with. Once back down into the village it transpired that a tree near the top of the course had been hit by lightning, had come down and there was a man in his forties plus his seven year old child under the tree so both of them were hit by the lightning. He had gone into cardiac arrest but luckily they were at a marshal’s station manned by the local fire brigade so they had started CPR immediately and managed to get him going again. Both were rushed away to hospital. A week later I was talking to one of the firemen from the area who said that they were both fine, at home, albeit with some painful burns and that the doctors were particularly amazed that the child was in good health despite having entry and exit burns as they had really feared the worst initially. On a lighter note it was fun watching a long line of nervous looking drivers leaving Caramulo in their Ferraris in a torrential downpour. They should have waited half an hour for the sun to come back out. Meanwhile, the results had come out with Iain and Graca winning the pre-war class ahead of a Type 57 Bugatti Atalante despite also not knowing what the rules were. Iain’s assumption was that the one speed he could do up the hill in his two speeder was basically the right speed.


Waiting at the top of the course after the last run


Iain and Graca Stewart in full race garb

Next part of my trip took me south to my brother’s place near Lisbon for a few days of eating, drinking, walking dogs on beaches, picking his 8 and 14 year old kids up from their school in the Morgan (a fair few uncle points gained, I reckon!) and a visit the breeder of his Australian Shepherds nominally to help with the socialisation of two litters of puppies, 17 in total. Those without a strong stomach when it comes to cute photos may not want to have a look at the Flickr Album of the photos.


The School Run


The dogs playing on the beach


Gratuitous cute puppy pic

The road north from Lisbon was a strange mix of not much actual rain but an awful lot of standing water from thunderstorms that I seemed to have just missed and was punctuated by meeting up with Iain and Graca for lunch and a short run about in their three wheeler, my first time in a pre-5-speeder, then meeting Mario CP and his wife Leo in Santa Comba Dao for dinner. A bit of a motorway haul across Spain ensued to an anonymous hotel in a small town east of Leon ready for crossing the Picos on the morrow. Picos day started well enough but soon the grey clouds met the ground and the road across the high section was a bit drizzly and misty but at least brightened up with the descent on the north side for the run to Santander and the ferry to Plymouth.


Descending into sunshine on the north side of the Picos

The crossing was as dull and uneventful as you would expect of a large ferry despite many warnings over the PA to be careful due to vessel movement in the rough conditions, clearly the crew have never worked on the Aberdeen-Shetland ferry which is inclined to be a much more sporting crossing!
An interminable wait to get off the boat ensued to get to passport control then into Plymouth’s evening rush hour traffic with the weather threatening but not that bad for the long haul north. A few hours of head down motorway cruising found me approaching the Lake District with the wind howling and the rain not so much coming down but blowing horizontally which at least matched the random sideways jumps that lots of the artics seemed to be making across the lanes. Tebay services beckoned and a room found at their Westmorland Hotel just as the rain went from deeply unpleasant to drive in to really quite difficult to walk about in. The next morning was spent watching the rain bouncing off the windows at breakfast and through the morning in the hotel lobby working on photos till early afternoon when the forecast proved itself correct and the final short run home to Aberdeen was completed in the early evening.
4140 miles for the trip or 6663km in total – perhaps I should have done another 3km?? The wee car performed quite happily for most of the trip, a couple of interior trim screws needed tightened, as did the oil tank brackets on one side and only one wheel fell off above Grindelwald and it didn’t really fall very far before being bolted back on and then Loctited up the next morning. Not too bad considering that when I set off from Aberdeen I hadn’t quite finished the rebuild after hitting some black ice back in the winter…not too much damage had been done but it still needed new wishbones, uprights, steering rack, wheels and chassis which took a little while to do.
All told, I think I can now declare the car shaken down.

Great travelog - thanks Calum! Must get to Portugal at some point...

What a trip, thanks for posting, Calum, you must be exhausted. I’ve just returned to Dunked over Glenshee last night, the last time I saw you was the same journey in the spring. This time it was in the dark with lashing wind and rain and huge streams and puddles waiting to catch me out, I can’t imagine what that must be like in a M3W!
Who’d have believed that lightning would need to be a considered risk at a car event and to cause such a freak incident, thank goodness those people have recovered.

Great post Calum. Thanks for sharing your experience

Excellent travelogue and pics. Thanks Calum

What a fantastic adventure Calum and thank you for sharing it with us all

Quite a journey! Wonderful photos, as always. Javier and Ana Marie do know some great places to stay, fantastic hotels and routes sorted by them for our Spain trip this year as well. Good to hear the M3W is going well after the Winter incident and rebuild, is that chassis number four?

Certainly is...more a service item than a chassis?

A great trip Calum and glad you made it back safe - albeit a bit damp around the edges

That's what I call an adventurous trip Calum. Stay safe with chassis no 4 ! Can you suggest some reinforcements. ?