I planned to do a road trip in my Porsche Boxster in the summer of 2024. Having been driving for nearly 20 years and owning many ‘driver focused’ cars, one thing I have never done is to take one of my cars over to mainland Europe. Most likely due to the all-encompassing anxiety of a breakdown that comes with driving 20year old performance cars and hot hatches.

In order to minimise this fear of break down I decided to do some bits of maintenance on the car before the trip. This escalated quickly. What started off as replacing an air conditioning pipe because I didn’t want to be too hot driving on the continent, resulted in replacing every single braking component on the car, and subsequently a substantial amount of suspension components…’If you’re going to do something – do it properly.’ A moto some of the previous owners should have heeded. Crumbling brake lines, snapped bolts, threaded components all repaired and replaced with better than factory upgrades including stainless steel brake hoses, handmade brake lines and complete caliper seal rebuild and caliper refurbishment. New master cylinder and multiple brake flushes make the brakes on this car impeccable and better than new. I now also have an abundance of tools, just incase I ever have the stupid idea to do all of this again in a future old banger.

The Prep:

This work took months of travelling to mum and dad’s house to carry out work on my laid-up Porsche every weekend. Rolling about on the floor, cutting and burning my skin on various tools and parts. Refurbishing things that would never be seen and even taking a trip to the emergency eye hospital in London to remove a fragment of metal from my eye. As the Eurostar booking loomed, I worked everyday to get the car ready for the trip – finalising the work with a trip to Porsche Torque in Uxbridge to check over my work, get a full alignment and to refill my aircon.

I even roped my little nephew in to help bleed the brakes, such was the urgency of getting these jobs finished!

We made our way down to Folkstone in my clean and shiny Boxster, now with freezing cold air conditioning and excellent brakes that would not give way on the autobahn in Germany or elsewhere on our circa 1500mile journey.

The Journey:

Our trip started early with the drive to Folkestone the car was giving me confidence and made the 2 hour trip faultlessly – I was however, disappointed with the amount of dust produced by my new Brembo pads. Spoiling my lovely clean wheels. After arriving in Calais we drove through central France to Reims for a stopover. We were very tired so grabbed some food and focused on the forthcoming journey.

A cool stop on the way was Reims Geux. A disused race circuit, who’s remnants sit alongside a public road. A great place for a quick photoshoot, to let the top down and open the valves on my exhaust to make some noise!

France:

In hindsight, we focussed too much on getting through France and onto Switzerland where we’d be staying for 3 days. We should have slowed down and stopped in more places on the trip before moving on. So day two saw us heading south west toward Colmar, a border city of France, Switzerland and Germany and a place we were already familiar with; having visited earlier in the year.

Following a brief brunch in the pituresque Colmar we made our way to Wilderswil just outside Interlaken in the Jungfrau Region of Switzerland. A place we had been before and loved so much and the perfect place for some top-down mountain pass driving. We even stayed in the same 100+ year old Swiss lodge that we did 7 years ago – Wilderswil is a quiet town away from the touristic Interlaken, but close enough to visit for restaurants and bars.

Switzerland:

We visited the famous towns of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, which are busy tourist hotspots. but understandably so. The colours, fresh air and scenery are unbeatable and with the farmers having just cut their grass – the sweet, floral smells of the fields was overwhelming. Furthermore, the food on offer in Switzerland is also delicious!

A key purpose of this trip was to drive. To drop the roof on the Porsche and get it screaming through the mountains (and; in possibly the most perilous way, to test my engineering skills in rebuilding brake systems) by throwing it around the corners, tunnels, ascents and descents of the Furka Pass and Grimsel Pass made famous by the James Bond film; Goldfinger. I had a clear run most of the way and pushed the car – but not too hard! This was the start of our Journey into Germany for the next leg of the trip.

The car was tested further on the de-restricted sections of the German Autobahn on the way from Switzerland to Freiberg-Im-Breisgau via Luzern. Looking at my dashboard I saw 180… (Kph – not Mph!) this was plenty fast enough for me. Again, we rushed through this area but stayed at a lovely hotel with an excellent restaurant before heading up to Landgraaf in the Netherlands to stay with Nadine’s family.

Germany and Netherlands:

Staying in the Netherlands with Nadine’s family is always chilled and I am always so well looked after by them! Bringing the car to this part of Europe. It would be sacrilege not to visit the Nurburgring, one of the worlds most challenging tracks (which is technically a one way toll road). I took Nadine’s dad with me and showed him what my car could do on the autobahn and the surrounding roads of the Eiffel region. On the way down to the ‘Ring it started to rain heavily. Steam rose from the roads. I had contemplated taking my car around the infamous track. Crashing is commonplace and the car would not be insured and damages are expensive. I consulted Nadine’s dad who is a solid voice of reason and he said; “Daniel, you can go round…but I won’t be coming with you.” and his caution was right. It is just not worth the risk to me – especially after the rain. We opted instead to travel to some of the viewpoints around the track and take in the atmosphere of the world’s most famous racetrack.

A few sweltering days in southern Netherlands saw us visit an outdoor pool and a regionally famous ice cream shop in Valkenberg, where the dairy cows used to make the ice cream overlook the shop. Again, some wonderful driving roads popular with motorcyclists.

After our stay with Nadine’s family we made our way back to Calais for the return Eurotunnel. We stopped in Mons, Belgium and then Dunkirk, France – I had always thought this area to be a bit of a dive but was pleasantly surprised by the refurbished promenade. We spent a couple of hours walking around before heading back to the UK. The hard work and expense had paid off. The Boxster was flawless (bar thousands of splatted bugs on the front).