Steve's escape from the Swedish winter: UK or bust

Well Neil and I finally did the trip to England. Neil on his Suzuki Bandit and me in the little car. Left home almost midnight on a Sunday and drove through the night down through southern Sweden, across Øresund bridge to Denmark and on to the Rødby to Puttgarden ferry.

Breakfast! - First McDonalds into Germany at Fehmarn-Burg.

Grabbed 20 minutes sleep on the ferry and continued down through Germany along autobahn 1 which I must say is a pretty boring motorway but if one wants to get some miles out of the way it's probably the only way to go. Once down at Osnabrück we turned right and headed into Holland. Eventually arriving at our first stop at Manfred and Villeca's holiday home in Rijssen about 5 in the afternoon. A little worse for wear but a few chilled beers solved that - thanks Manfred!

Nice new tents and award winning camping stools!

Next day we said goodbye and headed for The Hook (of Holland), first time ended up on the wrong side of the estuary so initiated a "quick" correction to get us back to where the Stina line ferry would take us to Harwich. Then I was on to my mums in Kent and Neil to Liverpool.

Peter changing out the plenum for a much better version. A few small mods before taking her to TDI for a well deserved tuneup.

Accelerator snapped yet again and we realised it was most likely because I hadn't added a throttle stop. Thanks for the help to drag me back out of the car Andy, oh and the B&B.

The dyno was invented by a guy at Scania and he created his own company out of his idea. It's a much safer and more accurate way to set up the vehicle as well as test it as there is no risk the car will fly off the rollers.

During the tuning process, many parameters were tweaked and tweaked again.

Nice to have it professionally setup.

Almost there.

At the same time I took the opportunity to have the geometry setup up, which I have only ever done myself. It feels and drives so much better now.

Then it was touring around, visiting friends and family and time also to take in a trip to Silverstone for the Formula Student event. Unlucky for Charmers university from Gothenburg their electric car had problems after the mandatory water test which is part of the scrutiny process. Unfortunately it couldn't compete in the full competition.

Fantastic how the electric cars out performed the petrol engines on acceleration and cornering.

There was chaos in Calias with operation stack so we decided to take the Harwich to the Hook again with a stop with Manfred and Villeca's new site at Harderwijk in Holland. Then it was time for the long drive home (1500km), up through Holland, skipped through Germany and into Denmark. Instead of taking the Puttgarden to Rødby ferry we drove up through Denmark to Fredrikshaven and took the ferry to Gothenburg.