Day 2 Sarnen to Aprica (Via the Alps)

The night in Hotel Metzgern started well - we had the customary Swiss curry (complete with fruit cocktail) and began the drinking. Staples 2 Naples is reknowned for being the quickest way of European cities disposing of beer and this night was no exception. Team XJ3 helped the friendly and precise Swiss people in this respect, but our mums will be pleased to know that we did not do as much as some.

Day 2 started too early with a brisk drive to the meeting point just outside Sarnen and the trip over the Alps was soon under way, but only after we all gathered together for a group photo.

The Duchess seemed to relish her second foray into Swiss countryside. Well, all morning anyway. We passed the spot where she "failed to proceed" in 2006 and joy was in our hearts. Not for long.

About 10km (perhaps as little as 5km) later she began to misfire, refuse to go any further and get generally grumpy. We re-seated the fuel pump relay and all seemed fine.... for the next 5 km. Bugger. Well, you'll see the photos as soon as we can find somewhere to post them up but to cut a long story short, it's much the same as 2006 - we had several teams' help, thought we'd fixed it, then we hadn't etc - until she seemed fine. It looks like it's been the air flow meter all along and a clean out seemed to do the trick.

So joy was in our hearts again. But not for long. We got off Julien (SP?) Pass, towards St. Moritz, with a convoy of S2N-ers following to help in case she stopped working again. It turns out that the Swiss Police (a.k.a. a heavily armed bunch of officious gits) chose the Duchess for a spot check. Just not what we (or she) needed. They checekd our papers and sniffed suspiciously around the car for a while before questionning Ian about his alcohol habit and drug use. He wasn't even driving! Anyway, he managed to fool them that he was just a normal guy and off we went, watching other comrades suffering the same fate at the hands of the Swiss.

We made it to Aprica at about 8pm, the Duchess is OK - but only OK. We think that there's a brake problem on the passenger-side front so we'll have the wheel off tomorrow and have a look.

So far so good! Wonder if she'll make the distance though.

Stats so far:

Fuel Used: 44.9 gallons
Distance: 993.5 miles
Average Speed: 45 mph
Average MPG: 23.7