Carbagerun, part 5/5. Final Chapter. Andorra - Besançon - Wageningen

"duurtlang" (duurtlang)
04/15/2016 at 09:10 • Filed to: carbagerun, carbagerun 2016

Andorra (Erts), hotel parking lot. Carbagerunners packing their chariots for the ride back home. 12:13

It was Saturday morning and we found ourselves in Andorra. >1600 km/1000 miles and less than 2 days away from a normal work day. As my co-driver’s Hyundai POS had died he needed the Galant as a DD, meaning I had to take a train for the last 450 km leg of the trip home. Great.

Day 6: the first leg back home. Arinsal (Andorra) - Besançon

I had booked a hotel in Besançon, north-eastern France, for the next night. This was supposedly a 9 hour non-stop drive.

On the hotel parking lot I talked to a fellow carbagerunner. He told me he scored second place, and actually scored points for almost all the assignments. He also told me this resulted in skipping most of the route, as solving the assignments meant there was no time to take the scenic route. He also mentioned his €350 Volvo V40 diesel had needed about 13 liters of coolant this trip.

Me, while having a conversation with the guy who scored second place in his coolant-hungry Volvo. 12:14

The previous day we had already observed that fuel prices in Andorra are comically cheap. From a European perspective that is. So before leaving the country we filled up the Galant with the cheapest gasoline I’d seen in a very long time.

Comically low gas prices in Andorra. Gas-oil is regular diesel, SP 95 is regular 95 octane (RON) gasoline. Multiply with 4.32 to get a $/gallon US price (exchange rate April 10, 2016). Notice the plastic cow plus speaker in the foreground, mounted on top of a carbagerun car. 12:33

Besides roundabouts Andorra is filled with tunnels. Not that odd for a mountainous region, but considering the tiny size of the country one wonders who paid for these things.

12:59

Still in Andorra. Roundabout ahead. 13:19

Not long after arriving in France we found ourselves in a Traffic Jam I’m intentionally using capital letters for. We imagined something terrible had happened.

Shortly after passing the French border. We were going to be behind this Citroën for a lot longer than we had anticipated. 13:39

End of the traffic jam in Ax-Les-Thermes. 15:59

Between the two pictures above the camera time stamps indicate there’s a 2 hours and 20 minutes difference. Google maps tells me the distance between these two points is about 25 km and 30 minutes. In the top picture we still had 10 minutes/10 kilometers of normal driving ahead, so we needed 2 hours and 10 minutes for a 15 km drive (<10 miles).

So what was going on? Nothing. Nothing at all. The town of Ax-Les-Thermes, the end of the jam, is a tourist trap. After the roundabout in that town the roads were clear again.

Sadly we had left the Pyrenees by that time as well. As we had a long trip ahead and because it wasn’t exactly early we took the fastest way to Besançon. This means the scenic part of the day was over. We did notice that the temperature was unusually high for February 20th, from the point of view of us north lings erners.

Panorama shot of a weirdly spacious and scenic rest stop. It even had a small marina! 17:16

Outside temperature of 16 degrees C. Insane for the date and time. 18:11

Long stretches of highway. It wasn’t all bad. 19:23

It was almost midnight when we arrived in our hotel right in the car-unfriendly city center of Besançon. Loads of one-way streets and pedestrian-only streets, something our navigation had a lot of trouble with. Great place for locals and for tourists on foot, horrible for tourists in a car. The hotel itself, Vauban, was very nice though, as was the caretaker.

Day 7: Besançon - Wageningen, via Heidelberg/Mannheim

My co-driver lived in Heidelberg at the time and needed the Galant as his commuter. This meant we only had to drive from Besançon to Heidelberg (3 hours, 15 minutes) this day. From adjacent Mannheim I’d take the 17:36 train to Wageningen, the Netherlands. About 450 km (almost 300 miles) in 3.5 hours. I had booked a hotel in Wageningen as I had a meeting for my company in that city the next morning at 9 am.

So, in Besançon we had a slightly over 3 hour drive ahead of us to catch a 17:36 train. This meant we had time . Time discover the city. While we had done some sightseeing in Avignon and Toulouse before, the season and time meant we didn’t have the luxury of sunlight. This was different in Besançon.

Panoramic view from the hotel room. 10:20

Am I looking at the ancient gate, the church behind it or the Peugeot 406?

Besançon has a lot to see, so we spent the morning sightseeing. Probably a nice destination for a romantic weekend with the significant other.

Loading the Galant for the last time. 13:00

While back in the car we evaluated the past carbagerun. We both decided we had enjoyed it a lot, however we wouldn’t participate again. A next time we’d arrange something ourselves. We had a few issues with the carbagerun as it was:

Way too much time spent on highways. A highway is a highway, it’s something I can drive everyday and it’s boring. To be avoided.

Too rushed. We were driving, and nothing else. We’d prefer to have more time to explore places on foot.

Assignments were too random, too “I was drunk when I made this up”. If we’d have assignments in the first place we’d outsource it to a well read friend or family member who wouldn’t come along, and who’d think of things more involved with the route. A bit like that golden witch assignment, which we did enjoy.

Close to the German border we were in the neighborhood of one of the PSA (Peugeot/Citroën) factories. When we stopped for gasoline we were met with this display in the gas station. A nice vintage 1967 Peugeot 204 coupé I liked a lot as I’m a sucker for Pininfarina designs (I own 3 irl; 205 CTI, 306 cabriolet, 406 coupe). The red car, named Asphalte, was from 1996 and featured a 90hp 1.6L engine from a Peugeot 106 and did 200 km/h, according to the sign.

The two Peugeots on display in the gas station. 14:04

Soon after we were in Germany and my time in the Galant was up. I caught the ICE train to the Netherlands, and that was the end of it.

Internet-sourced picture of an ICE train similar to the one I took

Looking back I’ve got a folder filled with >1400 SLR photo’s (most taken from a moving car), a totally fixed up Mitsubishi Galant which might be used as a grandparents-taxi (born 1925 and 1928) and a week long holiday for a total cost of roughly €1250 a person all-in, assuming we sell the Galant for what it’s worth.

(picture time stamps as provided by the camera. I’m unsure about the accuracy. It was probably still featuring summer time, so it’ll be 1 hour off)

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DISCUSSION (9)

BATC42 > duurtlang
04/11/2016 at 13:27

They recently finished “pedestrianing” the city centre of Besançon. My grandfather has been bitchin’ about it since they’ve started! It’s a really nice place to wander around i, when it’s sunny (and thye have some awesome cheeses in the area).

Too bad you didn’t have time to stop in Sochaux, the Peugeot Museum is quite wonderful, not Cité de l’Automobile wonderful (in Mulhouse), but quite nice nonetheless!

duurtlang > BATC42
04/11/2016 at 15:21

That’s the real downside to this trip. Too many kilometers in too little time. Other than that morning in Besancon we really didn’t have any time.

A quick calculation based on google maps leads to:

924+448+415+425+343+782+884 = 4221 km

8:58 + 6:16 + 8:15 + 8:09 + 5:54 + 9:24 + 7:36 = 53:32 of pure driving time (calculated in my head; could be off). In a week. That’s close to 8 hours of non-stop each day, excluding stops.

BATC42 > duurtlang
04/11/2016 at 15:51

That’s a bit much much indeed! How did you guys split the driving time?

pjhusa > duurtlang
04/12/2016 at 20:35

Finally done. A fun read. Thumbs up!

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > duurtlang
04/15/2016 at 08:14

Thanks for sharing all of this!

duurtlang > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
04/15/2016 at 14:27

It’s weird though. Excluding my own replies I got on average maybe 2-3 people per post commenting. Apparently few people find it interesting.

uofime-2 > duurtlang
04/15/2016 at 15:44

Very cool story, thanks for taking the time to tell it!

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > duurtlang
04/15/2016 at 16:25

It’s the TL;DNR mentality, sadly... It sucks to put in so much time and effort into something and get so little response, I know. Since it didn’t get much traction on OPPO, I’d pursue getting all of this published to a European-focused site with a large readership.

Pabuuu, JDM car enthusiast & Italian parts hoarder > duurtlang
04/19/2016 at 08:25

This is common for big Oppo posts, it sucks struggeling with kinja for a whole afternoon only to find no one bothers to comment.