I recently completed a long trip in the Tranny, with trailer, too.
Left home at the London end of the M3 at 06.00 on Saturday 4th March,
with the Brian james 14' car trailer empty.
Off to Dover to catch a Seachance ferry, once off the other end filled up at the gas station by Pidou (1.08 Euros per litre... cheapest I found anywhere), then head off into Belgium. Then across to Luxembourg, at Luxembourg city down into France towards Metz, then Strasbourg
where the snow started in earnest
trailer lights lighting up the snow in the monitor), Got down to Basel about 02.00 on the 5th , through customs (no problem as I was empty), off towards Lucerne there was reportedly 60 cms of snow fell that night, I soon realised if I stopped I wouldn't get going again,(
because the roads had not been cleared, so just kept going, a few hairy moments, but luckily no sizeable downhill bits (otherwise I wouldn't be able to stop..especially with the trailer).Plodded on to the Gottard Tunnel and upon exiting, thankfully the roads had been cleared !
).
Then just a steady plod on to Volpiano just north of Turin. (I had delivered the 'clocks' to here in December for the Winter Olympics) so knew where to go and an hotel close by. Got to the hotel mid afternoon.
Got fed an off to bed early as I had missed a nights sleep (yes I am an old man).
Up at 07.00 Monday morning , breakfasted and at the warehouse by 09.00, load 4 'clocks' in their purpose built boxes onto the trailer.
Left there at about 10.30 to the first delivery in Milan, got there a bit before midday, offloaded in 15 mins but took them a further hour to find someone who would sign for it !
Then off to the 2nd delivery in Milan, a small 'square' in the financial district/centre. Loads of phone calls , iffing/ butting/f...ing around etc........
3 hours later 3 guys come down from the 6th floor and decide I was not lying the boxe(s) really were 2 metres long 1.5 metres high & 1 metre wide, (being sharp young men ! they too realised that the box would not go in the lift, a fact I had been telling them for 3 hours),so I offloaded a box they wheeled it to their office quickly realised at 250 kilos they couldn't carry it up the 6 steps to the door any more than I could), so opened up the box, took out the clock (on a stand like a wardrobe rail hanger) and left me the box !
That took me to about 4 30 p.m. so off I set for Florence the last delivery in Italy, the office phoned and said in view of the Milan fiasco, they had an alternative address in Florence (just outside really) to deliver to.
I got to 'Prato' a huge trading estate just north of Florence about 8.00 p.m. found a hotel and slept the night away
.
Next morning up at 07.00, I had (what was laughingly called breakfast...everything edible was smothered with sugar, and I am diabetic), so a couple of coffees, then off to the storage warehouse where I got strange looks because I had arrived with a flatbed trailer with 3 boxes on, took off one box, left them the 2nd box & put the identical (unbeknown to them ,empty) box back on the trailer.
(the boxes at 2 metres long go exactly across the trailer & because it is a tilt bed I can lock the castors on the boxes, and roll off the 'end' box without any equipment i.e fork lift trucks e.t.c).
So all deliveries done (the last 'clock' was damaged and being returned to London) I sheeted up and set off for home ! All was fine untill north of Turin where there also had been a heavy snowfall, so it was slow going up to the Mont Blanc tunnel
.Roads were clear in France so despite a little run in with a French ***ehole who wanted to drive through the van at
the exit for Geneva (in spite of the kilometre long exit road !), I made it to Bresse where I found an hotel at a service area, scraped in before the restauraunt closed at 9.30 and then went to kip !
Being an early riser I was up at 07.00 and away, got to Calais at about 3.00 p.m. got f***ed about and eventually got the 5.30 boat, so arrived home at about 9.00 the evening of Tuesday 7th. Autoroute tells me it was 2031 miles, but I would add 60/70 miles for faffing !
by Buzz-Billsberry » Wed Mar 29, 2006 4:04 pm 
