Tour to Vernasca Silver Flag Event, 17-28 June 2024
Where should we go for our European Tour to mark the 70th anniversary of the Giulietta? It had to be Italy, of course as it had been for all previous anniversaries, indeed our first tour had been to Milan in 2OO4 for the 50th anniversary. We opted to go again to the Vernasca Silver Flag hill climb as we had done in 2014. This had been a wonderful event, fabulous cars in a beautiful setting, good access to the cars and a great atmosphere, relaxed and friendly.
We hoped it would be the same in 2024 and miraculously it was the same as before, an enthusiasts' event run by enthusiasts and still not heavily commercialised unlike other events. We had advised the event organisers that we were coming to celebrate the anniversary and they responded by offering us exclusive parking on Viale Remimbranze, only 50m from the start line and, to cap it all, a drive up the hill for all of us, in procession, after the last runs on the Saturday afternoon. A huge thank you to Claudio Casali and his team for such an unforgettable experience.
Fourteen cars left the UK on Monday 17 June to cross into France and start the drive to Parma, our base for the Vernasca event. Our route took us across eastern France to the Alsace, then over the Rhine into the Black Forest and a drive over the Wiedener Eck with its amazing view point to Konstanz on the Bodensee. Here Bill Gillham from the US and his wife, Marion, joined us for dinner as by delightful coincidence they just happened to be travelling in southern Germany at the same time. Then south through Switzerland over the Splugen pass, a favourite of the biking community, to Lake Como and on to Parma. Most of the group went via Milan to Parma to visit the Museo Alfa Romeo. Many of us had been before but it is an excellent museum well worth a second visit and we had organised an afternoon tour of the storage area, a behind the scenes treasure trove of forgotten prototypes and development engines. By the time we got to Parma the group had swollen to 23 cars, 41 people, as carb and people joined us from the USA, Ireland, The Netherlands, France, Germany and ltaly at various points along the way. We were a truly international group.
The 28th Vernasca Silver Flag event on Saturday started bright and early with our cars (all of them having been hurriedly washed after the filthy weather we'd endured in previous days) congregating in a dedicated display area just for our cars beneath the historic castle in Castell' Arquato. The weather was perfect, hot and sunny all day, the atmosphere was amazing with plenty of loud engines and some very special cars. The main event celebration was 110 years of Maserati but all the hill climb contestants were spectacular, with cars from all marques and disciplines, some driven hard and others being given a less challenging time.
The climax of the day had to be when the organisers who, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Giulietta, allowed our guest cars to do a parade run up the hill at the end of the day. Over 10 kms of closed public roads, the twists and turns testing all our vehicles (and drivers!) to the limit. What a fantastic, once in a lifetime, experience! From a passenger's point of view, it was an exciting run with lots of hairpin bends and chicanes and absolutely nothing like a 'parade run' at all, more like Pikes Peak!
After our day at Vernasca and a rest day in Parma it was time to start the journey home. We travelled northwest up the Aosta valley and over the Petit St Bernard into France. This was possibly the best driving day of the tour, see more below, with spectacular views on both sides of the pass and to follow a drive over the Cormet de Roselend, another bikers' favourite, from Bourg St Maurice to Annecy. From there it was a gentler drive north via Dijon and Chalons en Champagne back to Calais and home, a total of 1,750 miles in 12 days.
Naturally the trip was not without a few problems, not least the vagaries of Google Maps trying to divert us onto 'better routes' but also the usual mechanical and electrical issues, including an electrical melt down under the carbs on John Wilson's Sprint which could have been nasty, but all were dealt with efficiently by the team's on board mechanics.
