I have just returned from my annual holiday. My girlfriend and I went from our home in north east England to the Dordogne area of south west France in my SL500. What a trip! The car behaved faultlessly for 2,100miles. We did the 900miles there in under 24hours (we overnighted in Calais: the total driving time would have been about 14hours). On the return journey we went from our holiday house in Campagne to Paris (350miles) in less than 4hours. After a day and a night in Paris I drove to Calais (150miles) in about 1hour 20mins, and then up from Folkstone to Newcastle in about 5hours, although we stopped for a drink in Yorkshire.
On the French autoroute it is easy to maintain a 100mph plus cruise. I woke up at one point to find the girlfriend doing 130mph through some pretty twisty autoroute gradients. The fastest I saw on the clock was 150mph but then a Frenchman in a clapped out Renault Clio made a move to take a truck (despite several long pulls on the lights as I'd approached over the last mile an a half). He pulled back in pretty sharp but I'd already braked from 145 (I'd started to slow) down to 65mph; the rears chirped a bit...
Anyway, the car was a delight for topless touring around a beautiful part of the world, whether it be ambling through the daytime hot sun to visit a pretty town or rumbling back from yet another good dinner, savouring the engine note through the warmth of fine food and wine...
Here are a couple of pics.
Yours truly down by the river:
Driving through Paris on Sunday morning
Parked up for a picnic by the Vezere river
And the two of us in beautiful Montpazier
