The Via Spluga, SS36, runs almost north from Chiavenna taking in little villages called Campodolcino, Idola, Madesimo, and links northern Italy with Switzerland. It begins at 300m elevation at the southern end, and crests the Alps at 2200m in 30km. The route follows the San Giocomo valley. It allowed people to traverse the otherwise imposing and impossible central Alps, and was an important trading route over the centuries.
It is now a glorious, mind blowing road trip.
The road quality was immediately different from Austria and Switzerland, and narrower. Scary as hell in some places, there's bits of wood as guardrails between you and the valley floor 1000m below. With corrugated and rippled tarmac, I thought the ABS would be in for a real shakedown. But Veronica handled these with aplomb, a testament to the strength of the underlying chassis. With the almost 180degree switchbacks at several spots, the convertible came into its own: with the top down, I can look
up to whether there were cars, cyclists or tour buses coming down onto my head. With a clear road, it was engine brake into the corner, tap on the brakes, swivel the car around your hips and accelerate out, hard, in 2nd. And all around you, majestic vistas of mountains, valleys, rivers, alpine lakes, and forests.
As we ascended, snow became everywhere. Near the summit, snow was packed to about 2-2.5m over the road surface; a snowdozer has simply cleared the road but in a Mini, top down, it felt like in an X-wing fighter doing a version of the Death Star trench run. Except perhaps, on the planet Hoth. It did pose a different problem - snow could and did fall onto the road, and straight line visibility was hampered by the height of the snow. And in the shadows, black ice. Nothing for it, increase power to the engines, after all Vader is on your tail.
As I mentioned, being relatively underpowered I spent a lot of time in 2nd and 3rd, and at high revs. Some cough sphincter contracting moments when you see a bad patch on the road and thinking this would be a really bad time to lose traction at 60kph with a cliff 2m away. But this car gobbled it up without flashing the DSC warning. A real blast. Made you very confident that you can chuck it into a corner and you can make it out.
End of Day 2, sedate drive back to Innsbruck for the last hurrah on Day 3. Day 4 is back to Vienna and the grindstone, so spent a bit of time planning the route - and checking which passes are actually open.
) for EUR900, for 7 days. 
