About 18yrs ago i bought my first buggy. I'd owned just about every aircooled model in the previous 15yrs but never a buggy. It had been recently rebuilt and I travelled up to Nuneaton (or just outside anyway) to buy it and think I paid £2200 ish for it.

 Then, as we all do, I wanted to drive it. Only it was winter.
   After staring at it on my garage for a few weeks I decided what all lucid people do and decided to drive it to Switzerland. In the winter. With the hood down (on the way there anyway) 

 The only thing was, this was a Thursday lunch time I decided to do it and we were leaving after work, the same day.......

 Absolutely no preparation other than filling the stupidly small spun Ali fuel tank (that has since been replaced by subsequent owners). I think it was about 5 gallons 

 Packing every item of warm clothing we set off from Dorset at 1700ish in the butch black and headed for Dover, stopping every few hours due to small tank/no fuel guage/the threat of early onset arthritis.

 We got to Dover with no events and pretty much joined queue to board a ferry. Landing in Calais we found a hotel for the night. Leaving at 0900 Friday via the supermarket for a carrier bag full of calories, 200 Marlboro and a cheap sleeping bag for the passenger to sit in while not driving.

 The next 15 hours saw a cycle of drive, stop/fuel/coffee/smoke.
At Midnight on the Friday/early hours of Saturday we crossed into Switzerland via a small village. Almost comical ad the three Border Guards stopped speaking and followed us with their eyes from when we entered their sight until we left it. Mouths open.

 As we got into Switzerland the weather had gone from cold to REALLY cold. I think at one point I had on a thermal underwear top, T-shirt, sweatshirt, buffalo shirt, a fleece then a fleece lined goretex.
 Also had a pair of merkalon gloves, a pair of fleece gloves then a pair of arctic mittens. Unfortunately as we're driving up a mountain pass I pointed at a digital sign above a petrol station that proclaimed a heady -12. Unfortunately with the movement my clothes separated from my gloves and with the wind chill form us driving I got a cold burn on my wrist. 
 
We stayed somewhere half posh in Bern that night before heading down to Fribourg on the Saturday morning. The hood was up as we had made it one piece (just).  We drove down the motorway and had one too many near death experiences. Wagons thundering past throwing slush up on us, the washer fluid rated to -100000 getting frozen. At one point having to replicate the scene from the Blues Brothers where he is wiping the oil off the windscreen.  Driving on a motorway doing 50 and couldnt see other than the patch I could  reach with the windscreen scraper.

Stayed at Fribourg Saturday night then rinsed and repeated on the way home.
  Northern France was horrendous and we spent a good few hours being forced off the motorway by French trucks trying to make the ferry port. So we ended up on the hard shoulder in the slush. The leads were getting soaked so we spent every twenty mins or so stopping to dry the plugs and leads with a cigarette lighter until we could get on out way again.
  Finally landed back in Dorset just lunch on the Monday.

It never let us down apart from rubbish screenwash and the soggy leads.
 

Proper buggy ownership that   

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BuggyBaggy it's folk who drive orange buggy's feel they need to prove a point. Loved the story but can't say it's encouraged me to want to copy the experience.

Ah, the joys of youth, when stupidity can be a virtue!

Wow
Respect

Quote from: TonsOfFun on May 17, 2026, 05:09:08 PMAh, the joys of youth, when stupidity can be a virtue!

I was 36 and I'm not content with letting life pass me by while I push a trolley around Sainsburys 
  Bought to drive and not to polish 

Quote from: Hugh on May 17, 2026, 03:55:31 PMBuggyBaggy it's folk who drive orange buggy's feel they need to prove a point. Loved the story but can't say it's encouraged me to want to copy the experience.

You could have a point. But I prefer to prove mine when there isn't snow.......not a my altitude anyway.     

Quote from: Buggybaggy on May 17, 2026, 09:12:33 PM

Quote from: Hugh on May 17, 2026, 03:55:31 PMBuggyBaggy it's folk who drive orange buggy's feel they need to prove a point. Loved the story but can't say it's encouraged me to want to copy the experience.

You could have a point. But I prefer to prove mine when there isn't snow.......not a my altitude anyway.     

 

A great story we are off in june to the Amalfi coast for 4 nights but having 17 to get there and back Switzerland will be the return route.

I think the problem is that some folk have no soul and have lived a life where central heating has been the norm. Back in 1974, when I built my first buggy a GP, it was my daily drive. Travelled to work and back and everywhere else I needed to be through two winters. Snow, sleet. hail and rain. Buggy had no heating just a soft top. I cannot remember at all feeling uncomfortable or miserable driving it. But...... at work everyone except the young lady I gave a lift to work and back were regularly quite vocal saying we were cuckoo.....  I was 21 in 1974 and told them something an older guy had said to me a few years earlier.  That was..... "Paul don`t ever change... there is nothing in a wild life but even less in a tame one".  I have never forgotten those words.