Petrolhead therapy...

Tuesday just gone was my day off work. I had stuff to do, little things here and there and, like many of us, I just didn’t fancy doing them! However, I’d just fixed a few little niggling faults with my car and there was only one thing I wanted to do and that was to drive… So I got up, threw some clothes on, grabbed my wallet, phone and car keys, jumped in my little yellow Fiat and headed straight for the Via Verzasca!

This has to be one of my favourite driving roads ever! It starts off in the little town of Gordola in Ticino, Southern Switzerland and takes you all the way up to the even smaller sleepy town of Sonogno via about 25km of beautifully twisty tarmac and it has the lot! From sequences of sharp hairpin bends, through tunnels up into fast left and right-handers and all the time you’re climbing up and up and up as the scenery around you gets more and more incredible and as a petrolhead, I feel completely in my element!

There’s also something so therapeutic about it – you’re by yourself in your pride and joy, feeding it through the corners conserving all the momentum you can, concentrating to get the perfect line and you’re concentrating hard but at the same time, you feel completely relaxed and completely chilled out with your own thoughts, following kilometer after kilometer of road ahead of you snaking up through the hills.

Then a few arty photos at the top, take in the view for a minute or two, fill up the tank and it’s back down again, this time with gravity on my side :P

Everyone has to have their own way of winding down as we are all different and all live different lives… some people go running for headspace while others prefer to get the guitar out and jam, but for me… it has always been and will always be behind the wheel – it’s where I feel most at home, most comfortable and, ultimately, most happy ☺