- Joined
- Nov 6, 2007
- Messages
- 12,859
- Location
- North Oxfordshire
- Car
- His - Denim Blue A220 AMG Line Premium / Hers - Obsidian Black R172 SLK55
We did a few touring holidays in Angie’s previous R171 SLK350 (to France, Spain, Germany, and Italy), so we thought it would be nice to do a road trip this year in her new R172 SLK55. As on previous trips I did all the driving, so it gave me a great chance to get to know her new car and to compare it with her previous SLK350.
We planned three main stops (Cahors in the Lot Valley, La Ciotat on the south coast, and Beaune in Burgundy) plus transit stops on the way out in Chartres and on the way back in Arras. Due to the distances involved, much of the driving between locations was on Autoroutes, but I did include some stretches on more interesting N and D-Roads where it made sense to do so, or if it gave us an opportunity to take a look at something we wanted to see en-route. I planned the more interesting routes using Garmin’s BaseCamp (I also have a Garmin GPSR that I use when motorcycle touring) and used Malcolm Bryant’s excellent converter program (www.freepoc.org/download/Routes106.zip) to turn them into Route files that can be read by COMAND, but for the simple bits (e.g. Eurotunnel Terminal to Chartres) I just punched in the destination POI in COMAND and let it route us there.
If you’ve travelled in France on Autoroutes you’ll be familiar with the need to collect a ticket at the entry Péage Station and to submit it complete with payment at an exit Péage Station at some point later. What isn’t perhaps so obvious is that when you’re sat low down in a roadster like an SLK it can be a real pain in the rear for the passenger (the booths are always on the left) struggling to lean out the window and reach high enough up to either collect the ticket or to put it and your credit card into one of the payment machines. In fact, over the years Angie has come to hate the rigmarole this entails so when I suggested getting a SANEF Toll Tag for the trip she jumped at the idea. I used the Eurotunnel offer to apply for a tag which waives the initial fee, and we received it a few weeks before we left. All the billing is done through SANEF’s UK operation, and while you can argue that you pay a premium for that luxury, frankly its small beer in the overall cost scheme of things. Once you receive the tag all you have to do is activate it online (easy) and mount it on the windscreen in the car. I did a fair degree of web research on where best to mount the thing because the standard SANEF suggestion of mounting it on the shaded section of the windscreen behind the rear view mirror isn’t applicable to current Mercedes models (like the SLK55) with cameras and other sensors in that area. The SLK55 also has various antenna strips in the screen itself, so that was another consideration. After a good deal of searching I picked up a post on a Volvo forum that suggested mounting on the cover over the electronics behind the mirror worked OK, so that’s what I did. Here are a couple of photo’s showing it in position in the car:
Apart from the mounting location being very discrete from within the car, it has the advantage that the tag isn’t easily visible from outside it either. This is relevant because the advice is normally to remove the tag when you park up – especially in Autoroute service areas – as the low-life’s will happily smash a window to nick the tag so they can get a few free Autoroute journeys before it’s cancelled. I was slightly concerned that all the mounting instructions show the tag mounted the other way up (note the upside down “kapsch” logo in my photos) but if I’d mounted it the “right” way up, I could never have slid it off its mount to remove it from the car. Our first encounter with a Télépéage terminal on the trip was a little nervous because I didn’t know if having the tag upside down and behind a load of electronics was going to inhibit it working, but my fears were unfounded: as we approached the barrier, the tag beeped and the barrier lifted. Success!
In addition to the convenience factor that the tag provides, it also caused us a good deal of amusement seeing French drivers eyeing us suspiciously as we headed to the Télépéage-only lanes at the Péage stations. You could almost hear them saying, “Regardez le Rosbif stupide dans la voie Télépéage! Je vais le suivre de près afin de maximiser son embarras quand il doit entreprendre le reverse of shame. Hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw!”, followed by a loud exclamation of “Merde!” when the barrier lifted
As is normal for our continental jaunts, we took advantage of our Tesco Clubcard vouchers to fund a free return crossing on Eurotunnel. I must say that the while the service is generally fast and convenient, the last few times we’ve used it there have been cancelled trains and service delays “due to a technical issue with an earlier train” which would suggest that the rolling stock is becoming less reliable as it ages. Certainly the inside of the carriages is starting to look decidedly tatty in places, so maybe it’s time they looked at a refurb program? This trip was no exception, and while we managed to get out on time, our return train was 90-minutes late. Something worth mentioning is that if you have a wide-track car running low profile tyres, it’s very easy to lose concentration while driving through the carriages and kiss the upstands at each side of the lane with a wheel, damaging a rim. I know that some people deliberately book their car as higher and wider than it is so that they’re put on one of the wider commercial vehicle carriages, but I didn’t bother. Here’s a photo of the SLK pretty much centralised in the carriage lane to give you an idea of the precision required:
To be continued…
We planned three main stops (Cahors in the Lot Valley, La Ciotat on the south coast, and Beaune in Burgundy) plus transit stops on the way out in Chartres and on the way back in Arras. Due to the distances involved, much of the driving between locations was on Autoroutes, but I did include some stretches on more interesting N and D-Roads where it made sense to do so, or if it gave us an opportunity to take a look at something we wanted to see en-route. I planned the more interesting routes using Garmin’s BaseCamp (I also have a Garmin GPSR that I use when motorcycle touring) and used Malcolm Bryant’s excellent converter program (www.freepoc.org/download/Routes106.zip) to turn them into Route files that can be read by COMAND, but for the simple bits (e.g. Eurotunnel Terminal to Chartres) I just punched in the destination POI in COMAND and let it route us there.
If you’ve travelled in France on Autoroutes you’ll be familiar with the need to collect a ticket at the entry Péage Station and to submit it complete with payment at an exit Péage Station at some point later. What isn’t perhaps so obvious is that when you’re sat low down in a roadster like an SLK it can be a real pain in the rear for the passenger (the booths are always on the left) struggling to lean out the window and reach high enough up to either collect the ticket or to put it and your credit card into one of the payment machines. In fact, over the years Angie has come to hate the rigmarole this entails so when I suggested getting a SANEF Toll Tag for the trip she jumped at the idea. I used the Eurotunnel offer to apply for a tag which waives the initial fee, and we received it a few weeks before we left. All the billing is done through SANEF’s UK operation, and while you can argue that you pay a premium for that luxury, frankly its small beer in the overall cost scheme of things. Once you receive the tag all you have to do is activate it online (easy) and mount it on the windscreen in the car. I did a fair degree of web research on where best to mount the thing because the standard SANEF suggestion of mounting it on the shaded section of the windscreen behind the rear view mirror isn’t applicable to current Mercedes models (like the SLK55) with cameras and other sensors in that area. The SLK55 also has various antenna strips in the screen itself, so that was another consideration. After a good deal of searching I picked up a post on a Volvo forum that suggested mounting on the cover over the electronics behind the mirror worked OK, so that’s what I did. Here are a couple of photo’s showing it in position in the car:
Apart from the mounting location being very discrete from within the car, it has the advantage that the tag isn’t easily visible from outside it either. This is relevant because the advice is normally to remove the tag when you park up – especially in Autoroute service areas – as the low-life’s will happily smash a window to nick the tag so they can get a few free Autoroute journeys before it’s cancelled. I was slightly concerned that all the mounting instructions show the tag mounted the other way up (note the upside down “kapsch” logo in my photos) but if I’d mounted it the “right” way up, I could never have slid it off its mount to remove it from the car. Our first encounter with a Télépéage terminal on the trip was a little nervous because I didn’t know if having the tag upside down and behind a load of electronics was going to inhibit it working, but my fears were unfounded: as we approached the barrier, the tag beeped and the barrier lifted. Success!
In addition to the convenience factor that the tag provides, it also caused us a good deal of amusement seeing French drivers eyeing us suspiciously as we headed to the Télépéage-only lanes at the Péage stations. You could almost hear them saying, “Regardez le Rosbif stupide dans la voie Télépéage! Je vais le suivre de près afin de maximiser son embarras quand il doit entreprendre le reverse of shame. Hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw!”, followed by a loud exclamation of “Merde!” when the barrier lifted
As is normal for our continental jaunts, we took advantage of our Tesco Clubcard vouchers to fund a free return crossing on Eurotunnel. I must say that the while the service is generally fast and convenient, the last few times we’ve used it there have been cancelled trains and service delays “due to a technical issue with an earlier train” which would suggest that the rolling stock is becoming less reliable as it ages. Certainly the inside of the carriages is starting to look decidedly tatty in places, so maybe it’s time they looked at a refurb program? This trip was no exception, and while we managed to get out on time, our return train was 90-minutes late. Something worth mentioning is that if you have a wide-track car running low profile tyres, it’s very easy to lose concentration while driving through the carriages and kiss the upstands at each side of the lane with a wheel, damaging a rim. I know that some people deliberately book their car as higher and wider than it is so that they’re put on one of the wider commercial vehicle carriages, but I didn’t bother. Here’s a photo of the SLK pretty much centralised in the carriage lane to give you an idea of the precision required:
To be continued…
. Keep the pics coming Phil. 
