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Time for another Bergmeister retrospective! I love looking back at the pictures from this event, which saw TwinSpark Racing sponsor a mega road trip for ten classic Porsche 911s from the European R Gruppe tribe. We have so far driven from Amsterdam to Geneva to Briancon to Monaco: now we start day 4.

Having arrived in Monte Carlo the previous evening, day 4 saw us all set to enter the heart of the 2010 Bergmeister Tour: to drive classic Monte Carlo rally stages, following the genius RallyAtlas sat nav application (sadly now defunct).

Following a quick breakfast and some photos at the Cafe de Paris by day – in the famous Monaco Casino Square – we headed out of town. Our destination was Turini, that legendary pass seen in so many snow-and-ice pictures from the Monte Carlo of old. Unquestionably the highlight of the tour for me, it didn’t disappoint.

My Catholic masochistic streak was obviously running at full tilt, as I agreed to passenger Jan de Boer in his 911 Carrera 3.2 rally car. Take a look at the roads in the map extract above and imagine the scene as Jan, a slalom champion and never-say-die racer attempted to nudge the back of Leonard’s 3.0 RSR all the way to the summit…

The pace up the twisty, bumpy ascent was exceptionally lively. Jan was on and off the throttle, trying to rotate the car on sticky tyres, while the widebody cars running on less sticky rubber could slide a lot easier. How to climb the Col de Turini in the style of the old masters! Needless to say, there are not a lot of pictures of this: no one is going to hang out the window with a rugged rockface inches away. My seat belts stayed resolutely fastened.

At the top was the legendary Three Valleys inn, home to many famous rallyistes over the years. Now their number included a band of crazy R Gruppers who watched in amazement as a bird divebombed the inn’s female owner. “He won’t hit me,” she said, as the feathered fiend repeatedly flew sorties over her head, dropping nuts and twigs and shrieking as it came and went. Whatever history they had, it wasn’t good! Lunch was, and soon it was time to get back on the road.

We took the stage route from Turini to Sospel and the pace was immediately off the charts. I managed 10 minutes in the on-off rally car until I had to abandon ship! I jumped into Hamish’s 2.7 RS rep instead, and took advantage of a more settled platform to shoot some tracking shots of the group. One shot made the cover of 911 & Porsche World magazine – I was totally stoked!

We had dinner appointments at a local yacht club, then on to the Holland Bar to watch Netherlands play in the World Cup, so we said goodbye to Turini early and took that fabulous road back down to Monaco, and the cool delights of the Novotel. That night would be a blast (literally), and the following day would be something else entirely. Same roads, different mission! More of that anon.