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There’s less than a week to go until the 2010 RGruppe Europe Bergmeister Tour. Ten 911s will rendezvous south of Brussels next Saturday morning, to drive through the French Alps to Monaco, where we’ll run the cars over old Monte Carlo Rally routes for three days, to stretch our Porsches’ legs.

A week is not much time for those of us who haven’t even started getting the car ready yet. I’ve got to drop the oil on my 1976 Carrera 3.0 (above), service the engine with new spark plugs, reconditioned fuel injectors, reset valve clearances and fit new gaskets. I also need to lubricate the bushes and linkage under my WEVO shifter and get some tyres on the car, as the track rubber gracing my Fuchs is past its best.

In Amsterdam, TwinSpark Racing are preparing two cars for the event: Leonard Stolk’s yellow 911 RSR – the car we know as Woodstock – and Lex Proper’s orange short wheelbase 911 S, which is destined for the sort of mountain climbing the early cars revel in.

The idea for Bergmeister came about in late-night discussion at Treffen 2009, when automotive artist and friend of TwinSpark, Nicolas Hunziker got talking about some Monte Carlo Rally prints he had been working on. Someone suggested it would be an idea to ship some cars across to Europe and do a tour through the mountains before Classic Le Mans 2010. Leonard Stolk is not a man to let a good idea go to waste, so he began working on the plan on his return to Europe.

TwinSpark’s patron, the legendary Gijs van Lennep had partnered a TomTom Navigation supplier on some rally route software. TwinSpark established contact and the ideas spiralled out from there. The Bergmeister Tour was born.

The tour lasts six days. Day one takes us from Amsterdam, down through Belgium and France to the shores of Lake Geneva, at Thonon-les-Bains. Day two brings us to Briancon. Day three sees us arriving in Monaco, where we will establish base camp at the Novotel in the heart of old Monte Carlo. We’ll run the cars for three days from the centre of town, driving several old rally stages and along the famous Corniches: those beautiful highways cut into the Alps, where they meet the Mediterranean Sea.

The Bergmeister car selection is serious to say the least. Hamish Franklin’s beautiful 964 C2 track machine is the newest car on the event, and that is getting on for 20 years old. We also have a genuine works RSR, a freshly-built 993RS-engined IROC special that has been shipped from the USA especially (above), a beautiful ST-style race car and much more.

We’ll be sure to update the blog with pictures and video, so stay tuned for more news over the next few weeks.