It may have been a little optimistic to have said 'yes' when Bob passed on Bjørn's suggestion of the Ålesund meeting: the coupe had just completed a three thousand mile trip to the Coupe 25th Anniversary meeting in Turin. It returned to a scheduled engine and front-end rebuild which lasted over winter, and spring... and wasn't completed until a month before the trip was due to begin.

So, with only a couple of hundred kilometers on a completely rebuilt engine, we rolled out of bed and hit the road... and didn't stop except to sleep until we got to Oslo - the pretty way, via Hamburg, Aalborg, and Kristiansand. After some sight-seeing for a couple of days, we chanced to be passing through the ferry terminal and came across a small herd of coupes. We were hoping for moose, but we're not fussy, so we followed them to make sure they didn't get into any trouble.

Even stranger, we bumped into Bob halfway to Ålesund - what's the odds of that in a country the size of Norway? - and he joined the convoy too. We'd both heard of Trollstigen, and even though the weather was grim, Bob and I figured it was worth a try.

And what a road... I'm a huge fan of mountain roads, and while it isn't the Stelvio, Trollstigen certainly has the tarmac and the scenery to go with it. And the viewpoint, too, carefully placed to watch buses failing to get round the corners.

As for the meeting itself: what a wonderful collection of both cars and people. Some lovely old Fiats, and some lovely newer ones; it's always a thrill to see so many cars that are so obviously used and appreciated for what they are.

We failed to see the tall ships that we'd expected in Ålesund; they left just before we arrived. But that wasn't a problem; it's a fine town - with possibly the best aquarium I've ever seen - and it must have amused the locals to watch all the convoys of Fiats coming and going! We caught up with the tall ships a week later in Kristiansand, purely by chance, just waiting for our ferry back to Denmark.

What can I say: some fantastic roads, some fantastic people, some fantastic cars. A great couple of weeks that I wouldn't have missed for the world. Five thousand two hundred and fifty kilometers, three hundred and ninety litres of fuel, seven ferries, and a Channel Tunnel (twice), in just fourteen days.

Now - I'm thinking about something similar in Scotland next year - is anyone interested?

Neil Barnes