BMW Car Magazine Forum Lake District Winter Challenge - January 2003 Stage 4: Bowness to the dealers via Katmando

Breakfast was a sober affair, or perhaps I mean hungover. It was damn good either way, plenty of fried animal and beans, just what I required. I ate with Gromit, Robin being a little less prompt than me, so he ate with Ben who was even later. Over breakfast they were clearly plotting some great scheme, and it turned out to be the morning's exercise. So we met up at the now famous garages at 10, giving us two hours to arrive at the meeting point, which I believe was only a few minutes away. Here follows a few snaps of our three cars taken at numerous beauty spots around the region. Paul was spending the morning with his family, meanwhile we did about 80 miles and I used about 20 litres of fuel!! Above from left to right, Gromit and his E36 325i, Kilo and his E36 328i and Ben Luker's E46 330d touring. Ben set a truly astonishing pace, in his chipped 330d. He had a couple of advantages over me: he has good wide tyres, I was running 205 wide 15 inchers, and he also knew the roads better than me. However enough of my excuses, he and his car went extremely quickly. I believe he is running around 200bhp and 350 foot pounds of torque, and his car ate up the hostile terrain with ease. He has also fitted sat-nav, and it's altitude reading excited Robin sufficiently to provoke him into taking a picture of it's readout at 1400ft.   Back to Friday or on to the main meet