1. Ötztal Glacier Road
On the outskirts of Austrian ski haven Sölden lies the gateway to a road with 007 pedigree
The Ötztal Pass is one of many wondrous European mountain roads that isn’t the quickest way anywhere. Unless you’ve got skis strapped to the roof. That means it operates opening hours, and despite my obsessive checking of its webcams and timings, as we pull up to its toll booths after two days of driving from London, their barriers are all down, red Xs illuminated above them, with not a member of staff in sight to explain why.
An ominous sign when it’s pass number one in an outrageously ambitious Three Peaks adventure I’ve concocted to put some proper miles on our i30N long-termer, to see if it really is as much of an upset to the establishment as we think. It seems to have duffed up every hot hatch bar the Civic Type R thus far, but new cars often come with a veneer of novelty factor that eventually wears thin. Visiting Europe’s three highest roads – covering 1,500 miles in 48 hours – will reveal if that’s the case pretty swiftly.
If I can actually drive the thing, of course. I spot a service barrier left open, glance across at photographer Lee, and with the
light he needs quickly fading, neither of us utters a word before tearing through the empty lane and up the road. It’s at this point I should say I don’t condone such misbehaviour. But something about the i30N’s rambunctious character makes you act like this.
While it conquered 800 motorway miles here without a hiccup, it’s a proper hooligan at its core, and most at home flamboyantly cocking an inside wheel through a hairpin or loudly combusting fuel in the bowels of its sports exhaust. Two things you can repeatedly do guilt-free when you’ve an endlessly curvy road all to yourself. The Ötztal’s twists and turns actually hosted a chase scene in Spectre, but look vastly different minus a cloak of snow.
Thankfully, really – the i30N’s on its standard Pirelli P Zeros, a vehemently fair-weather tyre – but it’s impossible to resist sniffing out a bit of white stuff when we spy a gravel track leading even higher from the pass’s peak and towards the first dumping of winter snow at the mountain top, not to mention jaw-dropping views as the mountains zing with golden light as the sun sets. Today’s lesson? Winter tyres and arriving here earlier in the day are best advised. But that won’t give you anywhere near as pulse-raising a story to tell.