Winding Neverland
IT’S A HUMDINGER of a pub. Old and regal, The Hotel Belvedere clings to a mountainside high in the Swiss Alps, but it’s the road that really sets it apart. It’s so close to the pub that it touches it, the blacktop sweeping by so tightly that boozy beer hounds could feasibly brush passing traffic on their way back from the bar. It’s called the Furka Pass and it’s the kind of road you could imagine James Bond driving... because he has.
Watch the opening sequence of 1964’s Goldfinger and you’ll spot a dashing Sean Connery at the wheel of his Aston Martin DB5, its nose cleaving a path through the pass’s hairpins.
We had to visit it, naturally, and our idea, conceived in the middle of a typically scorching hot Aussie summer, was rather brilliant. Or so we thought.
The crux of it was to pedal AMG’s newest (and cheapest) creation – the highly rated A35 – up the mountainside to deliver some Aussie beer to the publican. A generous gesture, you’ll agree, even if the A35’s positioning as the entry-level AMG meant light beer may have been more appropriate. But come on: driving bliss, with a Bond connection, and a doozy of a pub to explore for lunch? It sounded super.
Until the first piece of bad news
