Detour #354: A Rollercoaster Ride on Timmelsjoch, Austria

Perhaps it’s a cliché to liken a scintillating stretch of road to a rollercoaster. But with Timmelsjoch, the toll road which straddles the Austrian-Italian border deep in the Tirol region, the comparison feels uncanny.

You sit in its short, polite queue to pay your 20 euros (€28 return), excited tingles building in your belly as you ponder what G-forces await you. Much like a visit to a theme park, though, the anticipation begins much earlier. Getting to Timmelsjoch typically involves a drive from Innsbruck, whose mountainous approach is a sight to covet whether by car or plane.

Immersing yourself in its scenery doesn’t take long, and sticking in Kühtai as my waypoint – ski resort in the winter, verdant valley in the warmer months – proves a neat way to cut the highway miles short. This 26-mile stretch is warm, inviting and chockful of everything we love as drivers: hairpins, 90-degree corners and quicker, more flowing bends, all perfectly surfaced and wide enough to maintain decent momentum. The car helps, too. I’ve commandeered a Mini John Cooper Works for the journey, one of the few remaining small petrol hot hatchbacks on sale and an ideal device for a day like this.

Human endeavour weaves neatly into the work of mother nature here. Tunnels twist and bend sympathetically through the rock, their open sides allowing light to dapple their interiors, while the swooping Längental dam boasts banking to rival an American speedway, the reservoir it keeps in place as dazzlingly turquoise as any I’ve seen.

Reaching Sölden, I start to pick up more enthusiast traffic, the little Mini rubbing shoulders with the copious Porsches, Ferraris and McLarens of supercar tour groups. Yet we’re all pottering along at the same speed and I’m wincing far less as we skulk through contraflows or meet oncoming timber lorries. Out of Sölden you have the choice to turn right onto the Ötztal Glacier Road, among Europe’s highest passes and the shoot location of a Spectre chase scene, or carry on along route 186 to Hochgurgl and the beginning of Timmelsjoch.

Today, I’m doing the later, and the 186 plays its own support act ahead of the main event, its subtle jinks and chicanes an utter joy in something so nimble. This JCW may be a 1.4-tonne car nowadays, its onslaught of borrowed BMW tech not without consequence, yet it still handles gleefully.

Ten miles later it wends into a briefly dizzying ascent to the Timmelsjoch toll booth and its neighbouring café and motorcycle museum, a fine pitstop before rolling up to pay for the pass and begin our plunge into the Tirol scenery. The breakneck run to the road’s 2,509m peak begins right out the gate, with long straights, sweeping bends and a rapid climb to its crescendo through a series of hairpins. This isn’t a chance to wring out every last ounce of the Mini’s 231hp and 280lb ft; tourists pepper the route, as do the cows, sheep and goats who claim free reign over the road surface. Yet visibility is always vast and you can safely up your pace on demand, the road often quiet enough to spin around in a layby and repeat a favourite section with a mite more commitment.

The Timmelsjoch peak also marks the Italian border a switch in identity to Passo del Rombo. A shift in character, too: much like cresting the Stelvio Pass and descending its fiddly eastern side, leaving Austria means stemming the lovely, rapid flow you’ve hopefully enjoyed so far. I’m into a world of tight, nadgery lanes and the sort of acute hairpins that larger campervans take several bites to clear, slowing traffic further.

It’s a chance to slow down, rest the brakes and absorb the scenery, then, the pass’s lower stretches dipping through a cooling forest whose fresh scent simply has to be enjoyed with the windows rolled down an inch. The euphoric epilogue that signs off any great rollercoaster ride.

Words Stephen Dobie
Photography Mini

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ROADBOOK

CLASS: Mountain Pass

NAME: Timmelsjoch

ROUTE: Innsbruck to Timmelsjoch

COUNTRY: Austria

Distance: 85 Miles

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