Military tanks in the snow

We love a good roadtrip and yesterday was no exception. Simplon is well known for the Venice-Simplon Express train ride, but did you know you can also drive this amazing mountain which links Switzerland to Italy?

And that’s just what we did. An amazing feat of engineering, most of the road, which goes from around 1000m up to 2005m, is built on stilts, complete with twists and turns and even tunnels to avoid avalanche debris (!).

Coming face to face with a Swiss army tank!

What really surprised us is that, on reaching the summit, it was actually a snow-filled plateau affording amazing views into Italy on one side and back to Switzerland on the offer. To get a bit of perspective, the Simplon summit is 2005m above sealevel, compared to Britain’s highest mountain Ben Nevis at 1344m. And you can drive there. Mind boggling.

Even more surprising was us coming face to face with a rather humungous Swiss army tank! Clearly, the Swiss are better known for their cuckoo clocks and chocolate rather than their penchant for war, so the sight really was an eyebrow raiser. But thinking about it there can be no better training ground than the Simplon pass – wild, windy, snowy and vast. Perfect for winter tank manoeuvres.

Your chance to drive a tank and crush a car – another madcap experience from Into the Blue!

We’re no expert on tanks and we couldn’t tell you what sort it was, other than it was big and made the most enormous anount of noise as it started up and trundled off into the snow.

Now we might not be able to offer tank driving in the depths of the Swiss Alps, but Into the Blue does have a wide range of tank driving experiences across the UK, including the rather cool idea of crushing a car in an Abbott tank in Leicestershire – bring it on!