Grim up North?

Yeah but in the boy racer rocket you always have a point to prove.

...you should consider going up through Finland some time.

Miles and miles of b*gger all (except trees and lakes) but best of all, no (and I mean no) traffic outside the towns. A car every thirty minutes or so if you're unlucky.

The (main) roads are surprisingly well maintained (though everything else is gravel at best), and it's much cheaper than Sweden and much, much cheaper than Norway.

Absolutely loved the place, and if we can sort it out, we'll be back. (though the language is entirely unintelligible)

With your eyballs bouncing up and down surprised you can see them. Hot rocket Ford drivers are just like the annoying hyperactive kid, rushing around screaming. 

Well, we're back. 280 miles each way, plus sundry local pootlings. This was our first trip of substance in the CLS and it was, by unanimous consent, magnificent: fast, smooth, quiet, spacious and superbly comfortable, even in the back. Winter tyres would have helped a little around Durham, but keeping the touch light and the steering and braking inputs small was enough to keep things tidy.

Much better weather in the north this morning, with spectacular pink-orange cloudscapes over the A1. We enjoyed a coffee, cake and leg-stretch stop at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, but then the weather turned grim and rainy from Leicester southward. No dramas, but the car now needs a wash.

On fact, our closest brush with drama was ten miles from home, where we crested a rise to find a fallow stag eyeing us from the verge and apparently on the point of stepping out, too close to avoid or even to lose much of the 40mph or so we had on at the time. Fortunately he changed his mind; he was a lot bigger than the little roe buck that bent my Escort in Hampshire in 1992.

Thanks for all the input and encouragement. I'm glad we went; duty done, honour upheld, good outcome all round.

Roughly what I'd have expected from the E220 on the same trip: about 38 on the computer.

It's always puzzled me a little that some other users' big MBs seem to go further than mine on a tankful. I suspect one factor is different ideas of a 'full load'. Humph's load of shoes may be bulky but they won't weigh as much as four adult-sized humans and a densely-packed boot. My car could be carrying 200kg more than his - but then I never saw 50 on the E's computer even when I was just trundling the M4 on my own. (I did get 98 once, but it had started at the top of a Pyrenee.) 42-45 was achievable, though.

Funny thing is, I regularly got 45 out of the 2.4-litre S60 and 42 from the 3.0-litre 325, so it's not that I have lead boots or poor driving habits - and I don't run through tyres, brakes or clutches, so I reckon I'm driving reasonably smoothly.

My cruise speed of choice typically has the needle just short of vertical, which probably meant 74 in the Volvo and BMW. MB speedometers (if the E is a guide; I've yet to calibrate the CLS) read bang-on, so my actual speeds are probably higher. But Humph's probably are too. So I think the weight is the thing.

Any other ideas?