I've always loved the feeling of adventure associated with a journey free from time constraints; the kind where you can just meander along, stopping and starting as you please. This is the best way to see things and get to know places. You can stay longer where the action is and move along if you don't like a place. I have very fond memories of doing this around New South Wales, Australia, before I started university.

This road trip was never going to be like that, particularly if I was to work around the time commitments of my co-drivers. I had already decided to reduce the itinerary from two weeks to one, leaving the car in France and picking it up at a later date. I knew the distance would be easily covered in a week but soon came to realise that other aspects of my plans were a bit ambitious, particularly when you put traffic jams and getting lost into the equation.

As we got caught up in another traffic jam on the outskirts of Modena, it seemed that our plans to drive from Brescia to Maranello (Ferrari), Maranello to Sant'Agata (Lamborghini), and Sant'Agata to Castelfranco Emilia (Pagani) in one day were far too ambitious. Once again we were having navigational issues which only added to the tension and we rolled into Maranello with an hour and a half before we'd have to leave for our arranged tour of the Pagani factory - something I had no intention of missing!

Maranello seems like a place that you could spend a good few hours wandering around. If you like Ferraris then you simply must go there. Having seen only two Ferraris since Spa-Francorchamps, things suddenly and dramatically changed. There were plenty of the new FFs cruising around, the first I have seen. Test drive experiences in Californias were an obvious attraction for visitors and meant that these were also rolling up and down the roads almost constantly. We even saw another F355 parked there, the only other spotted in the course of the journey. The museum is well worth a look, with an excellent room dedicated to the company's motorsport successes over the decades, and lunch at Il Cavallino was a good call by Spencer, who had visited the town once before. For us though, the experience was rushed and the planned visit to Sant'Agata - the home of Lamborghini - was scrapped as we made our way to the Pagani factory at Castelfranco Emilia.

The Pagani factory is a small and unassuming place within an industrial estate on the edge of town, though I am told that they are soon to move to new premises. As you enter the building you are greeted by the sight of two Zonda Rs - racing specification versions of the car that placed Pagani alongside the established supercar royalty - before being given a knowledgeable tour of the small facilities and the practicalities of carbon fibre construction. Having been told it wouldn't be present, we were excited to see that the new Pagani Huayra was parked outside and we would be welcome to look around and sit in it. Apparently this stunning car is currently Horacio Pagani's daily driver.

If you get a chance to visit the Pagani factory, I can strongly recommend it. It is an amazingly welcoming environment and a great opportunity to see how a bespoke, low-volume manufacturer goes about things. They are rightly very proud of their products and talk with passion about the processes.

I thought I'd post a short clip of the drive over the Fluela Pass yesterday. It really doesn't surprise me that it is rated as one of Europe's best driving roads. Take a look for yourself...

So, I can tell you one thing: the Stelvio Pass is currently shut.

I'll be sure to check such things out in future. It is one of the key roads that I wanted to drive and I wrongly assumed that it would be open by mid-May. According to the local tourist office in Trafoi, we may well have been in luck in ten days time. Now though, there may be ice on the road. I had better check whether we'll be able to drive over the Col de la Bonnette as planned...

The last two days have been a blur. The problem with a road trip is that you rarely spend more than one night in any given place and, as such, you rarely get a real feel for anywhere or get a chance to get to know anyone. The latter of these points is a bit of a disappointment but I know it will be offset to some degree by the people with whom I have and will be speaking with back in the UK.

Since I last posted, I have driven from Francorchamps to Nurburg; a town where car manufacturers test their latest products, taking in the challenging Nurburgring to hone the dynamics of their cars. If you have read anything about the Audi R8 GT Spyder over the past two days, we saw it driving through Nurburg in plain sight on Wednesday along with a number of disguised cars, such as the new BMW M5.

I have driven and sat as a passenger on the Nurburgring and can tell you that I am not a great passenger, though I blame some of the feelings of nausea on the racing-style balaclava and helmet I had to wear for safety purposes. For what it's worth, I think Ned and I may have developed a tiny addiction for the place and we were both reluctant to leave, promising ourselves that we’ll be back to do some more laps before long.

Together we drove to Zuffenhausen, outside Stuttgart, to visit the architecturally amazing Porsche museum, feeling like imposters as we arrived in Porsche-land in an Italian supercar. I have now experienced life in the fast lane, charging down the autobahn to Zurich at absurd average speeds and witnessing the moment that the road goes from a derestricted speed limit, three-lane motorway to a round-about and passport control in a matter of metres.

I have changed co-drivers, dropping-off my cousin Ned at Zurich airport after having built a strong relationship after years of no contact and swapping in my good friend Spencer, someone with whom I have shared many adventures over the past ten years.

Yesterday felt like the beginning of the real road driving as Spencer and I drove across the Alps to experience the legendary Fluela Pass - a route still lined with snow many places even at this time of the year - before finding ourselves at a dead-end as we discovered that the Stelvio Pass was closed to us. We have already seen the cultural shift, in terms of passion for cars, having crossed the border from Switzerland to Italy and noticing how the F355 suddenly became acknowledged much more frequently by fellow drivers, road workers and pedestrians alike. We even found ourselves chasing a Ferrari F40 and an old Porsche 911 Turbo through a tunnel at one point only to realise that we had missed our turning. It was worth it though. The combined sound of the three cars in convoy through the tunnel was incredible and the closest thing to a Formula 1 car that I have heard on public roads. We eventually made our way to the hotel in Brescia and I had my first experience of an evening in this part of Europe. The food, weather, architecture, music and people are all great and I look forward to spending the next couple of days in Italy.

Despite the many experiences had so far, today is due to be one of the most exciting parts of the journey yet as we drive my Ferrari home to Maranello and take side trips to Lamborghini in Sant’Agata and Pagani in nearby Castelfranco Emilia. First the car needs a much needed wash to remove the grime, brake dust and dead bugs from four days of hard driving...

I think every road trip needs at least one occasion when you get lost. It adds to the authenticity of travelling somewhere new and, perhaps, not being very well prepared. There were certainly a number of moments yesterday when I questioned our decision to take some back roads to our destination to 'mix it up' after hours of motorway driving.

Myself and Ned, my cousin and co-driver for the first three days of the trip, had made a good start on the first leg of the journey, from central London to the Spa-Francorchamps racetrack in Belgium. We were making good time and a little detour taking us a more scenic route for the last bit of the journey seemed like a good idea. At this point we assumed that our European map and the Belgian signposts would help us navigate. My sat-nav was quickly turned from a vital tool to a useless adornment for my windscreen as we progressed into farming country as I'd chosen only to upgrade it to map the main roads in Europe. The AA roadmap also began to cause problems, not going into enough detail and not recognising the roads we now found ourselves on.

At least, we thought, we'd have some good quality Belgian roads to enjoy the car on. Sadly our positive assumptions around Belgian road quality was seriously misplaced. The roads we experienced in Belgium yesterday reminded me of the roads in central Aberdeen after two heavy winters. You could be cruising along at 80mph on the motorway and there would appear a huge pothole that looked like a dinosaur had been walking there whilst the tarmac was still cooling. The smaller roads were even worse. We lurched around on poorly signposted rural roads that didn't ever seem to have been upgraded to tarmac. They seemed like they may have been paved by the Romans and avoided by civilisation ever since – until we found them anyway. Not Ferrari-friendly then.

We made it to Spa-Francorchamps about 10 minutes after the time indicated on the itinerary of our "bapteme de piste" session. Again we were struck by issues of poor signposting and couldn't quite work out where we should be. We drove slowly up a ramp that opened-up into the back of the pit lane and rolled forward to pause amongst the numerous track-prepared supercars, of which there were many more putting in some serious laps on track from what we could see and hear. After a brief chat with a group of Germans that turned out to be taking part in a four-day track driving lesson we found a security guard and things started to fall into place.

I will go into more detail on the track experience itself another time but I can tell you now that this brief introductory session at Spa-Francorchamps was excellent. It is certainly worth doing if you are in the region.

The passenger lap blew my mind. Both Ned and I were flabbergasted at what a professional driver can do in a car no more exotic than a Renaultsport Megane when they truly know the limits of the car and the intricacies of the track. The fact that it had been raining lightly for a couple of hours by the time we went out undoubtedly helped. As we drifted through corner after corner, sometimes seeming as though the grass verges were beckoning, I asked my driver whether the wet surface made it more fun. He turned to me briefly with the wry smile of a man caught up doing something that he loves and responded, with some understatement, "Yes".

I woke up today to the sound of German and Swiss-registered Porsche 911 GT3s making their way to the track for another day of tuition. I would really like to do more track-driving now and, after my abandoned trip to Brands Hatch earlier this year, will be putting my name down for some track days as soon as I get home. First though, Ned and I have a date with a Renaultsport Clio and the Nurburgring this afternoon. I can’t wait!

The past couple of months have been an exciting time for me, though at times quite nerve-wracking as I have come to terms with my decision to leave my job and try to establish myself as a creative writer. I have struggled to validate some of my decisions at a time when I am not earning money but I have managed to continue pressing onwards in the pursuit of my ideas. Now I feel that these decisions have been vindicated and that there is a degree of momentum behind my work.

A lot of this positivity is a result of the willingness of others to engage with what I'm doing. Loved ones have motivated me; friends have supported me by making countless introductions to car enthusiasts that they know; and those enthusiasts that I have met to date have been kind enough to spend time chatting with me and giving me ideas and stories to follow up on, whether directly or indirectly.

Things really started on Wednesday 16th March when I attended the pre-show press conference for Top Marques in Monaco. Top Marques is a luxury and performance car show that I remained on the press list for from some years ago. Once I had decided to prioritise writing about car enthusiasm, over my original plans for a fiction novel, this seemed like a good point to kick things off, and it was. Initially evo magazine posted a preview article I had written about Top Marques on their website. As a committed reader of the magazine this was really exciting for me.

A month later I was back in Monaco to attend Top Marques and to carry out two interviews. The first was with Gildo Pastor, a local businessman who bought the Venturi car company and turned it into a manufacturer of electric vehicles. It was fascinating to hear about the progression of his interest in cars and driving. The second interview was with Juergen Obermann who was at the show to launch Type 41, an invitation only supercar club for the Cote D'Azur. His was a different perspective but no less interesting.

My intention to write about car enthusiasm didn't ever stop with other people. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to combine the stories of those people I would meet along the way with my own stories, my own experiences. It was time for me to do some of the driving-orientated things that I had marked down in my head to take place 'one day' in the future. By the time that I returned to Monaco in April I had attended my first classic car auction and was deep in the planning phase of a European road trip, a pilgrimage to take in some key sites and some of the great driving roads. Planning that trip has taken longer than I thought it would but the departure day is now closely approaching.

A week today I will be departing London to cross the Channel and then on to Spa-Francorchamps to experience the circuit there. Next will be the Nurburgring before heading down to Switzerland and across some of the Alpine mountain passes, into Italy and then taking on the legendary Stelvio Pass. From there the journey will continue to the Modena region - home of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Pagani - before heading north again to the Concorso d'Eleganza by Lake Como. From there it will be over to the Cote D'Azur, again via some great driving roads, where the first leg of the journey will end.

One of the reasons for splitting up the journey is to participate in a small classic car rally and concours event in Scotland, which I will be attending in an Aston Martin DB7 Vantage. The return leg from the Cote D'Azur will take place in July and will be a more meandering journey designed to better reflect the slower-paced, grand touring approach that many driving enthusiasts take part in.

To truly embrace the mentality of a car enthusiast I quickly decided that my choice of vehicle for this journey should be made more with the heart than the head. I wanted to understand what it was like to throw caution to the wind and buy your dream car and to experience a pan-European drive in something that would excite me and those I would meet on the way.

Just over two weeks ago I bought my first Ferrari - a 1996 F355 Berlinetta. Whilst it is probably the most outlandish thing I've done during a period of no income, I convinced myself that it would be a good choice because depreciation should be close to zero in the short term, maybe appreciating if I can afford to keep it longer. More than that, it is a modern classic, seen to be a genuine supercar and is simply gorgeous. Over the coming weeks I will talk more about the F355 and my impressions on it in different scenarios but I can safely say that it attracts a good level of interest from people and I'm going to be really interested to see if that is as much the case at the Nurburgring or in Italy as it is here. I find it's really nice that people are willing to strike up conversations at petrol stations about the car, something that is arguably at odds with the conservative, 'keep to yourself' attitude we Brits are renowned for.

I will use this website and my Twitter account to post updates as I continue to undertake research over the coming months. I hope that the content interests fellow car and driving enthusiasts as well as those who just enjoy a good adventure. Please feel free to comment on any of the blog posts, as well as those on Twitter. Whilst I know that I will never be able to produce a comprehensive work on the huge and diverse world of car enthusiasm, it is always interesting to hear other people's thoughts and experiences.