Two cars, one mountain: morning corners on Cholomontas

There's a moment, just past Arnaia, where the road over Cholomontas changes character. The sun stops landing on you and starts dripping through the leaves instead. The temperature drops three or four degrees, the tarmac darkens in the shade, and the double yellow line becomes the only loud colour between the grey and the endless green. Up there, on a Sunday morning in July, we pulled onto the shoulder and shut the engines off.

The plan was simple: leave Thessaloniki before the day heats up, coffee on the way, and run the mountain spine of Halkidiki until we'd had our fill of corners. Two cars, four friends. Leading, a BMW M4 Competition - matte blue, with a red interior that makes it clear subtlety was never on the options list - and behind it a black Porsche 718, roof down from the first kilometre.

Cholomontas isn't a tall mountain. It has none of Olympus's drama, none of Metsovo's ribbon passes. What it has is rhythm. Second- and third-gear corners that follow each other with an almost musical logic, good asphalt for most of the way, and a forest of oak and beech that closes over you like a vault. You drive through a green tunnel and the light flickers across the bonnet like a strobe.

Two philosophies, one road

The M4 is overkill up here - and that's the entire point of it. The S58 straight-six makes speed so effortlessly that the road runs out before the engine ever gets to the top of its rev range. Its width makes you read every tightening left-hander twice. And yet the front axle bites with a precision you don't expect from something this heavy, and out of every corner it converts your patience into thrust in a way that makes you laugh out loud.

The 718 is the other school of thought. Low, narrow, weight in the middle, roof down - it doesn't need half the BMW's horsepower to be just as fast on this road. You hear the forest, you hear the exhaust bouncing off the trees, and you smell soil and ferns on every open stretch. If the M4 is a statement, the 718 is a conversation - and on Cholomontas the conversation never stops.

Somewhere along the way the inevitable happened: we stopped at a corner with a wide shoulder, phones came out, hazards went on, and one of us ended up crouched next to the M4's front wheel, inspecting - nothing at all. It's just what we do. We stare at cars the way other people stare at the sea.

The route

From Thessaloniki, the most rewarding combination is Galatista - Polygyros - Palaiochora - Arnaia, then the Cholomontas pass towards Taxiarchis. Budget about an hour and a half of pure driving without stops - but you will stop. Go early: after 11 the road fills with motorbikes, cyclists and weekend traffic, and the rhythm disappears. Coffee and a proper breakfast in Arnaia, fuel in Polygyros, and mind the first shaded sections in the morning - the tarmac holds moisture even in July.

On the way back, with the cars tick-ticking as they cooled outside the taverna, we agreed on two things. First, that Cholomontas is the closest thing Thessaloniki has to a racetrack with shade. And second, that these drives deserved to be written down somewhere. That's how this site was born. Welcome to groundspeed.