hmm [Music] hello everyone along welcome to scene through glass welcome back to my welsh adventure in this porsche 911 gt3 i really should have expected well mixed conditions or at least this weather yes it's august yes it's officially summer but this is england this is wales dry sunny days here few and far between hence why i like to often do international road trips whilst there are epic driving roads here in the uk the weather often ruins them but we're not going to let it dampen our spirits because i have the keys to a gt3 and i have to say i am slowly and unsurprisingly falling in love with this thing i'm not sure there's a better road car in existence in terms of attacking the road now the only thing is this car is equipped with michelin pilot sport cup two tires so if those sort of dark and gloomy clouds break and we get a proper downpour i am gonna have to take it very easy but for now things are remaining relatively dry which means out here in snowdonia so basically the north slash north west part of wales we can have some fun as long as i get out of this junction all right which i think i've done we're away that soundtrack i mentioned in the video from a few days ago when i collected this car from porsche uk it's intoxicating and it never ends and there were so few modern cars that sound this good that naturally aspirated 42 engine you just sing and it implores you to push on and on and on and i always shift too early you've got to remember this thing goes to 9 000 rpm and on a road like this which is relatively smooth the car just feels perfectly set up perfectly balanced the slightly bumpier road gets a little bit firm i have to say the car squirms around all over the place but the minute the tarmac looks anything like a sort of race circuit or snooker table you just want to push on and on and on and you just know it's gonna grip and keep going look at this glorious please reign please hold off whether it does or doesn't today's bit of an exploration day whilst of course i want to be finding some amazing driving roads to really enjoy and exploit this car on what's going to be exploring whales it's been a few years since i've been up and around wales especially this park and there's tons of things that i want to see you know most of the time i try and convince you that this isn't a travel channel but this is essentially a travel channel you know aided by the fact that i use cars to get to and from the various places i want to visit so yeah we're going to be indulging in that today i've got some tips from some viewers of cafes coffee shops farm shops to visit but also places of interest and i've earmarked some properly decent roads to use in between those various stops i mean come on i i hope this is coming across on camera because this car is just a dream [Music] now you may think that i've transported myself to positano italy or to the set of the wizard of oz but i promise you i'm still in wales this is port marion basically created by an architect called cloth williams ellis it's kind of a passion project he bought this site in 1925 and spent 50 years turning into this and it was kind of just to show that you can basically make anywhere beautiful or a beautiful spot even more beautiful basically it's just an insane creation you can walk around there's tons of things to see things hidden inside of nooks and crannies beautiful views over the bays and things like that there are cafes there are restaurants a ton of people just taking it in because it's the maddest thing i've ever experienced about 15 quid to get into to sort of walk around tomorrow but look at that i mean honestly i could be in some italian alps city it's absolutely nuts let's keep exploring so there you go there is sir clough he became a so i guess for his other architectural work or maybe just the architectural work of port marion and he got presented a lion by his mates it's a pretty cool thing to get presented isn't it no i think like me most people that come to port mary and come for a couple of hours to look around taking the sights and be kind of blown away by how mad this place is can actually stay here there's a sun on that gate saying residents only there's a couple of self-catering cottages there's even a hotel here so you could set up camp and spend a few days in portman which i think would be a bit weird when you wake up i think it would be disconcerting you'd be like where am i again but if the weather were better kind of why not it's kind of mega and amazing and that that bay out there is insane and this view i mean imagine waking up one of these cottages and looking out on that seems like i might have timed that perfectly because the rain is just starting to come down a little bit heavier um huge thanks to everyone that recommended port marion i genuinely love that place so wacky but so cool anyway i think it's time for lunch i'm getting a little bit hungry it's got about a 45-minute drive back across some decent roads to rogue rug rug country farm shop so yeah let's go check it out [Music] now i have to admit there are lots of things on that menu that caught my eye but before coming here everyone was recommending the burger so that's what i went for i think award-winning farm all these award-winning meats here at the rug estate uh the actual sort of cafe restaurant wasn't open so it's takeaway only at the moment but at least it allows me to sign for what plan is going to be a very good burger with some some good fries so here we go taste test actually hold on a sec i'm weird get rid of the tomatoes get rid of the onions that's how i like my burger basically meat and bread two seconds it's good suddenly well it feels like the weather is getting worse so i thought i'd quit whilst i was ahead come here to my hotel for the night palais hall near bala lake bala i think my welsh pronunciation is all off it's supposed to be like a five-star hotel built in the 1890s so worth spending some time in tomorrow i'm heading south towards the sort of elan valley and and well a bit more of the coasts and well just hopefully some more epic driving roads give me a chance to talk about the manual gearbox that gt3 is equipped with but i'll save that for tomorrow [Music] well good morning i tell you what very few things beat the excitement of being on a road trip knowing you've got a car parked outside the hotel that you cannot wait to get back in and keep driving i've never eaten my breakfast as quickly as i did this morning uh weather's still a bit gray and grotty but as i mentioned before headed south today down towards the pembrokeshire coast i know it's supposed to be drier and a bit nicer down there so yeah let's crack on [Music] uh well unfortunately the weather hasn't got any better if anything it's a little bit worse been in the car for about an hour and a half now heading south and yeah i got caught up in quite a few storms so much so that at one point steam was pouring off my front radius because water was gushing me so much i thought the car was on fire a little bit nerve-wracking so now i pulled over for a quick coughing refreshment just to try and let this storm pass because every time i look at my weather app it tells me it's going to be dry or it should be dry by now so it's clearly passing through this hasn't passed through yet i have to say though the gt3 is pretty impressive in these conditions and also at slower speed it's always been my one concern with any gt3 let alone the new generation that it'll be too stiff too firm too twitchy just on an everyday use but yeah especially with those cup two ties it should be all over the place but it's not got the music blasting and cruising along and looking out the window and finding really nice coffee spots yeah and enjoy this do some posts on instagram etc hit the road then hopefully by that point most of the them would have blown through and i can head to the elan valley region which is kind of the main stopping point i want to do beforehand properly south so wish me luck [Applause] so [Music] i was driving [Music] [Music] it was some kind of contemplation well everybody welcome to the elan valley uh top gear fans you may recognize where i'm standing right now because the dam that uh richard hammond was winched up in a land rover many seasons ago this place is absolutely breathtaking this isn't the only dam in the valley i think there's like six of them maybe even more i did do some research before i got here now i've got no phone signal so i can't bring that research back up so i'm a little bit clueless but the scenery around here is mind-blowing and it changes so much you know you just move 500 meters down the road and it goes from super tall trees to open wide valleys to these quite insane oh damns i'm not very good with heights um the driving roads aren't well they're incredible for taking in the views not great for fast driving you know they're all narrow bumpy tight you know you don't want to do a lot of speed but you can just cruise around and take in this glorious scenery whales is just it's not an undiscovered gym everyone knows it's stunning but i often forget how stunning it is and and the more i move through wales the more scenery i'm kind of reminded of or just smashed in the face with this continues to get more and more epic also speaking of epic how cool does a gt3 look atop a dam who knew that was a thing but this needs to happen more often now one thing i haven't been able to talk about with this car yet is the fact that of course it's fitted with a manual gearbox nothing new for the gt3 and in fact something very old there was only one time when porsche decided to not offer a manual gearbox for the gt3 and well that didn't go down well so they corrected that and yes now like the previous generation you can inspect your car either with the pdk or the manual and now for the 992 even if you choose the touring specification which essentially is a gt3 without a wing these days that's literally the only difference uh you can also have pdk or manual you know what before this test drive experience i'd assumed that if i was lucky enough to get a slot on a 992 gt3 i'd probably go for the pdk whilst look porsche haven't increased the power substantially with this new car i often find a lot of the sort of modern stuff oh there's a big cliff to my left hand side mate so interesting um yeah i find with a lot of these modern cars that actually the auto option sometimes suits the car better you can just extract more of the potential and actually that sort of thought was proven to be true recently when i drove the pdk gt4 which i'd always assume would be in its best kind of configuration with the manual box but i really enjoyed driving the pdk car so yeah before this test drive i was like i would go with a 992 gt3 touring specification with the pdk now i don't know what to think because this manual is still fantastic and people often say that you know the pdk is one of the best automatic gearboxes out there but i think we have to say in the same breath that this six-speed manual from porsche is one of the best manual gearboxes out there it's so nice the way it moves through the gearbox the throw of the actual gear lever it's just it's all perfect and it's so rewarding when you shift gear and the thing is this is going to sound a bit odd i think it helps me from going too fast you know when you're in a pdk it's all so easy that you're just constantly at the red line and it's bashing through the gears left right and center and building terrifying speed but because the gear change in this car is so rewarding at any point in that rev counter i can kind of puddle along but still feel engaged and still enjoy the driving experience without well going off the side of this cliff into the into the valley so look it's gonna really come down to personal preference now if you're doing a lot of track days and if you're in a car with the wing i think maybe pdk still will be the route to go this is gonna be the ultimate version of the car i think as porsche intended it to be come back to that in a second if you're going touring i need to drive the pdk to see what it's all about i would honestly i would be super hard pushed to choose but let me just come back to what i just said because i actually think porsche want you to choose pdk and there's a very specific very unfortunate reason like a shockingly unportia reason why i say that let me pull over because i need a prop and i need to explain now bear with me here because we're going to get a little bit nerdy a little bit niche but anyway here is the gear selector for the manual gearbox lovely looking thing very nice to hold actually if you get the pdk option it looks very similar which i think is a clever idea by porsche so you might be thinking okay cool cool sam what's what's the issue well let me present exhibit a a cup holder now in the prior generation gt3s well at least in the 991 which came before this car uh cup holders were sort of up in the dashboard concealed hidden away one on the far left for the passenger and then one closer to the kind of main console for the drive and you just push a button and they'd pop out and there you go very effective they weren't the best cup holders ever they didn't hold things fantastically but they did the job and everything was easy you could carry on so i go right well they've moved it down here for some reason the passenger cup holders in the same place so not sure why the drivers one has moved here and that wouldn't be a problem if i had to shift gear all the time hence why i think porsche want you to get a pdk because i now have a lovely water bottle let's face it the majority of the time in a car i'm drinking coffee but we're gonna we're gonna use water right here and it's a rather large bottle i will admit but the proof is in the pudding so there's my water now being held in its cup holder as it should be could be a hot drink don't want it to spill so i'm there let me get back into position driving along and i go i want to switch gear what is this porsche what what sudden now i know you're gonna be going oh come on sam what are you on about this makes a huge difference because when you're driving fast you you actually can't handle the gear knob well so you can miss time shifts you can and also i don't want to snap i think i don't want to break anything and it's it's uncomfortable when i had a coffee cup in here i ended up having to shift gear like this like up and up in here and oh it really like this is such an unportia thing porsche don't do these kind of things by mistake they don't go oh guys we forgot about the cup holder i don't know what this accent is let's get past it but yeah they don't forget stuff this is something this is an afterthought because let's face it i mean you can take that out i think but this wouldn't be an issue if it was pdk because then just put it into drive and off you go you got your flappy paddles so you don't have to be messing around down here and you might be going oh i'll just use the passenger one i tried that i'm driving along the road and i'm having to reach over here trying to find my coffee then not spill it and if you've got a passenger there's no excuse there is no excuse this is not good not good porsche anyway nerdy rant over let's carry make me on fine i guess it was some kind of contemplation [Music] you're probably not going to believe it's the same day or even the same country but it is the same day and i am still in wales a bit like yesterday when i visited port marion this is the welsh seaside and well it's as dramatic as everywhere else i've visited in wales this is freshwater west bay or well maybe it's called freshwater west it was an old smugglers spot so basically pirates and smugglers like that would come in and use little coves and caves all along this kind of coastline to hide things in and i guess then smuggle them into the country today it is so windy i can't actually step outside i've managed to get a couple of shots but it's trying to do a piece of camera out there not gonna happen so i'm in the in the sanctuary the sanctuary of this car and well is this true to to form what i said a few days ago in my first video this car i want to spend every waking minute this thing because i just think it's perfect honestly the more time i spend with it the better and better it becomes and i'm not sure there's a car that i think of that would be better to do what i've done with it today porsches can just take such abuse they're so usable and so fun and that engine and that exhaust just it just there have been so many moments where i've gone it's so good this car and look of course there are things that are more dramatic and there are things that sometimes pull on my heartstrings a bit more those with a prancing horrible and italian prancing horse on the front as an example but as a tool that can do nearly everything in kind of the perfect way but with enough emotion to make it feel special and exciting this new gt3 is everything i hoped and wanted it to be anyway i hope you've enjoyed today's video don't worry there's more content to come more gt3 content to come tomorrow well no no i'm going to film it tomorrow i'll be going live in a couple of days so make sure you stay subscribed turn on notifications so you don't miss any future gt3 content and yeah if you if you've enjoyed today's video give me that thumbs up um i'm going to sit here and enjoy the view a little bit longer so [Music] [Music] you