Bunces in Austria and Switzerland May-June 2017

I forgot to mention, difficult though may seem, but at one campsite we returned after an afternoon trip into town to find someone practising their Alpenhorn playing on the site.  Maybe he wasn’t a virtuoso but it was a bit monotonous, just one deep rather mournful note, repeated, repeated and repeated.  Still it didn’t go on for too long,  it was well away from us and it reminded me of one reader of this very set of notes who when we went on holiday together (rather disturbingly nearly fifty years ago), took his trombone with him and was generous enough to surprise other holidaymakers by playing it. Anyway as we left Salzburg it was a brilliantly sunny day and we could have stayed longer after all but our heads had already moved on and so we followed them.  Westwards now and heading back into the Austrian Tyrol.  We stopped on the way for a view over a lake alongside the autobahn and a little behind us was a Chinese van.  It had a big map on the si...

Heading eastward we find ourselves in an area with fewer mountains and much more gently rolling countryside, woods, very neat looking farmland and just about every house with the usual amazingly evenly stacked woodpiles with nary a stick out of place.  As we got to a point roughly north of the Italian/Slovenian border we turned north ourselves in a vague direction towards Salzburg which has been highly recommended. We’d come this far east to see Burg Hochosterwitz castle.  It got a good write up in Lonely Planet which is to say that it might be good or it might not be.  From some way off we could see a huge mound with the castle on the top and it did not disappoint.  We stopped half a mile short in a spotlessly clean layby picnic area and contemplated the scene.  At least I did while Heather put lunch together.  Well I did take some photographs and while we were there we were only visited by two coach loads of German tourists who spilled out and mi...

                            on the Grossglockner Road                                                                                                                       Spring Gentian We’ve come a little further south working on our ‘once we’re here, not driving too much’ idea and have pitched in an almost caricature Alpine Village called Heiligenblut.   Set on a steep hillside, surrounded by woods and meadow, snow capped mountains to the north and a church whose spire looks as if it has had a giant pencil sharpener used to finish it off.  Oh, and drenched in hot sunshine.  On a walk into town...

           So this is another Motorhome trip across the channel into the rest of Europe.  Now many of you will be familiar with the minutiae of planning, arranging and booking that we don’t do before a trip and this was exemplified as we checked in at Dover.   Two miles away from the port we did check that we were arriving on the correct day and we also wondered how many visitors to the town see anything more than the road to the ferry terminal.  We were a bit early and as we sat at the check in booth we were asked if we wanted the earlier ferry to Calais rather than our booked one to Dunkirk.  In a harmony which The Everly Brothers would have been proud of there was a chorus from both of us, “Dunkirk, I thought we  were  going to Calais”.  Well, now we are and this bit is being written on the ferry.   To misquote Douglas Adams, our planning flies like a brick doesn’t.   And I’ve forgotten t...