1. Austria and Switzerland - Here We Come

          

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 the wheelbarrow to carry my Toblerone down to the car deck.  Judging by the number of other passengers on board, this ferry should be called the Marie Celeste because we have a whole lounge to ourselves, areas of the boat are taped off and there’s enough space on the car deck for an impromptu game of football.  The shop is customer-less and I noticed on the front of the Truckers (how American) Atlas of Britain that one of the features inside is “The Most Hit Bridge List”.  No, I didn’t bother to look.

So across the tangle of motorway spaghetti that passes for Belgium we turn south and stop fifty miles or so short of Luxembourg.  Then true to form and living up to my nom de foot, Gouty McGoutface, my port-side big toe joint glows an appropriate shade of red and I have a gout attack.  It doesn’t stop me driving though because the motorway driving takes place with virtually no gear changes so we can both take our turn as usual.   In Luxembourg (520 miles from home on one tank of fuel) we stock up with food and fuel at the equivalent of 80p a litre for diesel and although I know that won’t particularly impress my American readers, it impresses me.

On the hundreds of miles of travel southwards there is as you would imagine lots to see and ponder.  This part of Europe as we cross into Germany and for a long way to come is lovely rolling wooded country with distant views and glimpses into lovely village studded bucolic valleys each with a great big motorway viaduct across the middle.  There are a fair number of tunnels and what I think must be one of the most (among many) useless roads signs imaginable.   Just after the end of every tunnel is an outline of said tunnel with a red line diagonally across it.  Now, if you’re driving and you need a sign to tell you when a tunnel has ended, should you be on the road at all without a guide dog ?  The German Autobahn network is extensive and many roads are two lanes each way so there tends to be congestion through weight of traffic around conurbations and there are also a lot of road works.  It made me feel quite homesick except that the potholes are less impressive.

Ulm in southern Germany is just down the road from us, with a huge church and  (just over) 500 foot tower (as a comparison Salisbury’s is 404 feet).  When it was built as the parish church, it had room for a standing congregation of 20,000 people, twice the population at the time, which indicates an impressive level of civic optimism.   Ulm is the birthplace of Albert Einstein and although we haven’t seen it, there’s a memorial to him which according to The Rough Guide has one stone on it (ein stein).   I suppose it’s a joke.

above Zell am Zee

Anyway we’re headed for Zell am See in Austria, east of Innsbruck and south of Salzberg where we’ll be meeting old friends for a few days.  Jan and Clive from Sussex and Hennie and Helena from South Africa.   Our campsite is in a fabulous location, the lake a little to the north, wildflower filled meadows to the south, beyond that the impressive snow capped peaks and a nearby lively town with ice-cream.   It was very warm (no, not the ice-cream) but the air was very clear making the view look almost too much like a backdrop.  On our last day at the site a man with a tractor cut all the wildflowers down as part of the hay crop so our timing was impeccable but it was shame to see all the flowers go.   We did all go up on the cable car a couple of thousand metres to walk at higher altitude which as you can imagine on a clear and sunny day gave us spectacular views of snowy peaks in all directions.  It was very disappointing for birds and flowers though with few varieties to be seen although it was clear that the snow had only recently melted at this height and we did walk through a few small patches.   On the way back my camera found itself being introduced to a concrete floor rather faster than is good for a camera but it appears to have suffered no damage, unlike my nice 16 – 300 zoom which has been left at home with focusing problems.  It just doesn’t seem to be able to concentrate any more.

next to the van on our campsite

After we left Zell am See and all went our separate ways, Jan and Clive west towards Innsbruck, Hennie and Helena to Italy where Hennie is taking part in a six day bike race called the Tuscany Trail and us south along the scenic toll road called the Grossglockner Alpine Road, 48 kms of scenic driving as it says in the brochure.   Hennie is one of those frightening fit 70+ year olds who has pretty recently taken part in a 22 day, 2,300 km bike race in South Africa and was one of only half the starters to finish.

the Grossglockner road winding upwards

Whenever we’re in a suitable location we keep our eyes peeled for Dippers.  They’re lovely little birds which are found in Britain but they certainly aren’t common and are usually on fast-ish streams and rivers with rocks to perch on.  They look a bit like an oversized Robin but with a white bib instead of the Robin’s orangey red one and they have a habit of bobbing up and down.   We saw one today which got me thinking, which I suppose is always a good idea.   Dippers eat invertebrates from the streams which they catch by diving in and plucking their food from the rocks, sometimes even walking on the bottom, so they have a tight little ecological niche which they exploit but I can’t think of another freshwater bird which has the same one, that of eating invertebrates from underwater.  Ducks and Swans tend to eat vegetation and Kingfishers unsurprisingly eat small fish.  The thought was, why aren’t they more common ?  They don’t seem to have any competition for food, at least not from other birds.

Alpine Pasque flower

Chapel near the end of the Grossglockner Road

     Our Grossglocknerdrive was on a Sunday morning.  It was sunny, very steep and liberally sprinkled with cyclists grinding their way upwards.  At one point there was a 2km side road, even steeper and very much more like the alpine passes we drove on when we first came to the alps in the 1970s.  That is to say narrower, cobbled and with sharp hairpins rather than the more smoothed out ones seen nowadays. Our van was the maximum size allowed up this particular road so naturally up we went.  It was to a view point which even at this height had a tower so that it was possible to go up another 20 feet.  Anyway, on the way down this very steep road we had a warning flash up on the van.  Quite worrying in the circumstances to have a message which read  “Brake Fluid Low, Do Not Proceed” appear.  Frankly it was just not convenient to stop so I just carried on down which I guess would have been the same direction in which we would have gone had the brakes actually failed.  It seemed though that the gradient was too steep for the sensors to cope with because as soon as we levelled off the message disappeared.  For those of you who don’t know, the ideal is to descend an Alp (or similar) using brakes as little as possible because otherwise they burn out, which is disagreeable.  You’re supposed to keep in low gear and use the brakes only when necessary which means you end up going fairly slowly.  On one descent today we were overtaken by a cyclist. 

Herb Paris (Paris quadrifolia)