Lake Bled (Slovenia) to Ehrwald (Austria)
After splashing out €8 for our road tax "vignette" for Austria, we decided to eat some homeward-bound KMs this morning and drive 450km to a campsite at the foot of a cable car on the Austrian / Germany border. I appreciate that I am not driving, but a 4-5 hour journey just flies by, as there is so much to see. It's almost like being at a cinema to watch a 4 hour film. The big windscreen is just fabulous - except for the poor birdy that flew in to it today - that was more like a 3D film - sad face...
We arrived at the campsite around 16h00; selected because it was located at the foot of the mountain that we wanted to visit the following day - mount
Zugspitz. At 2962m, it is the highest mountain in Germany with the base of the cable car being situated in Austria. Fact!
The drive to the site was fantastic - the ski resorts in the Summer look so green and lush. Colin was quite keen to stop at a particular mountain called w***" - but we didn't! He was thankfully satisfied with me just taking a photo of the sign...boys - do they ever grow up?!
The temperature dropped so much at the foot of the mountain that we had to dig the long sleeved t-shirts out of the boot and put a blanket on the bed! The beauty of the cooler night was that we both slept really well and didn't wake up until 8am. Sluggerbugs!
We took the 9am cable car to the top of the mountain. As we had seen coaches parked up the night prior, we thought we would be squeezed into the 100 person cable car but with the exception of about 6 others, we had the cable car to ourselves both up and down! We do often congratulate ourselves for being the "early birds catching the worms"!! We just love having places to ourselves or leaving somewhere just as the crowds arrive.
The views from the top of the mountain were breathtakingly superb. How can you put this in to words? Even the photos do not depict the views well enough or convey the heights. The video that I took on the way down is fab though!
As we drank our coffees at high altitude, we could see the remains of snow on the ski slopes, but the sky was blue blue blue and the sun was shining.
We have been so lucky with the weather on our hols - the afternoon prior when we arrived, the mountain was covered in cloud and it even rained a little bit. We were not sure we would have even bothered to go up if it would have been so cloudy the following day.
There was a big board at the cable car station showing that the temperature "up top" was 10 degrees, so we had thankfully dressed up accordingly (first time wearing socks and a jacket all holiday!)
After an amazing stopover, we took the mountain road through Austria, direction Germany - via Liechtenstein (as it was not far out of our way and Colin wanted to say he had been there!). On several occasions, Colin instructed me to check his altimeter so he knew how high we were climbing. As his PA / co-pilot, I am always busy! But I have to admit that that's a great little app!
At one point we saw a road sign with a massive exclamation mark that said
Oltspur! or something like that - at this point we were on such a windy road approaching a hairpin bend, that Colin (now totally fluent in German - as he has been speaking like one for a few days now!) said it translated as "fuuuccckk!" - really!! By the way, when we were in Croatia, they call their hairpin bends "serpent bends! Forgot to mention that before.
It seems that at the borders the do not care about our passports really, as it's all Schengen in these parts, but they all want to know how much Mabel weighs. Lucky for us, the threshold seems to be 3.5T. - maybe for the smaller roads and towns. Thankfully we are in this category or we may have found ourselves sticking to more motorways that we would liked to.
Despite weighing in at 3.5T or thereabouts, you will be pleased to read that Colin has still tried a wheel spin pull-away on at least three occasions!
Even being as methodical as we both are, we have not quite mastered the technique of packing up to be "road-ready" on a first attempt! There is so much to remember with vents, windows, blinds, electricity, preparing TomTom and "the office" with the right maps and books, that we always seem to pull away and then have to stop 100m later when we realise that we have forgotten to lock the drawers, hook the door back, lay the salt and pepper pots down etc!
We suppose the beauty of having your own van is that you buy "things" to secure "things" as you are driving, but this not being ours, we only invested (heavily at €2) in a "cut-to-size-from-a-roll-anti-slip mat" and otherwise, everything else is wrapped in tea towels or wedged in to place with kitchen roll etc. Most untidy and most unsatisfactory, but there is no point buying things we wouldn't need after the trip is there?
Having pulled up at the only advertised campsite in Liechtenstein, we decided we were actually just happy to pass through and in the end moved onwards to a campsite in the Black Forest. As we arrived quite late and only wanting to stay one night (and it is now high season) the nice lady at reception suggested that we used the service point and then camped in the overnight spot outside the gates, for a tenner. Bit like Boy is the striped pyjamas, we looked through the fence at all the activity!! Anyway, we decided to "slum it" for the night, took her advice and parked up outside of the site.
Feeling a bit lethargic, we decided not to go to the town for a moochy round, so we went to the onsite bar and got caught in the RAIN! HEAVY RAIN! So heavy that we were trapped drinking beer and talking to strangers until the rain stopped long enough for us to head back to Mabel where we had our first inside dinner whilst planning our journey to the "romantic Rhine".
...signing off from me and my quasi-German husband!!!