So things have moved on apace. This photo is of Ross finishing his 63km loop of the Stelvio pass in Italy - it is very close to the Swiss and Austrian border as well - Ross could tell by the quality of the roads as to whether he was in Switzerland or Italy. It is at an altitude of about 2700m, which also has an impact, and he headed off to climb the 48 hair pins of the ascent very early so as to avoid those who had come on motor bikes and fast cars to emulate the feats of Top Gear on what is essentially a single lane road. Anyway, we can tick that one off the list. The next night we overnighted in Innsbruck, at Hotel Engl, which was within walking distance of both the altstadt and the laundromat, so we were able to decorate the room with freshly washed clothes. It was such a sauna they dried very quickly.

Next we went to Berchtesgaden, where we took a boat ride up Konigsee - which reminded us of NZ fjords. Then the next day, up to the Eagle’s nest, Dokumentation Obersalzburg and the salt mines, which made for a very full day, but all enjoyable and worthwhile. Ross fitted in an early morning ride on the Rossfeld Strasse, which seemed appropriate.
Next day, moved onto Regensburg. Well that was the plan, but Gertie the Satnav in our car decided she wanted to go via Munich and we didn’t so we set her to intermediate spots along our preferred journey, which took us to a place called Burghaus (?) the longest town in the world. Not sure about the claim to fame but it is a beautiful medieval town built along a ridge in the bend of a river. It has 5 courtyards strung out along its length, and people still live in the buildings in it- and it is surrounded by a wall, with the neustadt along the river banks outside it. The neustadt is only a few hundred years old ......

When we got into the car, however, Gertie had somehow poisoned it against us, and it started telling us that if we didn’t adBlue within 600kms, the car wouldn’t start. We had been enduring a countdown of this message from 2400km, and now it was at a crux- spanner lights were appearing, the message on the satnav flashed every 30seconds ....we had long since worked out that adBlue was a diesel additive to improve environmental standards, but you know, doing something about it had been put off. So we gave in, found a servo purchased a bottle of the wretched adBlue and voila, peace and tranquility reigned.

So after all these shenanigans Gertie duly got us to Regensburg, another amazingly old city that we wandered around and dined in. And when Gertie started her shenanigans again this morning, putting us on boring major roads to Dresden, we discovered Colditz, and took another little detour before rolling into enormous, ostentatious, boiling hot Dresden. We are expecting a storm tonight, to make things cooler, but I ‘m not convinced it will actually happen.