Tuesday 30th September - Zugspitze, Germany
This was our view in the morning.
When we arrived at the site last night, we parked up where the farmer told us to. However heavy rain woke us up at 6am, and when we came to drive away the wheels just spun in the mud. I went and found the farmer who, thank goodness, was on the farm and not out in the fields miles away. He pulled us out with his tractor - poor Kiwi was covered in mud - and we started our journey.
While I was waiting for the farmer, I made friends with the pet goats.
The day got worse when we went through a Swiss town which suddenly became an Austrian town. Because we are over 3.5 tons we need a Go-box in Austria which prepays tolls. I knew there was a border but I thought it was Lichtenstein 😩 It took us for ever to find a service station that sold the boxes. We ended up in a car park which let us in without getting a ticket but wouldn’t let us out! I had to plead with the man on the intercom that I was a stupid English woman and he let us out. Believe it or not we ended up again in the same car park - it was huge with various entrances. This time we got a ticket and got out easily. Eventually, after two abortive visits to service stations we found one that sold the b****y boxes. It was all so frustrating but Richard was just his usual“laid back” self which does, thank goodness, help me to calm down. All this will teach me to be more careful with borders in Europe.
We continued on our way leaving Austria for Germany, then going back into Austria and back into Germany. Don’t forget we started the day in Switzerland.
The weather forecast had said rain and it did quite heavily for about 3/4 of the journey.
Our site was in a valley with mountains on either side including Zugspitze, which is the highest mountain in Germany, at 9,718 feet. The strange part is that one side of the mountain is in Germany and the other side is in Austria. Zugspitze doesn’t even feature in their list of high mountains! (It is actually only 15th).
Gradually, during the afternoon the rest of the group arrived and we all met up in the bistro for a burger and a drink. It was lovely to catch up with the people who had been to Normandy with us and to meet new people.
144 miles
Wednesday 1st October - Zugspitze
Up the Zugspitze today. Our plan was to join three others, Matt, Lizzie and Lou and get a bus to the bottom of the mountain. We walked to the stop to catch the 10.28 but at 11.00 we gave up. Lou has a VW campervan with five seat belts so we drove instead. It also turned out that we were on the wrong side of the road so it’s just as well there wasn’t a bus as we would have gone somewhere completely different!! I hasten to add that Lizzie and I kept saying it was wrong but Matt said he was right!!
At the base of the mountain and caught the cog railway to a base just below the top. Rio couldn’t work out what was happening and kept gulping, so I guess his ears were popping too! We spent some time there (it was actually nicer than the summit) having hot chocolate and cake and a walk in the snow. It was Rio’s first encounter with snow and he loved it but would have preferred to be off the lead and run around.
We then caught the cable car to the summit (almost 10,000 feet) where we wandered around the terrace, we weren’t allowed on the snow, taking photos of clouds! We could see some mountain but it was a bit of a disappointment, but at least it wasn’t raining. We crossed the border into Austria where we saw a group of men in Tyrol hats and one had lederhosen on! There were also three birds, who were fluffy and kept posing for photos.
We then got the long cable car back down to the base. As we came through the clouds we found blue sky and sunshine.
Back at the site we sat out with Kevin and Liz before our evening get together with Kat. Richard and I was so tired that we went to bed at 9.30pm though I did read until 10.25pm.
Thursday 2nd October - Salzburg
We packed up and left Zugspitze. A quick pop into Aldi then we were on our way to Austria.
There were a few routes we could take and we chose the scenic one with a trip to some waterfalls. We got stopped for a €12 toll by an old German man with a Tyrol type hat on! We drove on, the road was a bit narrow but nothing to worry about until a German campervan came hurtling towards us, not slowing down and swiped our wing mirror knocking and breaking the small bottom mirror out of its fixings. We stopped and Richard wrapped gaffer tape round it and we continued on our way hoping that the campervan had damage too!
We drove alongside a beautiful lake and were able to stop on a bridge over a tributary to take it all in.
From there we started to climb, negotiating some pretty tight hairpin bends, but the views back were amazing. When it was time to descend from the plateau there were more hairpins, then a car park with stunning views over the valley and we could see a waterfall in the distance.
Down in the valley we parked up and walked to the bottom of the waterfall. It was beautiful with lots of spray.
Back at Kiwi we continued our journey but it was much more built up and not nearly as nice.
A random statue on a roundabout - look carefully!
It was 5pm before we arrived at our site where, even with our wedges in, we were still sloping downhill! We ate in the site’s eating place, I couldn’t really call it a restaurant, with everyone else before we all retired to our vans for the night.194 miles
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