Alpine summer

Following the mechanical troubles of the JOGLE run we planned our own summer adventure on the return of Roofus.  We are probably going to alternate summers in the British Isles with slightly further afield travels.  As last year finished with the Devon trip, this year is another Euro-jaunt.  Poland or Italy were the likely destinations and I don't remember why but the southern compass point won the day, Italy it shall be.

Trummelbach Falls

We've never made it to "proper" Italy, just managing to break into the lake areas at the top a couple of times.  So we though we would make a go of it this year.

However, when it came down to it, we failed again.  We had a good could of days driving down through France at a leisurly (for us) pace, stopping in Verdun for a couple of nights.  A flappy gearstick later and confidence in the "it'll be OK" diagnosis, using google translator, from a VW dealer in Besancon we carried on.

The we found ourselves in northern Switzerland and kind of decided that actually we should have a look around.  It is a beautiful coutry and we bought ourselves a motorway vignette and headed off to Interlaken.

Camping in Stechelberg

We found a great campsite at the head of the Lauterbrunnen valley with views down to Wengen and towering cliffs on either side.  I took myself off for a full day hike up into the foothills of the Schilthorn (I think) meeting goats and other wildlife.  Fran enjoyed  a lazy couple of days reading and chilling in / around the van.


I guess we then decided to move on and seemed to spend the next few days going up and down the Alps.  We certainly managed a lot of alpine passes - Sustenpass and St Gottard into Ticino (Italian Switzerland) where we stopped and took in the Madonna del Sasso before getting caught in the mother of all thunderstorms at the campsite.

Climbing in the Busenbrand

Mountain wildlife

As we were so close we felt Italy itself was calling, so we did a token drive down to Lake Como before returning to Switzerland by way of St Moritz and the Fluelpass to Davos and departing via Klosters.  How the other half live!

We continued north into Germany and flirted with the Schwartzwald again staying in St Peter before spending my (40th) birthday driving up to Bingen to join the Rhine gorge up through Koblenz.  We then headed across country into Belgium and spent the night at a campsite very close to the Spa Grand Prix circuit, not quite realising that one day later and we'd have been fully caught up in the GP frenzy.  The countryside round here is fantastic.  Birthday dinner was an interesting selection of deep fried items containing cheese and other indistinguishable content.

Madonna del Sasso, Locarno

From Spa it was a long motorway haul to overnight in Ypres, where we took in the last post at the Menin gate.  The quick blast from Ypres to Calais and then M20, M25 home...!
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