I am so glad that Rosita had her brakes redone before this trip. The alps and the dolomites are very high...fancy!

Ok so I had to go to austria, I collect childrens books, but only of a certain kind and my favourites are a series of almost 60 books, set in the austrian tirol (amongst other places) so I simply had to go and see where they are set. It is a gorgeous lake, the achensee high in the mountains near the border of austria and switzerland, it is very beautiful and as usual without sat nav, bloody difficult to find.

Switzerland was another country that was reluctant to see the back of us, but we found our way and started climbing mountains and more mountains, the scenery was gorgeous. Chocolate box pictures of beautiful tirolean houses, simply smothered in flowers. The mountains in this part of the world are quite different, higher obviously, but you have flattish meadow and then without warning it suddenly swoops into vertiginous mountains, by way of dark forests. It is very difficult to look at the scenery and drive..we left a whole swathe of frustrated drivers in our wake as not only was I driving a little slowly, so I could gawk at all the heartstoppingly beautiful  views but as I already said, Rosita is built for beauty not for speed. So steep climbs on very windy roads tended to mean that we accumulated a lengthy tail of cars behind us.

This campsite was nice, what we saw of it, we arrived in torrential rain and left in torrential rain, I had planned to stay a little longer but once we had driven around the chalet school village (pertisau) and looked at the lake, and refused to pay the usurous prices demanded of the little train, it was time to tackle more mountians and the sud-tirol and head for italy,

Oh you would have been so proud of Rosita, I believe that she is a mountain warrior at heart, she drove up and down huge slopes without a blink. We didnt make much progress on the map in terms of linear distance, but we made a lot of vertical distance.

I dont know if any of you have read Stephen Kings novel ?the Stand' I am not a horror fan, but that is more about people and what happens when civilisation breaks down, it is in my opinion his finest book. Well there is a really creey passage towards the beginning of a book where two of the characters have to make their way on foot, in the dark through a car tunnel. I didnt drive through one tunnel in austria, italy or switzerland without being a bit creeped out. I tried to settle my nerves by being all engineeringly nerdy and admiring the engineering and the audacity of planning a road through a mountain. They were very cool.


Austria was probably the only country that was OK about us leaving, it had signs for the border, we planned to make the border after only one night, but then we drove through the dolomites. Late in the day we ended up at a spectacular pass. it was about 2000m up and you should have seen the corkscrew road to get there. I didnt want to go any further as it felt like we were in Gods best room. The views in every direction were awesome in every sense of the word. We arrived at about 7 in the evening and parked alongside a load of other campers, for the night, under the 'no motor home or camping' signs. And the next morning we went up the cable car to 3000m, the cable car was scary, scarier was the fitness of the surdy folk that were walking to the top!!! I have no superlatives left to describe the views. It was simply amazing...and freezing, we didnt stay too long. more madly up and downish driving, to which Rosita responded like a trojan, and we were almost in Italy.


without gettting lost!!!

I am sorry for not responding to your comments individually, time and internett access is so short!..but I love reading your comments and will reply once I have a little extra time online..ditto photos btw, been unable to upload any.