Saturday 28 April

Saturday 28 April

Set off from Schliersee after another fine breakfast at 09:30 in bright sunshine and as we headed south we could see the mountains stacking up with snow capped peaks.  We drove up the River Inn valley a “U” shaped valley with a wide flat bottom and steep sides to Innsbruck in Austria. The snow line was just about the same height as the top of the tree line and I kept seeing tops I wished I could go climbing on.

The Brenner pass was not as bad as I thought it would be, it was certainly worth while getting a motorway vingnette (pass) for Austria as the roads were great and we climbed without any trouble even hitting 57 mpg  on some of the downhill bits. The toll on the pass was an additional 8 Euros.

We stopped for lunch just after the summit and watched three eagles soaring and diving over the hills whilst we ate off the trailer cover stretching our legs.

The downhill trek into Italy was equally as beautiful as the hike up through the mountains, whereas on the German/Austrian side it was all green fields, flowers and snow capped tops. The Italian side reminded me of a huge version of the Cheddar Gorge in Somerset only with a motorway through it and Italian signs and it went on for over a hundred miles through the Dolomites with dry valleys, rushing green rivers and caves.

Once out of the hills we hit the flat plains of northern Italy that went for miles like crossing the Fens back home but for over a hundred miles! I have yet to figure out how to navigate in Italy and will be eternally greatful for the fact we have a Tomtom with European routes on it. How we would be expected to get through Ferrara without it is beyond me.

We eventually hit the coast around Rivenna and drove past large lagoons full of Little Egret, Flamingoes and Herons having covered 403 miles during the day. The temperature thankfully started to drop having hit 30 centigrade at times, not like home!

Our intention was to camp for the night but we couldn’t find anywhere and the one place we did get on to would not allow the boat on site. So at 20:30 we pulled off and drove up a side road until we hit a hotel in the middle of nowhere. It was a crazy place like arriving at the hotel in the Rocky Horror Show, all done out in gothic style with chandeliers, a four poster bed and suits of armour at the base of the stairs. There was even an Italian horror film on the telly when Viv turned it on. Apparently it was built in 1845 and used to be a regional Gendarme centre, then a finance centre for farming before becoming a police station. It was bombed in the war and then converted to a hotel.