Sunday 2nd July
A duck waddled over to say goodbye before we left the campsite at 9:45am. After only 5 minutes driving, the alarm started doing its thing. But thankfully, after only 10 minutes, we were surrounded by beautiful scenery. At 10:20am we stopped to fill up on diesel and then crept back on to the dual carriageway. We were relieved that no alarm sounded. At 10:46am we drove into Switzerland from Italy and within 30 minutes the alarm was coming on and off, on and off. I was terribly nervous that we were going to get stuck on the top of some mountain pass. But we made it to the top of the beautiful Simplon Pass. We decided to stop and enjoy the scenery and if we got stuck there at least it was far more attractive than a service station carpark, if a little chillier. At this point, the Vodafone SIM card stopped working; I guess Switzerland is not in Europe.
The café at the top of the pass looking inviting, and we needed to warm up as we were still dressed in summer clothes. Before leaving the café, we did use the toilets, even though the sign said it was only for ‘consuming guests’. We hadn’t consumed any guests, but as guests we had consumed a powdery hot chocolate, so we thought it would be okay to use the toilets.
At midday we headed downhill, drove through Brig, which on a Sunday, seemed to be fast asleep. We couldn’t find a bank teller machine, so we continued onto Visp where we managed to find a car park and walked into the town centre. We found the much-needed cash teller machine, so with Swiss francs in our pockets, we went to a McDonald’s for lunch ……. nothing much else was open in the very sleepy town.
At 2:00pm we set off up the Mattertal Valley to Täsch. The road was steep and narrow, but the alarm only sounded once. At 2:45pm we happily arrived safely at Camping Alphubel. We had managed to travel around 900 stressful kilometres since 11:30am on Friday. Rodney was tired, but we desperately needed to stretch our legs, so we walked to the train station to check out the trains for tomorrow. Back at the campsite, we noted that the shower block was rather ‘open-air’ so we had a shower before it got too cold and ate cheese and olives for dinner while looking at all our photos from the last eight days.
Monday 3rd July.
No ducks to greet us this morning but we did have our first good day in what felt like ages. We caught the 9:10 am train to Zermatt from Täsch and then hopped straight onto the Gornergrat Railway up to Rottenboden. The views were so stunning that we took lots of photos and managed a short walk down to a viewpoint over the glacier. Rodney struggled to walk back up to the train station, but we timed it perfectly just as the train came in to take us up to the Gornergrat top station.
We drank a good hot chocolate and soaked up the views which were fantastic. We couldn’t believe how blue the skies were and tentatively decided that perhaps our luck was shifting from the dark black squares onto the white squares. Rodney had wanted to come here for 65 years, and his tears flowed. We enjoyed the slow train all the way back down to Zermatt and at 1:45pm sat down to a soup lunch at a typical Swiss hotel in the centre of town. We wandered a little through the old town full of dark wooden buildings from the 16th and 17th century, bought a delicious chocolate pretzel and then boarded the 3:35pm train from Zermatt back down to Täsch. I bought some food and cherries and plodded back to the campsite while Rodney snoozed. I sorted out all the photos and put lots of stuff back in its place, ready for moving again tomorrow. It had been so nice not having a stressful time driving today and we’re really not looking forward to the drive tomorrow. It was a wonderful day today and the scenery was spectacular; up there with the best we have ever seen. Magical.
Tuesday, 4th July.
And we were right to be wary of today’s drive. We left the campsite in Täsch at 9:25am and by 9:30am the alarm was going crazy. Sometimes the alarm came on and immediately went off and at other times it came on and stayed on for a while. Almost every couple of minutes it was sounding. We drove past Martigny, Montreux, Lake Geneva and over the watershed between the Rhine and Rhone rivers. The architecture changed and the valleys became more open. The Lac de la Gruyere was bright green, not the colour of cheese, and the sky changed to a milky blue with lots of big clouds in white and grey. It does now feel like northern Europe rather than southern Europe. At 12:45am we stopped for some lunch and knew that our luck had not changed for the better. In the service station cafe Rodney dropped a water glass which smashed and shattered all over the floor; I’ve never seen a broken glass spread itself so far. The cleaning lady said it was good luck. We’re not so sure.
At 1:33pm, back on the motorway, we made a decision to try and get to Camping Hertzberg in Freiburg, Germany. I tried to ignore the alarms going off by trying to forget my Greek and Italian and start practising some French; then realised we were heading for Germany. Guten tag. Danke schön. Doh!
We spent the whole journey just waiting for the gearbox to explode and I tried not to visualise ourselves hurtling upside down and crashing. It makes it very hard to enjoy the scenery, and being inside tunnels, of which there were many, becomes quite scary. I could see Rodney constantly tensing. At 2:30pm we were stuck in slow traffic through Basel and fifteen minutes later we reached the German border. By 2:50pm the rain sprinkled on us and when we arrived in Freiburg, the alarm was still going on and off. I gave up counting. At 3:35pm we were relieved to arrive at Camping Hertzberg in Freiburg, having driven nearly 300 kilometres. It was an absolute relief to arrive after a six-hour drive and more alarms than we had had on any previous days. It was an okay campsite, but the owner gave us the worst pitch; probably because we were only staying one night. Even with the levellers it looked like we would be sleeping on a slant with our feet higher than our heads. But then we discovered that we might not be sleeping in the bed at all. When Rodney pressed the button to bring the bed down from the ceiling, it wouldn’t budge. He checked the fuse which was fine, and I started googling for Burstner repair places in the vicinity. There were none in our area, but there’s a couple of affiliated ones close to our route tomorrow. That broken glass at lunchtime was definitely not good luck.
We honestly believe that this motorhome has evil goblins under the dashboard……
those scenery pictures are beautiful did you eventually get the bed down