When the rain finally stopped, at some time in the middle of the night, we wondered what we might be waking up to, because snow had been forecast. I was the first one out of the door in the morning and found us surrounded by only puddles. However, on walking back from the shower block, the clouds had lifted a little and the mountains had come in to view. The tops were all covered with fresh snow and they looked beautiful. We realised that having just passed the longest day in the northern hemisphere, we are obviously heading back towards winter, perhaps rather quicker than we had expected.
At 10am we drove through St Moritz, stopping briefly in a car park to replace a bulb in one of Eileen’s indicators, and then set off on another very scenic drive. Through Samedin and Zuoz, the valley was wide with a line of snow-capped mountains on both sides along the Ober-Engadin Valley. At Susch we turned north-east up the Unter-Engadin Valley which was a heavily wooded, far narrower valley which twisted and turned beside the river that rushed downhill beside us. At times the river seemed to be racing us, as it frothed and foamed, and I would definitely not have wanted to kayak down it.
At Scuol the valley widened again and before long we were at the Swiss border. We slowed to stop, but no-one seemed to be around; no “goodbye and thank you for coming”, so we continued on, wondering where the Austrian guards might be. We drove for about 5 kms through an extremely steep-sided gorge and then found the sign saying we were crossing the border. About 2 kms further on, we finally found the Austrian border guard house, but again it seemed to be empty, no “welcome to Austria and we hope you enjoy your stay”, so we drove on wondering who owned that no-man’s land in the gorge…? The Inntal Valley was however, an attractive entry to Austria and we pulled up in Ried, at Camping Dreiländereck. The reception wasn’t open for another two hours and the whole place seemed a bit of a ghost town, but we just fancied a short day and we needed to get a load of washing done…. which we did.
Around 10am on Tuesday, we tried to leave the campsite (with brilliant six-minute timers on the showers….!) but couldn’t get out on to the main road. A bike race was in action through the village and vehicles were banking up behind and beside us. Lots of people were out of their cars taking photos, but some were getting a bit fidgety that they couldn’t move. We weren’t too bothered as it was a rainy day and we didn’t have anything in particular planned, apart from driving a bit further north.
Then again, we didn’t expect to get held up for quite so long; after 20 minutes or so, all the drivers were starting to feel too held-up and began pulling out whenever there was a gap in the bikes coming past. After a while we followed suite and then got trapped and had to head south, when we wanted to be heading in the opposite direction! It took us a while to get out of the midst of the riders and on to a main road that would take us north, but after a long, convoluted diversion, we got there in the end.
We stopped at Imst for some food shopping at the big Spar supermarket, where we met a young friendly butcher who helped us find zwei huhn breasts. He then doubled up as the baker and helped us choose a loaf of bread, “sorry, no baguette today”. His English was so good; it does embarrass us that we’re so hopeless, but we continue to try in every language. Now, which one am I supposed to be attempting today….?
We took the road up over the Fern Pass and the views were good, but with cloudy skies and drizzly rain, I’m sure it could have been so much better.
At Reutte, we checked in to Camping Reutte; creative name and far easier to say than yesterday’s and then we went for a stroll into town. At the gate we turned right, if we had turned left we would have ended up at the Bezirkskrankenhaus and that worried me. A basic translation in my head meant it was a ‘crazy suffering house’, but upon checking, it is actually the district hospital, oops. We wandered through the main street of the town, but turned around before crossing the river, or we could have ended up in Wänkle or Winkl.
We rounded off the day with a chicken curry followed by cherries and strawberries and drank a bottle of the local white wine. Tomorrow we will get our tourist hats back on and the camera back in action.
