June 11th 2010 - June 13th 2010

Natters - Ferienparadies Natter See - ACSI2010-723 Contd

Friday, another hot and sunny day. Kathleen cannot be talked into cycling along some of the walking and rambling tracks marked on the map given to us by reception when we checked in. Instead, she evades the question by promising to buy Apple Struddle, if we cycle to the village (Natters).

Being a glutton (literally), I am convinced and we cycle to Natters, not far, only about 1.5 miles, and all down hill.

The bad news is, there is nothing there except houses, a church, and (of all things) a shop selling plants. No bar, and the only restaurant is closed. I think I have been conned.

We cycle on, looking for Apple Struddle. We go down a very big hill. This is obviously not wise, since if you go down, you have to come up again. We fail in our search, and now have to cycle back about 3 miles all up hill.

We console ourselves with ice creams bought from the camp shop, then spend some of the afternoon chatting with a very friendly Dutch man, who is our new neighbour, and is keen to talk to everyone. Before talking to us, he had been talking with a French couple, but with little success, since he told us he did not speak French.

In the evening, when it has cooled down a bit, we begin our packing for our departure tomorrow.

Saturday, and we do not have far to go, our destination is a place called Reutte, still in Austria and only about 1 hour away (in theory).

Things go wrong almost immediately, the Tomtom instructs us to turn left at a junction with no left turn, so we have to go straight ahead, this takes us into the centre of Innsbruk, and after what seems like a 100 sets of traffic lights, all on stop of course.

Eventually we are out of the town and heady along an almost empty road, through beautiful scenery. It is too good to last, as we climb a steep hill, we come to a halt in a queue of traffic, . After about 15 minutes of stop start crawling, we come upon the problem, a broken down car.

Once past that problem, we move quite nicely for a while. Not for long. We join another queue, and this is a big one (but we later discover, nothing like as big as the queue comming the other way). Again we crawl stop/start up the hill, this time the problem is a short (not more than 20 meters) of road which has collapsed, and which they are in the process of repairing, so there is one way traffic controlled by traffic lights. We eventually get passed and on our way. The poor people going in the opposite direction are not so lucky, we pass traffic queuing for at least 2km. Then we come to a long tunnel (3 km), they have stopped the traffic in the opposite direction, to prevent queuing in the tunnel, and on the other side there are two lanes of queuing vehicles stretching back another 5km. It is sweltering hot, and many cars are stopped with bonnets up, having overheated. Goodness knows how long it is going to take for that lot to clear, and all because of a 20 metre stretch of road works! 

Reutte - Camping Reutte - ACSI2010-736

We arrive at around 12:00, having taken 2.5hours to do a 1hr journey. The site is excellent, and right on the edge of Reutte, you could walk into town if you wished.

 A little exploring on the bicycles and we have found the church for tomorrow, and topped up our wine supply from a Lidl.

We have not had rain for weeks now, the last time was in Spain I think, but it looks like today may be the day. Kathleen takes the opportunity to do the hair care thing, and by evening we have a full scale thunderstorm.

Sunday, it is dry but a bit cloudy, with rain threatening. We do the church run, without getting wet, then we sit eating strawberries and cream, while searching the internet for the places to see on the "Romantic Route", through Germany.

Sorry, came across this while searching on the Internet and could not resist including it, it is so funny, except, it has the ring of truth about it!

June 9th 2010 - 10th June 2010

Peschiera del Garda – Bella Italia – ACSI2010-1815 continued

Today we leave Lake Garda, and head north to Austria.

We decide to take a chance on the "ordinary" roads, rather than take the motorway, since generally speaking we find the motorway boring.

The scenery is spectactular as we head north into the Dolomites, this is our view when we stop for lunch en-route to the Brenner Pass.

(sorry if this photo is side ways, don't know why that is happening!, you will just have to turn your computer on its side).

Brenner Pass an anti climax, from the Italian side, as you can see, empty road, and nothing dramatic in terms of climbing or twisting roads,

but the scenery compensates for it I suppose, it is absolutely stunning. It may be more exciting going south from Austria into Italy, we will have to try it sometime.











We have lots of problems finding the campsite, including being directed (by the Tomtom) up a couple of very narrow and steep roads, one of which we had to reverse out of, since it was too narrow to turn around.

We discovered the problem. We usually input the map co-ordinates (if we have them) to the Tomtom, rather than the postcode. Well you may of may not know, map co-ordinates are commonly quoted in three different formats. Without going into all of the details, the Tomtom had been set (by somebody), to a different format to that in our ACSI campsite book. The result was it it was trying to take us to somewhere near where we wanted to go, but not actually where we wanted to go. How this happened is a mystery, it was OK last time we used it. I know I have not touched the Tomtom for days, and naturally Kathleen did not do it, so we must have a third party travelling with us.

Natters - Ferienparadies Natter See - ACSI2010-723

We find it in the end, relying on good old fashioned signposts, you know the way people did before satnavs!

The site is excellent, well worth the trouble we had finding it! The facilities are palatial and just look at the view from our window!

These Austrian's are so organised, everything is spotlessly clean, and works exacltly as you would expect.

The washing up sinks have so much stainless steel they could be in an operating theatre, and after watching the half hearted squirting of a hose as a cleaning exercise in southern Europe, watching the young Austrian girl doing the cleaning with a scrubbing brush is a revelation.

Thursday, we go to Innsbruk.

I am game to try cycling there (are you surprised?), since it is only about 4 miles, but Kathleen is not up for it, so we get the bus.

This involves a bus from the site, to the village of Natters, where we must get another bus to Innsbruk.

Needless to say it all goes smoothly and the bus times are set such that there is no waiting time on the way there, and only five minutes on the way back.

Unfortunately they do not accept UK pensioners bus passes, so we have to pay 9.20Euro return for the two of us.

Innsbruk is quite a beautiful place. Kathleen has been here before, in her youth, so some places she remembered from then (like the Golden Roof, shown above, on its side for some reason).

We enjoy strolling the streets so much, we stay for lunch, and have an "Austrian" lunch of Vienasnitchel, and Bratwurst (think that is how you spell it!), plus of course a couple of beers.

There are impressive buildings (right way up in real life, damned computers), even in the smallest alleys.

Plus, inevitably a triumphal arch, every city in Europe must have one, it would appear.

and of course, the usual collection of churches.

Innsbruk, is not as impressive as Salzberg, in my humble opinion, but it is still a pleasant way to spend a day.