Onwards to Italy 🇮🇹

Setting off on Sunday afternoon we spent the night at a lovely pub “The Swan Inn” at Little Chart in Kent, only 20 minutes away from the Folkestone Le Shuttle terminal, in preparation for an early train the following morning. A quick pint for us, and a swim in the river for Ruby - made to feel really welcome by the pub owners, and a good nights sleep (and no charge to stay 😃) Sailed through Pet Reception in the morning- phew! - and we were in France before we knew it 👍

Heading for the Dolomites we decided to take a completely new route for us, this time travelling through northern France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria - partly to shake things up a bit, but also to “experiment” with a relatively toll free route 😃 The first day’s journey was ok, but was struck by how run down Belgium appeared (probably not representative of the country as a whole), and in contrast to the pristine conditions of even the toilets at the Rastplatz along the German autobahn later in the journey 🤣

Popped back over the Luxembourg border to spend our first night in a stunning medieval French village - Rodemack, in the Moselle region. Surrounded by huge rampart walls, entry is through the fortified Sierck Gate into a series of quaint cobbled streets and beautiful buildings. And as is so typical of France, fabulous campervan facilities provided by the village, and without charge.

Rampart walls of Rodemack

Through the Gates

With temperatures still hovering around 28 degrees at 6pm in the evening, we set off on a stroll to explore, and amazingly came across a fabulous small craft beer bar in the village - just what was needed after a long drive 😃

Evening stroll around the walls, and a swim in the moat for Rubes 

A well deserved beer

View from the van

The following day was spent predominantly on the German autobahn as we headed for the Allgau region of southern Bavaria. Stayed at an interesting little Stellplatz (Private Aire) run by a very welcoming woman, whose husband was a trained chef, and immediately gave us samples of local food to try, that he had cooked - delicious 🤤 Sadly he had had a couple of major strokes and was not very mobile, but using his support frame was still quite keen to perch in the kitchen and cook - and we were very pleased that he did 🤣 Spent a lovely evening chatting with our German neighbours, who were also en route to Italy, about travel, politics, life in general, and then they produced some Italian liquor to get us all in the swing of things to come 🤣

Tasty vegetables fritters with herby dumplings - delicious 🤤 

View from the van - lovely until later when the farmer came by muck spreading 🤣

The weather wasn’t great but we did manage a good walk around the lake Hopfensee, and also an interesting bike ride around the larger lake Forggensee region (in the rain!) 

Bavarian Alps

Hopfensee Lake

Idyllic swimming spots around the lake

Biking through the mist 🤣

Despite a nice couple of day’s exploring, we didn’t really warm to this region - all quite orderly and tame, and perhaps a bit too touristy for us. Also struck by the sense of religiosity, with icons dotted around, and even in restaurants. So heading off in the evening we crossed over the border into Austria and spent the night at the lovely village of biberwier. The following day we navigated a hair raising drive through the Austrian Alps, negotiated the Austrian ASFINAG motorway system (and thankfully our digital vignette worked ok 😃), worked our way through the Brenner Pass, negotiated incredibly steep mountain passes, and arrived at our first Italian destination Predazzo  safely - well done Dave on a fabulous drive!

Overall reflections on our “slow” ish travel across Europe again highlight the lack of hard borders and ease of travel throughout the continent - a sense of cooperation and partnership- and again in direct contrast to our position now with the UK / EU relationship. The latter doesn’t feel good 😢

Toll free travel was relatively good - especially in Germany, but there were busy and challenging times when Dave commented that you certainly pay a price, but in a different way 🤣

Was lovely to come across the Moselle region of France, and area we are not familiar with - and definitely would like to return and explore more. Same goes for the Austrian Alps - another trip!

Met some lovely people along the way but interesting how many people appear to conform to national stereotypes (and maybe we do too!) - with most German people we encountered appearing to either glare at us, or blank us completely - appearing unfriendly. But not to be put off by this, Dave took the bull by the horns and initiated many conversations, every time this being returned with smiles and warmth 😃 So a lesson here to remember 👍

Let’s see what Italy now has in store for us!