We were expecting this to be the longest driving
day of the journey to Ancona. After a quick visit to the market that
was still setting up in the car park next to the aire, we set off for
motorway just north of Mulhouse that took us over the Rhine and into
Germany. Just a short drive down the east bank of the river and by
09:30 we were at the Swiss border at Basle. Here we bought the
vignette that allowed us to drive on the Swiss motorways for a year -
€40 (£35) with 6 Swiss Francs change. We realised just as we were
passing it that the last motorway service station in Germany sold the
vignettes and we suspect that there we would have been able to buy
one for an exact Euro amount rather than getting change in Swiss
Francs.
Compared to France, the Swiss motorways were quite
busy but trouble-free and we soon started to see a change to alpine
scenery with snow-capped mountains and near-vertical fields. The
route took us past the very pretty Lake Lucerne and we were soon
approaching the Gotthard Tunnel. Very early in Switzerland we had
seen signs telling us that there were 5 km queues for the tunnel and
this was still the case when we approached. The Swiss control the
cars going into the tunnel in an attempt to avoid stationery traffic
and traffic lights allow only 20 or 30 vehicles at a time. We played
cat and mouse with a British open-top sports car in the next lane
but, to mix the metaphors, the tortoise won and we left the hare
behind us when we entered the 17km of tunnel. The temperature in the
tunnel gets very high - today it reached over 39°C
and 34°C
inside the van. Together with safety and fumes, this is one of the
reasons for stationary queues in the tunnel but we still found
ourselves in one. It was a relief to reach the daylight and to open
the windows to let in some fresh air. I should think that it was
quite unpleasant in that open-top sports car in the tunnel especially
when we came to a halt.
A very long
descent took us down to the bottom of Lake Maggiore and the Italian
border. Then it was on to Lake Como and here we left the motorway to
head across country. Actually, country is not the correct word. I had
forgotten how urbanised the area around the lakes is. Towns and
villages run into each other without any glimpse of countryside. It
appears that the Italians have caught the French Roundabout Disease
and we must have negotiated 10 in the space of 5 miles that our,
admittedly old, sat nav did not know about. They seemed to want to
make some more artistic than the boring round shape, so they had
built them in an elongated oval shape with extra scalloped edges.
Pretty they might have been but it made them much more confusing to
navigate. There is something to be said for boring when it comes to
roundabouts!
We had picked
out the south-west shore of Lake Iseo as a suitable stopover. There
were two aires shown on our Italian aires book and one campsite –
ideal. However, one aire (a car park) no longer accepted motorhomes
and an official 'sosta di camper' (motorhome aire that charges a fee)
has turned into a lido. Furthermore, the campsite no longer existed.
The book showed some other possibilities over the other side of the
lake but we knew that we could hit the same problem there so we
decided to head in land to an aire in an area unlikely to be popular.
The aire at
Travagliato (S.W. Of Brescia) is very basic but it does have water
and dumping facilities and is quiet.
It had been
hot and humid all day with the mountains shrouded in thick haze but
the humidity increased after we arrived at the aire and the sky got
blacker and blacker. We knew what was coming and we weren't
disappointed. A massive and very long thunderstorm followed and the
van was rocked by the very strong winds. The rain lashed down, the
lightening was spectacular and van trembled with the vibrations of
the thunder. And it got cooler – lovely!
Photos: One of
the baker's stands in Thann market. The large loaf weighs about 12 kg
and took 1 hour 30 minutes to cook in a wood-fired oven. We bought a
loaf of their Pain Ordinaire which was anything but ordinary – it
was excellent!
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