Wednesday 13th April 2011 – Lake Maggiore, Switzerland

We plugged in our destination into the Garmin Satnav and set off. At the very first turn my Sitnav (i.e. Jane) said “I don't know why it has done that – we are going in totally the wrong direction.”. However, we were heading due south and that seemed OK to me. It took us on a route down a pretty valley through villages with lovely timber-framed houses and we were soon in France via a road that was not on Sitnav's map. This enabled us to fill up with fuel in France before we crossed over the Rhine and back into Germany at junction 56 of the A35. Unfortunately, there was a considerable delay at this point due to the repairs being done to the dam at the massive lock for the ship canal. There were also many roadworks on the German E35 where the road widening looks likely to continue for many months, probably years to come. Although the delays were only speed restrictions, we would probably been better off to stay on the French side and cross the Rhine further south.

The E35 took us down alongside the Rhine (although we rarely saw it) and into Switzerland at Basel where we bought our vignet (€35 with 2 Swiss Francs change!) to allow us to use the Swiss motorways.

The scenery became much more mountainous and pretty with alpine houses clinging to the slopes. There were lovely views over Lake Lucerne. The road tunnels became more numerous and we continued to climb until we arrived at the Gottard Tunnel. Our memories of this tunnel from many years ago were of huge queues, huge heat and fumes. However, it was relatively quiet, the controlling traffic lights were only operation for lorries and although it got up to 29°C, the fumes were not a problem. Some ten miles later we emerged back into the sunlight and started our sharp descent.

We decided to spend one night in Switzerland and we chose a site, Iseo Camping, from the ACSI book. It is located near Locarno, just north of Lake Maggiore. The route to the campsite is somewhat convoluted involving a journey south to a bridge crossing the river that feeds the lake before travelling north to the site. We did this in rush hour and the traffic was bad leading to a good 30 minute delay. It has to be said that the site did not justify the effort to get to it and the local Swiss taxes added an extra €5 to the normal €15 ACSI price. We would have been better off travelling an extra 30 minutes on the main road to reach the Italian campsites on Lake Maggiore.

Photos: Our pitch at Dahn with Altes Bahnhof in the background.