Day 2 - Driving Through The Swiss Alps

After a good night sleep, we got ready and checked out of the hotel at 8.15am. There was a man in reception who presented us with our bill. It included €29 for breakfast, which we hadn’t had & €60 for a Double Room. I pointed out the error of his ways & he removed the breakfast payment & when I showed him a screenshot of the Double Room price when I booked on Booking.com, he amended the room price to €44. We left feeling very pleased with ourselves.

We set the SatNav to take us to Camping Darna on the northern tip of Lake Lugano in Italy avoiding both tolls and motorways. It was showing as being 256 miles taking just under 8 hours.

We very quickly entered Germany crossing the River Rhine at a dam then came across a McDonald’s, which Jackie had made her mind up we were having for breakfast. She had the traditional Egg McMuffin, whilst I had a BLT roll and a couple of coffees.

Beside McDonald’s was a petrol station, with queues of RVs and coaches, meaning it must be cheap. We filled up at €1.87 a litre, which turned out to be about the most expensive you could pay for unleaded in Germany. The reason the station was busy we discovered was that the diesel was just €1.60 a litre.

We continued our journey only to discover that my phone which was connected to Car Play had lost internet connection, which resulted in us losing Spotify, then the SatNav. We soon had no idea where we were going and we ended up returning to McDonald’s to use their internet and try and get 4G back on my phone. It didn’t work.

We ended up trying to follow just a blue line on the screen and Jackie also had the compass up on my phone to make sure we were heading south (She had no idea how to read a compass!). Eventually after a few wrong turns and u-turns we arrived at Bad Säckingen where we crossed the Rhine River into Switzerland. To our great relief Switzerland provided us with 4G and we had music again.

The northern part of Switzerland was pretty industrial and urban, but things changed when we got down to the scenic Lake Zug. We followed the road alongside Lake Zug, Lake Lauerzersee and Lake Urnersee, before entering the Swiss Alps. Our route took us to Andermatt, which was the start of the St Gotthard Pass, recognised as one of Switzerland’s most scenic roads. The road took us through a valley, then up a steep zigzag road to the top of St Gotthard Pass at 2,108 metres. The temperature ranged from 24 degrees at the bottom to just 9 degrees at the deep snow covered top.

On the other side of St Gotthard Pass we found a a panoramic viewing area, cafe and toilets, which were definitely worth stopping at for a photo and a wee. As we continued, Jackie researched our intended destination, Camping Darna and discovered that the gates were closed at 7.00pm. This focused the mind to push on to get there in time. She also read on the weather app that around 7.00pm they were expecting thunderstorms. Perfect!

We arrived at Camping Darna at 6.10pm. The very laid back receptionist told us that they had pitches available. She suggested we have a walk round and choose a pitch, before registration. The pitches looking out over Lake Lugano were chockablock, but much further back there were plenty of free pitches and quite frankly much nicer. We selected pitch 225, which was grassy and fairly private as it was next to an occupied static caravan with a huge awning.

With dark clouds overhead we rushed to erect our tent, before the rain. Our Dutch neighbours with their very obedient dog, Noah, offered to help but we politely declined. After 20 minutes the tent was up, when the heaven’s absolutely opened with lightening flashing across the sky. We were cursing our sick note French friends, imagining them warm and dry in their French Chateau.

We located to the lovely big awning of the neighbouring static caravan and watched puddles, then rivers form around our tent and throughout the campsite. We had two choices. cry or crack open the wine. Obviously we chose the latter. An hour later the rain hadn’t abated, so we waded to the on-site restaurant for dinner.

We ordered a Sexy Pizza (honestly that was what it was called) to share (on Jackie’s instructions) and a beer each. The staff were lovely, the restaurant had a nice atmosphere and the Sexy Pizza with salami and peppers was delicious. I could have eaten more!

We returned to our tent, managed to unload & pump up our airbeds, sleeping bags, pillows etc still in the rain, then sat under the awning with a nightcap of another litre of white wine. At 10pm we dashed to our tent and to bed.

Song of the Day - Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by Diana Ross.Baca selengkapnya