European road trip

2月 - 5月 2024
Finally... we are off again on European Road Trip!
This has always been our dream, so lets go for it!
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現在旅行中
  • 57足跡
  • 8
  • 106日間
  • 472写真
  • 5動画
  • 7.0千キロ
  • 6.8千キロ
  • 日23

    23. Birkendorf

    2月27日, ドイツ ⋅ ☁️ 7 °C

    Today we woke up early so James can fix the split in the water waste tank pipe . We had one last clothes wash to do & we both showered before we had to leave the campsite. After taking Maddy for a walk; we continued along route 500, heading down towards Switzerland. En route, we climbed (more like crawled in the van) up to Black Forest's highest mountain,stopping to look at a huge skii resort along the way, it actually had a fair bit of snow, but still no skiers. We continued our journey and finally reached the top of the mountain at 1300 metres.

    We drove onto our next park up which was ultimately a log storage on a muddy track, so we decided to head on. Luckily, we found another park up about 20 mins up the road. This park up was a hiking car park in the woodland. We got settled and then took Maddy on the woods longest walk. You could buy a wooden ball at the start for a euro, so we did and had great enjoyment following the huge marble run around the woodland , there were little games and features dotted along the way too.

    After the walk we did the daily van chores before cooking tasty gyros chicken wraps for supper. We are planning our next movements and should be in Switzerland tomorrow. We are both extremely excited !
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  • 日24

    24. Rheinfalls Switzerland

    2月28日, スイス ⋅ ☁️ 11 °C

    We woke up to more sunshine, James went to walk Maddy and had a catch up with Mum at home, which was nice. We had a coffee and headed off to our next stop, Switzerland! It was only a short 40 minute drive to the Rhein falls just across the border.

    After a slightly sketchy drive ,(Swiss drivers on roundabouts, no indicators) 😬. we arrived to a thundering sound and in the distance we could see the Rhein falls, we walked closer and wow they were raging. They are about 23mtrs in height and 143 mtrs across but the sheer volume of water gushing down them was mad. They are the biggest waterfalls in Europe for water volume per mintue. We walked close up and admired for a while before heading to a cafe for a coffee and some WiFi to check out the Nozstock lineup! (Fair to say we are chuffed with that!)

    As Switzerland isn't in the EU we can't roam here so we downloaded all the maps we needed and the park for night app for Switzerland and headed off to our next stop. We drove out of Switzerland and then back in again from Germany. First customs checkpoint which we found strange as Switzerland is Schengen but anyway waved through without any checks today.

    We headed about 2 hours into Switzerland to a place near Lucerne as this is the start of the Alps to explore and a very scenic town to have a look around tomorrow.

    We had a early night and easy tea tonight ready for adventures tomorrow. Switzerland is a park up late and leave early in the morning from parks ups as it's not tolerated as much as the other country's we have visited.
    We hope tomorrow we will find more of the Switzerland we imagined as today it felt abit of a downgrade in scenery compared to the beautiful Black forest in Germany.
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  • 日25

    25. Lucerne

    2月29日, スイス ⋅ ☀️ 11 °C

    Wow, what can I say. We have found the Switzerland we were looking for!!
    We woke up today to a hazy yet warm day and quickly headed to Lucerne to explore. We were struggling a bit as we had no phone sim card sorted to plan the trip,so we followed our P4N app to a recommended car park to get the bus into Lucerne.

    The Short 20 minute drive was so scenic with the Alps peaking through over the beautiful lake next to the city. We drove through the middle of the town, which yet again was slightly stressful, but we arrived safely. We left Maddy in the van today as we weren't sure how dog friendly Switzerland is and she does stop us visiting shops together.

    We got on a very expensive bus (it was a short 10 min ride and cost us £14), we both said the bikes should have come out. Arriving in Lucerne was so exciting after the sneak preview we had earlier. The town is very old and has a 14th century wooden bridge which crosses the river. On the roof of the bridge was original paintings which were mad to see, sadly in 1993 they had a fire and 5 paintings were ruined and you could see where the flames had affected the bridge. In the middle was a tower which was used as a dungeon. This gave us a cool insite into the citys history.

    We had a bit of a wander through the colourfully painted streets and went to a souvenier shop to buy some badges and magnets for our collection. One thing we have learnt is how expensive Switzerland is , you can really tell that the wages are high here when a small sandwich is £10 and a bottle of coke is nearly £5. Mental really, so we headed to a local supermarket and brought some lunch there and headed to the Lake to eat and enjoy the view.
    As the day went on the Alps made more and more of an apperance and the view across the lake was literally amazing, the best view we have seen since our Himalayan trek.

    We got some Swiss sim cards so we can plan our trip and managed to get a fairly good deal, suprisingly. Afterwards, we headed along the lake front passing the Casino and some very posh hotels and resturants. Pasta dishes for £35 was funny to see.

    The last stop was a trip to a famous lion monument which was built for the soldiers who died during the french revolution. The sculpture is cut into the cliff and was very intricately designed. We took some photo's of us stroking him and slowly headed back towards the van.

    After letting Maddy out and sorting recycling out, we headed onto our next free park up and the route there, well we can't explain how scenic it was! This made us both realise that this was the exact reason we built a van, it felt like this was the moment we had been longing for over the last 3 years building the van, cruising through the mountains , music blasting on our soundsystem, sun glasses on. It was such a hype and we loved every second of the journey to the park up. We have found another free gem park up in Switzerland, the view from our windscreen is insane.

    We played basketball and had a kick around with the ball for a bit, Maddy decided to eat some disgusting things and we headed inside when it got dark and cooked a lovely noodle chicken dish.

    Then spent the last 2 hours updating Penguins before chilling and ready for our next day in Switzerland. Weather not looking great tomorrow, Heavy snow at times so that should be entertaining.
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  • 日25

    25. Lucern Photos

    2月29日, スイス ⋅ ☀️ 9 °C
  • 日26

    26. Altdorfe

    3月1日, スイス ⋅ ☁️ 4 °C

    The weather wasn't as great today so
    we made a coffee and sat discussing where we were going to visit next, coming to the conclusion that we should slowly head out of Switzerland and back into Germany . As much as Switzerland is amazing , it isn't great for campervans , unless you want to pay about 60 a night to stay somewhere. We have read that if you accidently park for the night in the wrong place , you can get fined up to £2000 !
    Finally , we set off to a little village called Altdorfe , about two hours east . The roads here are very narrow and no one indicates at all , making it quite nervewracking when you have a long vehicle to manoeuvre on the roundabouts.
    We stopped off at a supermarket near Altdorfe and bought our next few meals for as cheap as possible . Once we arrived at the campsite , we realised that it was basically someone's farm yard . There was hardly any space for us to park, so we quickly left before anyone noticed us .
    There was a little parking circle down the road , so we parked up there and got some cash out. Again, we spent ages trying to find a suitable alternative , but literally no where had all the facilities we needed .
    A really nice local stopped and chatted to us for a while and he had no other suggestions , but we really appreciated that he tried . We ended up going back to the farm yard in the end !
    Luckily, some of the vehicles had left by the time we drove back and once we parked up , we realised there was a barn of cows behind us and a meadow of chickens - it was really cute .
    We played ball with Maddy in the meadow for a while and took advantage of the hot showers .
    Both of us really needed a hair cut ( in case you haven't noticed 🤣) , so we spent the evening cutting each others hair , which was hilarious . Surprisingly, I don't think we look too bad 🤔.
    A quick tea tonight as it was so late by the time we sat down .
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  • 日27

    27. Flueli Ranft

    3月2日, スイス ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    Today we woke to beautiful sunshine, we left our funny farmyard campsite and decided to head up the mountain road to go for a walk. After climbing the van to 1380mtrs, we decided to stop as it was going to be a long way down and we could see the road disappeared up into snow... Erm no thank you 😂. The views were amazing and we enjoyed a walk in the sunshine.

    Afterwards, we headed to Aldi to do a food shop as we have an exciting plan for the next few days. We are back tracking abit and heading back to the same free park up as yesterday as Grangee has said to look at the Lauterbrunnen valley. Upon researching, we have found out that we can go on Europe's longest sledge run and looks unbelievably scenic. The sledge run is 11km in total, we will be getting a bus upto 1800mtrs and then climbing ourselves another 800 mtrs to the start of the sledge run.

    We have found a lovely but extremely expensive campsite at Lauterbrunnen to make base at 1300mtrs so we can explore these 2 snowy valleys. Jungfrau is a renowned skii resort and we are super stoked to do this sledge run. It can take anywhere between 30 mins and 1.1/2 so we may have time to do a couple of runs. This ticks 2 boxes for us, Climbing nearly to the top of an Alp mountain and also having the fun of sledging all the way down..

    We took Maddy on a long walk and then played basketball for a bit before planning tomorrows movements into the snow! The campsite we are heading to tomorrow is currently having heavy snow and is - 5 in the day, so I'm sure it will be an adventure!!
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  • 日28

    28. Launterbrunnen

    3月3日, スイス ⋅ ☁️ 6 °C

    Today we had a very scenic drive to Launterbrunnen via Interlaken, it was a nice sunny day so we loved the drive weaving between the mountains. We stopped at a few scenic points enroute and ended up taking a mountain road which definitely was not for vans. We had a good 1.1/2 mile reverse with a cliff to our side which was fun... 😬😬😂.
    We arrived in Launterbrunnen and were blown away with it's beauty, there are many waterfalls coming down the 300mtr cliffs, which is awesome to see.
    We stopped and walked down the glacier valley to another waterfall, which Maddy loved. Once we got back we checked into the campsite and made ourselves at home.
    We entertained ourselves in the shop looking at the prices, £10 for a small Toblerone, ouch...
    In the evening they light up the cliff with the waterfall and this was mesmerising. We enjoyed a night time walk with this in the background.
    After a nice chicken supper, we watched some TV before heading to bed as tomorrow is the day for the longest sledge run in Europe! Hopefully it is open!
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  • 日29

    29. Grindelwald

    3月4日, スイス ⋅ ⛅ 1 °C

    Today we woke up very early to check the sledge report .We were very lucky that they were able to sort the sledge runs after the storm yesterday. The weather was cloudy, but the sledge runs were open ! We took Maddy on a walk and packed our lunch. We then got on the free bus from the campsite which takes you to the train station. Upon arriving we ordered the tickets and nearly had a heart attack when they annouced it was £40 return. Grindelwald was only a 25 minute drive away, but we bought the train tickets anyway as it was easier than going back to the van (and putting it into drive mode) and driving there.

    When we arrived, it felt like we were in Skiing heaven, not much snow on the lower slopes, but there was still a hive of activity of Skiiers and Snowboarders around the area. We rented 2 sledges and then headed to get the bus, enroute we double checked our plan of sledging the 'longest sledge run in Europe' and the lady explained that snow wasn't as much on lower slopes so we could only do 1 run before it got dark, after a quick discussion we came to conclusion this was probably a blessing as we didn't want to hike up a mountain in the clouds anyway.

    Instead we bought a hiking and sledge pass, which gave us unlimited rides up and down on the open sledge runs. We brought the tickets for £55 each and headed up. It took us about 25 mins to reach the top from the bottom and we had some nice views along the way, despite being cloudy. We got to the top and did our first run, it was seriously quick and pretty much uncontrollable, so we knew we had to get some skills to get a clean and fast run without becoming casualties. After 3 runs, we were getting the feel and how to lean into corners to accelerate down.

    This is when it became so much fun, we were drifting corners and blasting through the snow at lighting speed. I am convinced at times we were doing over 30mph, it went really fast. We were able to get over 10-15 runs in during the day and it became clearer as the day went on which was a bonus. It was so much fun.

    We managed to film alot on the Go Pro and the only downside was losing a hat (we think on the gondola). After all the buzz we got the gondola down and had some great views.

    We got back to the van and took Maddy out and then enjoyed a fondue (typically Swiss) and had a lovely chilli. It was funny finding the many bruises from the mad day.

    We were both exhausted so after watching about an hour of the sledge footage we went to bed as we had to be up and out of the campsite by 10.

    What a great day! Highlight of the trip so far!
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  • 日30

    30. Transit to Germany + Sledge Photos

    3月5日, ドイツ ⋅ ☁️ 8 °C

    Both aching a little today after yesterday ! It was so worth it though. We had an early start this morning so we could leave the campsite for ten . The van was tidied and we topped up our water supply before setting off to Germany .
    It was a 5 hour drive to do 85 miles.... as we were being super stingey and avoiding all the toll roads (would have meant spending another 40 quid ) - we've already spent way too much in Switzerland !
    The journey was very pleasant ( well done James ) and we stopped off to give Maddy a walk about half way . It was nice to get some fresh air and stretch our legs too.
    Once in Germany , we bought some really nice food for the next few days before finding our next park up. It is lovely being back in Germany , the roads are so much nicer and we generally feel much more welcome here . Everyone is very nice and bubbly in Germany , often smiling and saying hello when you pass them.
    The first park up was at a really muddy woodland area , so we decided to move on to a really quaint town called Engen . James recieved some great news when we arrived , his boss from Hayley called and said that James has work for when we get home , which is fantastic ! I had a lovely catch up with Arnie too .
    Maddy had a walk around the park before we started cooking supper .
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  • 日31

    31. Engen

    3月6日, ドイツ ⋅ 🌧 5 °C

    After a very peaceful night at our free park up, we decided to have a chill today as we were both knackered from Switzerland. We suddenly feel so much more relaxed being in a camper friendly country.

    We had a few things to look into this morning, so James had a call with his mum. Sorting out a pitch in the field for when we return. After pricing a few bits up we decided to take Maddy on a rainy walk around the town. Engen was lovely and everything looked almost Lego like in many different colours. After a nice walk we chilled and planned our next movements!
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