Back on the Road
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We're on the road again! After a couple of days visiting family in Suffolk and Essex we were up bright and early to catch the day ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. The weather was glorious and the 6 hour crossing was perfectly calm and clear thankfully. Making it into the Netherlands late afternoon we then joined the 2 hour queue for immigration where for the first time ever we were asked if we had our return ticket to the UK?! Well of course not, we were going to be leaving the Schengen area via a land border in to Bosnia and Herzegovina in two weeks time. Anyway, we managed to convince her and she let us back in. Here was us thinking that explaining our French visas was going to be the most difficult part! We have since read up on EU regulations and having a return ticket is not a requirement and nor is it enforceable, so who knows?
Anyway, we blasted through the Netherlands and through the border queue into Germany (they were randomly selecting vehicles for extra checks) and made it as the sun was setting to our park up near a cemetery just north of Düsseldorf. The next morning we hit the road for the long slog to Nürnberg on the most terrifying German Autobahns. Unrestricted means you have cars doing around 110-130kph like us, some doing 200kph and then the obligatory German slow driver who swerves out miles from the car in front and hogs the middle lane at 80kph. What a stressful drive!
We did finally make it to Nürnberg in the late afternoon, though the first two Aires we tried were already full. Not a great start. However, we did manage to find another Aire in the north of the city that was both free and had plenty of space. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as this Aire had a simple self-cleaning toilet and a huge park behind it. We got set up and Ellen headed out into the park for a walk in the sun after the long drive. Then called me to say that she had found a bar in the middle of the park, so of course I had to go join her, which I'm glad I did as I got to actually see this wonderful green park full of life and barbecues!
The next day, we braved the bus network bright and early to head into Nürnberg city centre, arriving before most tourists were even out of bed. We headed straight for the Castle that dominates the hill in the northern section of the wall, overlooking the city. After a coffee at the cafe in the courtyard, we entered the main complex for a wander round this historically significant monument. Nürnberg castle was the site of the first council held by newly elected Holy Roman Emperors and holds an important place in the history of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire before. As a result, it was also used by a certain far right political party in the 1930's as a central focal point for their ideology... So, a lot of the city as it now stands i actually reconstructions after the allies destroyed a lot of it during the second world war. Also, in the south of the city stands the Zepplinfeld and Kongresshall, poignant symbols of Nazi megalomania. The former will be familiar to anyone who has seen any documentary of 1930's Germany, the site of the major rallies and marches.
All that aside, we had a lovely day in the old city of Nürnberg, ate far too much bratwurst/sausages and I bought some new shoes for all this city walking we've been doing. My Converse definitely aren't doing my feet any favours! Then headed back to the van for the evening.
It was scorching hot by this point and so we had all the windows and slide door open to try and cool down a bit. We had the slide door on the little runner stops to have it open at the same time as the side window behind it. However, Ellen went to make dinner and tried to open the door fully... Forgetting the window behind was open...
Now, initially we didn’t think much of this. We've done this a couple of times, I did it the day after I retrofitted the window in this time last year! However, we went to close everything up for the night as it got dark around 8:30pm and the window just wouldn't close!
Not what you need in the evening... Turns out the aluminium hinged portion had bent completely out of shape! I managed to get it to go back with a bit of light hammering and we got it closed for the night... But of course this is me, I have to get it fixed there and then don't I? So I tried to adjust it to make it close smoother, closed it up and CRAAACK, the acrylic window broke away from the hinge along 2/3 of its length! Needless to say I wasn't happy (putting it mildly) and we just had to get it secure for the night.
After a bit of a restless night worrying about every scenario "would this end the trip?", "was it totally screwed?", "Do I need to replace the whole unit?" etc, I had a bit of a thought early in the morning. I could go too technical here but I shall restrain myself. Basically, I had a though about how the window was actually attached to the frame based on the gas struts being a set length, not allowing them to open too far. After a coffee and quick breakfast I went out and tested my theory. I'm happy to report that I was right! The window could be lifted completed free of the frame and I could do some metal reshaping with some of the basic tools I had in the back (a set of mole-grips, a pair of snips and a Gerber multi-tool). We had re-thought our plans for the day and put a worst case estimate of a midday cut-off for a repair, if it went beyond this then we would have to decide on what we should do with regards to the trip and current plans. After all, we couldn't continue with a hole in the side of the van!
I'm glad to report, the frame was relatively unscathed and that after removing some of the worst affected bent metal on the window hinge, I could get it to move freely again and had secured the broken portion with the tiny section that remained. As this was our most used window, I decided to do a swap with the one on the opposite side which we tend to only open beyond a crack when it's scorching. It's on our "stealth" side and close to the diesel heater exhaust so we have to keep it closed fairly often we've found.
It all worked happily, the opposite window went on the formerly damaged side with little fuss. The damaged window went onto the other side with a little persuasion but closed up nicely. Well... That was until we went to close it fully. CRAAACK. So, turns out that not only was the damaged window damaged, but it was also not built correctly! The lower locking arms were the wrong way round (not really relevant here) and the side locking arms were drilled too high. This meant the gas struts when fully compressed needed their hinges on the frame to be higher. This wasn't a problem on the side they had come from, as they were higher. But on the other side they were where they should have been and therefore lower and so this added strain had cracked the acrylic further!
Yeah so this wasn't good. But, we ripped off the gas struts, whacked some electrical tape around the broken areas and headed to an OBI (Germany's bigger better B&Q) which was next to the Zepplinfeld and an Aldi supermarket. Ellen went and did the food shopping which left a lot to be desired through no fault of her own, Aldi's selection just sucked. Meanwhile, I went to OBI and got some goodies, oh and some 5 minute epoxy to affect a temporary repair to get us through the next few weeks. Happy to report the epoxy repair worked, we started discussions with Jackson's leisure back in the UK to get a replacement shipped to Lefkas marina where we were to pick up a charter boat for a flotilla holiday at the end of September.
Disaster averted we swung by the Kongresshall and the Zepplinfeld for a look and a quick lunch before hitting the road for the long drive to Austria and a fantastic "stellplatz" about 30 minutes train ride from Innsbruck.
After a much less disturbed night's sleep, we headed out past the guard geese, down to the local train station and into the City of Innsbruck. A gorgeous city, again with links to the Holy Roman Empire. Strangely, I found the modern apartment buildings, nestled in their sea of green leaves and imposed upon the backdrop of the Austrian Alps to be equally as photogenic as the exquisitely maintained old town. Our intention was only to stay in Innsbruck till just after lunch, but we quickly realised we liked this little city too much to only spend a couple of hours here. We ended up staying later and subsequently stayed at the stellplatz an extra night.
The next morning, having taken full advantage of the showers and facilities, we headed on. Our route took us through the southern suburbs of Innsbruck and then up into the Brenner pass through the mountains and up into Italy. We crossed the border into Italy in the pouring rain, eventually making it to a big Spar supermarket where we stocked up on good bread and a mountain of different pastas. Something I wish we had done back in May when we were last in Italy.
We then hit the road once more, next stop the Dolomites!
The Dolomites conjure up visions of dramatic peaks and mountain lakes on the top of the world. However, we couldn't really attest to this as our welcome consisted of traffic, roadworks, low dense cloud and storms. So... Yep...
However, we did make it to our park-up, albeit a bit later than planned. We were here to cross paths with another vanlife couple we had been chatting with for a few months by this point, Nick and Lex of bubblesthecampervan. They were on their way back from the Balkan states to which we were now headed and had met up with some of their friends who were out for a month or so. We had a great evening with them all as the storm rolled across in full force, the 7 of us piled into Nick and Lex's van 'Bubbles'. Which despite how it sounds, is actually very well laid out for hosting people, unlike our 'Noodle' despite her being longer which at best will seat 4.
The next morning the sun was burning off the clouds and we all managed to get out and see the mountain tops breaking through above the vans. Oh and above the Spanish couple in their roof top tent who, true to form had parked directly between our vans despite the huge parking area. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, the storm was nasty, they were in a roof-top tent and probably needed the shelter between us. We saw them hug each other when they arrived at 11pm as if they had had a scary drive up. So maybe that’s what it was. Nonetheless, Lex roped them into taking a group photo of us before we set off.
We didn't really have any plans for the day other than to end it near the Slovenian border. So we decided to hang out with the guys for the day and we're really glad we did. We had a great laugh, a walk around Misurina lake and pizzas at one of the restaurants at one end. Although, we did experience a rather rude waitress who either didn't like us, or just didn't like her job. After getting our order wrong and us politely saying that we hadn't ordered two of the pizzas that arrived, she came back, threw them on the table and said "you order these, you will have them". The other waitress dealt with it and funnily enough, we didn't see angry waitress again and thankfully we weren't charged for the extras either.
Heading back to the vans via a tourist trap souvenir shop for the obligatory pin for our pin-board, we bid our farewells and made plans to all meet up again once back in the UK. Holding you to that guys!
We headed off further east into the mountains, through mountain villages and towns and then we took a turn off the main road. The road, if you can call it that, that we had turned onto was rutted and narrow, twisting and turning, steeper and steeper. The 20% incline warning filled us with dread and willing Noodle along as we climbed and climbed, higher and higher. The sun was fading, the signal disappeared and the trees blocked out what little sunlight remained. Eventually, my heart beating in my throat, we made it to the crest of our climb and I pulled over for a breather and the let the car and motorbikes coming the other way pass.
Where the hell were we?
We pushed on along the route Google in it's infinite wisdom had taken us, through a little village at the top of the mountains and then down yet another winding, twisty path down into the almost abandoned border village of Uccea. We reached a T-junction at the bottom of the deep narrow gorge, a river in front, the Slovenian Border to the left, and who only knows what to the right. We turned right toward our supposed park up, the sun almost gone, the shadows draped across the mountains, an eerie tension preceding another storm hung in the air. We reached the point on Google maps and realised that we probably weren't going to get down to it. But, we had no signal, no way of finding anywhere else and it was about to be dark in this already dark, gorge, miles from anywhere.
I decided to keep going, deeper into Italy again, there had to be somewhere we could pull over for the night. It wasn't long before we spotted a little pull over alongside the road. We reversed in so we could get out and back the way we came in the morning and stuck the blackout blinds in for the night to hide us a bit. Turned out we actually had pulled up next to a little grove with a waterfall that honestly, you wouldn't know was there if you hadn't happened to pull in here. We settled in for the night, had dinner and headed to bed.
This was not a good night's sleep. There was no traffic on this tiny road to the Slovenian border, but the storm hit with a ferocity which we've rarely experienced. We barely slept and the constant worry of landslips and rockfalls kept me up most of the night.
I'm glad to say we made it (despite my ridiculous delay in writing this maybe leading thoughts to the contrary!) and the next morning we got up and moving as soon as we could. We decided to get to a town called Bovec in Slovenia to then hopefully have some signal to figure out what to do next.
We headed back up the road toward the Slovenian border early in the morning, the mists still hanging in the air, the road still silent. 5 minutes later we came to nondescript bridge and spotted the little blue EU country sign for Slovenia on the other side. This was it, this was the Slovenian border. A little further up the road, winding through the narrow mountain pass, we crossed the former border checkpoint from before Slovenia joined the EU, now all but abandoned. A little further still, we crested into the top end of an immense valley. The views down across the morning mists and deep into the mountains of the Slovenian Alps were truly breathtaking, the sun streaked across the sky as far as the eye could see. I lack the literary prowess to fully encapsulate what we saw. I had to get the drone up here to really capture it, so thankfully you can see a glimpse of what we experienced as the sun rose on a new country for us both.
And what a country it would turn out to be...
