Woke up and went for a quick swim in the lake before getting our stuff ready to leave. Was very refreshing and enjoyed diving off the diving board without hundreds of kids swimming all over the place.
Today we head for Switzerland. The planned route would take us through the San Gotthard tunnel which we decided was a better idea than attempting one of the mountain pass in a 20 something year old aircooled vehicle which does not like hills.
Before getting there we had to cross the Italy-Swiss boarder and purchase a vignette, which is required for all vehicles that want to travel on Swiss motor ways. This cost us 40Fr which was pretty expensive but was a lot easier than paying for a lot of separate tolls as we had in France and Italy. While stopped we had a quick bite to eat and then got back on the road.
The San Gotthard tunnel is 17 km long as it cuts through a large section of the Alps. We had planned to try and drive it over night as we had heard horror stories about the traffic. That was the plan but once we set off we seemed to be making decent time and so thought the traffic might not be too bad. Big Mistake! About 5km before the tunnel the traffic came to a stand still. Luckily for us it was right by a service stop so we immediately pulled off and parked up. As mentioned being stopped in traffic with a running aircooled engine for any extended period of time is not good at all for the engine and my bank balance.
We decided to sit there and wait to see if the traffic would die down before getting on the road again. We waited and waited! I think in total we must have been at the services for about 4 hours. Pretty boring although we did get to play a decent amount of cards and also witnessed a guy pull up next to us and pop his bonnet to see his engine on fire. His response was to run to the shop and buy a bottle of water, which he poured on the engine. He then shut the bonnet got back in the car and drove off. I was pretty sure we were going to see his whole car burnt to the ground further along the road but somehow we didn’t.
Eventually we made it through the tunnel, which was a strange experience to be driving underground for a full 20 min. Once through, the drive was lovely going past loads of little villages on the mountain side and seeing lots of little farms. Our destination we had decided would be Luzern.
Once we got about 10 km from Luzern the main motorway was shut for some reason so we were once again stuck in some serious traffic. This was not good but all of a sudden an all mighty storm appeared out of nowhere and the heavens opened which was followed by lightning bolts which Zeus would have been proud of. This made seeing where we were going very tricky but did serve to cool the very hot engine a bit.
Eventually we found ourselves at the campsite and we just managed to get a pitch before reception closed. The storm was still lingering so we had dinner inside the van and then hit the sack.
No comments:
Post a Comment