In everything we should expect good days and bad days, but it is nice if day one of a road trip goes well. Mine didn’t!
Two mishaps, one thrust upon me and the other strictly self inflicted. Firstly, I missed my Shuttle time and lost an hour out of the travel time. Someone managed to close the M23 which caused major disruption, not only on that motorway, but also threw the M25 into total chaos. It took us ninety minutes to travel through two junctions.
That brought us to the second problem for which I must be strictly reprimanded having broken one of my own golden rules. That is to thoroughly check everything about the car before starting a trip. I did everything except checking the coolant level. Sure enough, getting tangled up in the traffic caused Bridget’s temperature to rise, as well as mine. Once passed the hold-up we were able to maintain a reasonable speed to the Shuttle terminal and the air flow brought the engine temperature down, only to rocket off the scale whilst being held up at customs.
Once we alighted the Shuttle I pulled off the road and checked unsuccessfully for coolant! Fortunately, I had done one thing right and we had a bottle of antifreeze in the boot. This was sufficient for us to complete our journey and we arrived just one hour later than estimated at Maubeuge, France. That is just across the border with Belgium, about 15 miles south of Mons.
Day Two has been a great improvement. Bridget has shrugged off the abuse I subjected her too and, with a full coolant system, has performed admirably. Today we drove through southern Belguim, across Luxembourg and into Germany, finishing close to Heilbronn. In the main the weather has been good with just a smattering of rain at times. Traffic has generally been light with a couple of snarl-ups due to Belguim roadworks. One episode cost us half an hour. Given the number of instances of road works, the condition of the roads, particularly across southern Belguim has been poor, almost on a par with the UK for ‘pot-holes’.
We have completed today’s task in the small town of Heilbronn-Frankenbach. Having completed approximately 350 miles today I am feeling my age! We experienced several acknowledgements from passing motorists, surprisingly, from a majority of drivers of modern, high performance cars. The one I appreciated the most however, was from a young lady (no surprise there) driving a light blue, original, Mini, and very good she looked ((and the car, too.) smiley face).
I’m hoping the weather is going to improve and a nice ‘Indian Summer’ would be most acceptable.
Day three and the weather God wasn’t listening to my plea’s yesterday. I awoke at 06:30 this morning to claps of thunder and the pit, pit, patting of light rain. However, by the time I finished breakfast and went outside to prep Bridget for the day ahead, the sun had broken through the cloud and it was looking brighter. I had decided to give Bridget a break and have a shorter run of under three hundred miles.
Today’s run engaged fewer road works than the first two days and the scenery was much more interesting. Much of the time we were running through intense agricultural land, in Germany even the farms, cereals and plants are neat and orderly. Then we were running past and sometimes through densly forested land and finally we were driving parallel with the Austrian Alps. To round off a really comfortable day we found a real hotel! All the chain hotels, no matter whether cheap or expensive, offer the same cold, impersonal, furnishings chosen for easy of cleaning and maintenance. Bland ceramics, wood appearance formica, etc., with a fast food restaurant. They are uniformally characterless, so that when you wake-up in the morning you could be anywhere in the world until you look out of the window to find you’re in Clapham.
The Gasthof Schorn is a family owned business, the building dates back to the late 19th century and it has a traditional restaurant offering a menu of good, enticing meals. Not a burger or pizza in sight!
So, I decided to stay for two nights and do a little walking. Great hike through the forest but disappointing from a wildlife point of view. No animals seen, very few birds, only a dragonfly and two Peacock butterflies! Thousands of trees, but not a single woodpecker, squirrel, small mammal or reptile. However, the scenery was great.
