Muriel's Nervous Breakdoiwn

Saturday, 3rd, October

After six consecutive days travelling, it was great to relax a bit, and just drive 10 miles or so to a campsite at a nearby lake that looked to be a bit more off the beaten track than touristy Interlaken. Even so, we still managed get ourselves lost, mainly due to a Sat-Nav failure. The steep alpine valleys cause the device to lose the GPS signal resulting in Muriel announcing with confidence that we should turn immediately right (over a cliff), or the display shows us floating along slap bang in the middle of the lake. Consequently I missed the road to Lungern, and had to drive 8 kms before I could manage to turn around on the narrow road at a roundabout at Meiringen.

Soon we were climbing over our first alpine pass. The Brünigs Pass is not high, but it is steep with hairpin bends and overhanging rocks. This provoked a different kind-of dicky-fit in Muriel. Because the road double backs on itself, zig-zagging up the mountain side. It means at times you are more or less at the same spot in the horizontal plane, but a few hundred metres higher up. This seriously scrambled Muriel's brain and she kept repeating the phrase "turn around when possible" in a monotonous, somewhat catatonic tone.

Steeper than it looks.

The pass is not dangerous, but it did take concentration, and confidence that the automatic gear box will go down through the gears quickly enough for you to negotiate hairpin bends, which it does, if you begin braking a little before you would in a vehicle with manual transmission. We passed a car on the road-side with the bonnet-up, clearly it had over-heated. anxiously I glanced at the temperature gauge, it remained rock steady. Not so the fuel gauge. Maisy was making short shrift of the climb, but she was feeling thirsty, in just a few kilometres the gauge had notched downwards somewhat. Who cares! The view over Lungensee towards the peak of Hochstollen was spectacular, the day was sunny and the weather pleasantly warm. Life was good. especially as when we arrived at the small lakeside site of Camping Obsee we found a great pitch right by the water's edge with a picture postcard view out of the windscreen. 

Room with a view.

What a view!

 The place was really friendly too, within minutes we'd swapped travellers tales with a young English couple travelling in the autumn months through Germany, Switzerland, then onwards to Italy and the South of France. Later our next door neighbour mentioned that the English pair had their two-year-old with them. Thaty's great to see, and bravo to them. We travelled all over the Mediterranean, camping with our kids, sharing the experience with children brings a whole new perspective to travel, and some of our favourite memories involve blasting down the Autoroute de Soleil heading for the Med 'en-famille' in an overloaded Nissan Bluebird Estate with a Cabanon frame tent in the trailer half the size of a marquee. Happy times!

Sent from my iPhone