From England to Bled in Slovenia

26^th April 2016

Left home in the afternoon on Saturday 16^th for motorhome section  on Canterbury’s New Dover Road P&R (that’s becoming the usual pattern for us now), we stayed overnight and made the short drive to Dover on Sunday for the Calais ferry, arriving in France at about 11.30 am local time.

Spent the first night on a camper stop at Le Cateau Cambresis; we were there 3 years ago too, all services are free including 24/7 electricity!  We’re not hanging around at this stage, in the chill April winds, so we made for the free stop (charge for services) at Charlesville Mezieres for our 2^nd  night, a really lovely old town.  The camper stop there is on a waterfont, with a camp site behind.  Our next stop was at Stenay, supposedly just for coffee, but we really liked it there so stayed on the pleasure harbour overnight; we paid €8 for full facilities including showers and electric.

On Wednesday and Thursday we stayed on Les Breuils (ACSI affiliated) camp site in Verdun.  If history’s your thing it’s well worth a visit there before the end of 2018 because there are centenary commemorations going on for the 14-18 war.  We had the best weather so far those 2 days, even John sat outside to read in his shirt sleeves, in fact he let his arm get sunburned!

Friday night was spent on another free camper stop at Homburg Haut, still in France but very close to the border with Germany near Saarbrukken.  We spent Sat night at Leonburg, close to Stuttgart, having spent all day travelling the German autobahns in the pouring rain; we planned to stay on the Rhine, at Maxau am Rhein, but only had lunch & a rest there as we decided it was daft to sit out the rest of the day there, in the pouring rain with the heating on, when we could hit the road again in the direction of the good weather which (hopefully!) is waiting for us further south.  Both of these stops were free; those of you that know us know that we always use the free ones where possible, it’s the only way to afford to travel for 5/6 months.

We’ve taken photos at all the stops, but at the moment they’re still in the camera, as the download lead got left behind, so unless we manage to buy a replacement I will have to put them onto the website after we get home!  Talking of the camera, I’ve just tried to take a photo with the Linx, thinking I’d be clever and upload it straight to the site, but I’ve never used it before, haven’t a clue how to and couldn’t find my way around it by just playing around and clicking stuff, so I’ll have to find instructions for it from somewhere when I get a WIFI connection.

I wanted a photo because we’re sitting in the ‘van at Bad Aibling (between Munich  & Saltzburg) and it’s snowing!  Our windscreen was covered in it a few minutes ago; we’ve been driving alternately through sun & snow all day, nothing heavy but it’s the white stuff nonetheless. 

The camper stop we’re on is opposite the spa here; we’ve been over to get some local info from a receptionist, as tomorrow morning we need to find a dentist.  Always fond of chewing gum whilst driving, John lost an expensive cap to some today, so he’ll not be chewing gum any longer!

Tooth fixed, we hit the road again, but we drove through a few snowstorms and around several mountains’ hairpin bends, ending the day at Hermagor, southern Austria, on an ACSI campsite, Flaschberger. It’s a lovely little site, run by a friendly family, with superb en-suite style shower rooms that are very well serviced and really warm from underfloor heating.  It was such a luxury to use them yesterday evening after the awful day of travelling we’d had.  What’s more we enjoyed an evening of glorious sunshine.  It wasn’t to last though, there was a flurry of snow in the air when we left.

This morning we drove on, convinced that by the time we’d reached the other side of the Alps we’d find sunny warmth in Slovenia.  Then we booked in at the ACSI campsite at Lake Bled, in the drizzling rain, and the receptionist told me that the forecast is rain or snow tomorrow.  We had a chat to a fellow UK traveller after lunch (the sun came out for about 15 minutes!), who asked if we are sure that our fully comprehensive vehicle insurance included Croatia, as his only covers for 3^rd party and he’s spoken to many other people who’d had the same problem.  I emailed our broker, AIB, straightaway and was delighted and relieved to get their confirmation that we are fully covered for all the countries listed on the schedule.  So, if anyone reading this thinks they can’t risk visiting Croatia, you’ll know who to insure with at renewal time; just be sure to emphasise at the time that you need fully comp for there too.

June