The hills are alive...
…with the sound of music! No we weren’t in Austria but we were travelling through the Alps.
We left Lyon at 10am and struggled to escape, French signposts are pretty awful.
Looking forward to the Alps we began to see them as hazy outlines against the horizon. Difficult to put into words the beauty and awesomeness of the landscape, we took lots of photos and exhausted the battery in the video camera.
We drove zig-zag up a mountain, astounding views and the road dropped away on one side in a stomach-lurching manner. The thermometer on the van stopped working, which it had done before in England, but the engine fan was working, phew! The van (now nicknamed Freda) did really well considering the gradient, the heat and the tight corners.
The view from the top was amazing.
On the way down the van began to make a squealing noise — can’t say we blame it really — which seemed to be associated with the brakes, bit worrying. We took it easy and stopped a couple of times to let it cool down. When we reached the flat ground at the bottom it stopped.
We left the mountains, sadly, but were now in Italy, Buongiorno!
Decided to press on to the lakes and so took the motorway (Autostrada) which you have to pay for. Got to the booth before joining the motorway and as there was no person had no idea what to do. Sat there panicking for a while until some people at the next booth called to us, in fantastic English, to ‘push the button and take the ticket’.