We left Lake Bled around 10.20 on Monday, April 15 to make our way north to Austria and Germany whilst Wendy and Stuart headed east to Hungary. We wanted to do some more mountain passes so first up was the Vršič Pass that goes up to 1600m with 50 hairpin bends that are numbered with a gradient of 14%. We did 25 of them before having lunch at the top and then headed back down so we did 50 in total! Onwards towards Austria but on the back roads as our Slovenian vignette had run out and at €32 we didn’t want to renew just for a few hours. Consequently, we then needed to go up the Wurzen Pass to enter Austria and that had a 18% descent. All was well although I suspect that the brake liners are a bit thinner now!

Once in Austria, the temperature plummeted from the 26°C we had in Slovenia to around 5° with rain and hail. We made our way towards Salzburg and had found a Stellplatz (motorhome car park basically) just outside. It was expensive for €30 per night but there were few other options especially if we wanted to leave Dora to go into the city but it did have all the facilities we needed including hot showers (P4N#69353).

We rewatched The Sound of Music film that evening in preparation for the day ahead. As it happened, we decided not to do the Sound of Music tour at €60pp as we had done the Salzburg city centre bits previously in 2006. Instead, on the following morning, we did a self guided tour of the film locations ourselves in the van. Great fun and with none of the hassle or cost. We ended our tour at Monsee Basilica where Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer were married. An amazing church even if it did have scaffolding on it! The town itself was also rather lovely.

Thus, our whistle stop drive through Austria ended as we then drove through the mountains (again) to Berchtesgaden in southern Bavaria. A very pretty town with amazing murals showing the German soldiers fallen in both World Wars.

Then onto Konigssee (King’s Lake), our stop for the night at a campervan park just outside the village (P4N#94646). You could even see Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest on the top of Mount Kehlstein. We had hoped to go up Mount Jenner in the cable car but alas, it was closed for maintenance. After a short walk around the deserted, off season village we hunkered down in Dora as snow and rain was forecast overnight.

Miles driven since last post: 253

Total miles driven this trip: 3,877

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