European Roadtrip | Mad dash through Switzerland….
A journalist recently asked me if the whole European Roadtrip route was planned or were we ever allowed to ‘go off piste’ so to speak…. well i clearly said it was a heavily planned expedition with every stop mapped out until late April…. but it would be stretching the truth to say this was planned!!! So here’s why we ended up seeing Switzerland at night!!!
Following such a great day in Strasbourg, we simply couldn’t stop ourselves pushing further south in pursuit of equally interesting new places to seek adventure… Geneva had been high on our original list but had been moved to a later slot in the trip, with a journey through France the planned route…
So it all happened so fast, we made good time down to Mullhouse/Belfort and then Basel and before you knew it… we had breached Switzerland and were collecting our brand new vignette (£35 for a year on their tolls!) and we were off…
Oops!! The we realised we had no snow chains… well perhaps we could wing it as we were in a decent continental van… so with the light fading we passed Bern…. and then a little further south we were hit with two dawning realisations…
1. We had little to no diesel……. (no problem – solution found, petrol station a little richer as we headed out with a tank full and a bus full of Swiss chocolate!)
2. It was snowing…. hard!!! not the type which you hope might collect on the ground to form thin veneer! No these were big…. really big!!! (size of a scottish pancake!)
As we hauled ourselves up to the top at Fribourg, we had no choice, pull off the motorway and appraise our options (in the foot of snow!!!) Thankfully the sumptuous motorways were clear, yet either side was bank upon bank of snow!!! We agonised for fully 30mins (at 10.30pm at night)… could the kids survive a little longer… could Catherine’s nerves survive a little longer…. could the chocolate survive!!!
Well thankfully, we decided to push on and ended up whistling through Lusaanne. Not happy with their local ACSI campsite (we would never recommend staying there… a little scary!) we headed towards Nyon and the UEFA headquarters!!! Found a fantastic little aire just outside and parked up for the night!!!
Next morning was a ‘white out’!!!!! we headed to the lake, but sadly there were no views to be had!! Still no snow chains!!! could we push on…? We decided against and waited it out until mid afternoon before heading over the border and down south through the Haute Alpes!!!
Geneva
so where did we park the bus for the night?
Not to sure of the GPS coordinates, but if you keep the UEFA main HQ on your left, you can’t meet the huge car park (it’s in the Camper Contact app for those that use this too)
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