Peelies travels

The cows come back at exactly the right time. It’s actually 7am when the farmer returns in his old banger and the cows have perfectly timed their slow walk and are ready there at the bottom / right next to us. That’s what cows do. The night has been so quiet with no cars, no motorbikes and no sound save for one moment when the dog in the barn was spooked by something but that didn’t last long. Clouds came in so we had the advantage of some overnight warmth but the disadvantage of no early morning view. We really enjoyed it and didn’t want to leave  I don’t suppose we would have done except we needed to do some food shopping. We could have managed another 24hours but decided not to. Still, we held out till the end of the morning. It was so nice up there. Finally we headed downhill and past the possible Park4night spot which was nothing like as attractive as our Refugio. The temperature steadily increased and by the time we got to Lidl it was in the mid twenties. Here I had to do som...

We came down the west/south side of the Stelvio and into Bormio. There was no time to stop as we wanted to get to our chosen Italian lake. It was still a fair drive (in our 110) and we soon started to think about maybe pulling in somewhere unofficial. Park4night has a location “up there” and maybe it’ll be suitable or maybe there’ll be others there already. We are following the route to lake Iseo using our normal OsmAnd map on the iPad but Google maps instructs us to travel two sides of a triangle, rather than follow the hypotenuse. The overnight spot requires us to follow the H and so we head up what turns out to be another pass, only this time it’s more ‘local’. It’s certainly narrow, fairly steep and has sufficient hairpins to frustrate us as we’ve done enough today. Near the top the road is much less steep and there’s a wide flat area just under the hill of the last few bends to the summit. There, along a track of 150 m,  we see a building and the notice on the roadside says it...

We’ve driven a lot of Alpine passes but never the Stelvio. Moving south to the Italian lakes gave us a great excuse to drive it on Tuesday. Stelvio has a very recognisable set of hairpins that feature in many photographs taken of those final bends, on the approach from the east. Leaving Prutz and heading south we soon hit a road closed sign. This was our way to the pass and as we hesitated in the middle of the carriageway, an Austrian guy assured us it was a ten minute detour into Switzerland. So we left the roadworks, where they were working to strengthen the tunnel / galleries along the side of the rockface and we made the detour which was certainly not ten minutes longer. Maybe Austria Man meant ten minutes driving in Switzerland and then you’ll be back into Italy. So it was up and over a small local pass. By the time we got down to the valley we were ready for a stop and came across this reservoir under which are the remains of several villages but with one landmark remaining, a be...

I’d forgotten just how well Austria does things. From the moment you get there, everything looks perfect. It’s like Switzerland but affordable. The roads are smooth, the verges and trees clipped and cut back so that visibility isn’t compromised. We want a taste of the mountains before the expected thunderstorms break out this week and we head for Prutz, where we stay for Sunday and Monday nights. Here we find the most highly organised all-season campsite, full of people just like us, as well as couples with preschool children. We marvel at the shower rooms that are spacious and heated. The modest campsite fee is subject to hefty local and tourist taxes but as a reward we get a two day bus pass. We walk across the wooden boarded bridge, over a rushing river and wander around the town, visiting the churchyard. It’s a beautiful place. The bells chime the quarters but stop after dark, at 9 o’clock. For some reason that I haven’t researched, just after the 6am chimes, they then ring two bel...