Look closely in the photo above, and you’ll see fairytale Neuschwanstein, model for all those Disney cartoon castles, less than a day short of Daisy’s current destination, brother/brother-in-law in the deepest, brightest, greenest Alpine foothills of Bavaria.
Two months in and with a month to go till we’re home, this is the furthest away from the UK that we’ll be finding ourselves, bringing us past Munich on Friday missing a mega-thunderstorm (lightning, super-cells, flooding, the works) by the skin of our chainlinks.
The purple in our Weather app screeenshot on the left is seriously heavy rain.
The yellow circles are seriously powerful thunder and lightning.
The tiny red pin working its way down the River Inn (yes, as in Innsbruck, or Bridge over the Inn) just to the right, and JUUUUST missing the stormy drama, was us. Dry, and safe, and relieved.
We’re taking three days out here in Wertach with Jutta’s bro Juergen and wife Carola, enjoying absurdly beautiful views from our balcony and cooking to die for.
Map below illustrates our journey since Vilsbiburg, keeping discreetly quiet about the train taken from Rosenheim through Munich to Wolfratshausen, positioning us about a third of the way between the city and Wertach, via Oberammergau where Jutta and I (first) married 46 years ago.
(Daisy took one look at the gradients and took the blue line by train, though proved herself more than capable of working hard uphill coming up from the valley floor just short of Garmisch into Oberammergau.)
Our ride continues magical, and while intensely hot at times, the weather and the contours are being very kind to us.
Next stop Konstanz on the eponymous lake on the German-Swiss border, whence it’s further on to Basel where the Rhine turns north, and up via Stuttgart and Bonn (a few more old friends to see) to the ferry at Hoek of Holland on July 23.
Fingers crossed, just short of 4000km behind us (not 5000 as I had thought), with 1300km more to go, and Daisy should get us home in time, without, we hope, too much need to revert to trains.
As ever, photos tell the story.
