Wednesday 1 October

We had a lot of rain last night and this morning it was still dismal with low clouds and a persistent drizzle. A weather forecast showed that this was likely for a couple of days so we changed to plan B: miss out visits to the castles for now and head directly for the eastern end of the Deutsche Alpenstrasse and, if necessary, wait it out there. The route returns past here anyway so we’ll visit then when the weather is hopefully improved.

So a quick service then head off back the way we came for a short distance then turn east, a bit of cross-country then onto the A9 autobahn heading towards Salzburg. The rain continued on and off for the entire morning and we stopped at a restplatz just at the joining point for the A9 for lunch.

Although we don’t normally use motorways we figured that trying to go on ordinary roads would take us on a lot of the Alpenstrasse and anyway the autobahn was much quicker. Traffic was of course much heavier – this is an international route after all – but thankfully the rain petered out although it remained dull. Eventually we turned off before crossing into Austria – we don’t want to have to pay €75 for a go-box, which is the automatic toll system, and then claim most of it back as unused! 

We were now well into mountain country, driving along river valleys and through forests which climbed up into the low clouds. Having managed to miss a turn, we paused to check for an overnight stop at Berchtesgaden, which is the starting point of the Alpenstrasse and found a stellplatze which turned out to be in the middle of nowhere halfway up a mountain! But there were other vans there, it had all we needed and anyway the next nearest was miles away. For an extra €2 we indulged ourselves in electric hook-up then watched and listened as the heavens opened up again, accompanied by the odd rumble of thunder.

Spent the evening reading and updating our various navigation devices. We’ll have to see what tomorrow brings to decide what’s next.

Sorry, no photos today – we hope to get some much better piccies later this week. We've been experimenting with the new dashcam and finally found out how to get recordings out of it. Have tried to upload some footage of the scenery but don’t seem to be able to; maybe the speed of the internet connection. We’ll try again later.

And it's still hissing down!