… and that I was out like a light at 22:00. Didn’t feel a thing at all. And I slept until about 06:30. And I was busy too during the night. I can’t remember where I was (it might have been Electricity Street in Crewe) but I was working for some organisation that was doing something with the public and while our office still stayed in the same place, our job of interacting with the public meant that we had to go to the local shopping precinct that was 25 minutes away on a tram.
We needed a girl to come with us and we asked one of them but she was proving to be difficult. She said that she couldn’t possibly be ready for a 09:00 start as she didn’t arrive at the office until 08:30. I explained about the 25 minute tram ride and how not only were your travelling expenses reimbursed but so was your travelling time, but she was still being difficult about it.
So wide awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed I went down to breakfast. And on leaving I was presented with the bill for my evening meal, room and breakfast.
For my three-star hotel etc, it came to a total of €60 and so I’ll be stopping here again, that’s for sure. I don’t think that I’ve ever before slept in such comfort at such a price, and made so welcome too.
Leaving the hotel, I set out to assail the Stelvio Pass, all 2700-odd metres of it. I’ve never been up it before and so I didn’t know what to expect, and I wasn’t disappointed.
From Trafoi the road zig-zagged up to the summit via a series of hairpin bends. I don’t know how many there were, but I lost count at about 47 and there were still plenty to go.
The road itself dates from just after the Napoleonic War when Austria had possession of some territory south of the Pass and needed a road to connect with it. Although there have been many improvements to the road since those days, the actual trace of the road is still the same and that’s something that is quite astonishing.
Mind you, it’s not easy to see how else they could do it.
No vehicle longer than 10 metres is permitted on the road and I can’t say that I’m surprised.
This bus here was having quite a struggle upthe hill, not just against the hairpin bends but also against the traffic coming down the hill that, for the most part, refused to give the driver the room to manoeuvre.
There was plenty of snow at the top of the pass and again, I’m not surprised by that either. We’re at 2700-odd metres of altitude here as I said before, and you may remember that it was snowing in the Tyrol the day before yesterday at half of this altitude.
As an aside, this was once the border between Italy and the Austrian Empire after the reunification of Italy in the 1860s and in World War I there was actually fighting up here at the pass.
Still, Caliburn enjoyed a good wander around in the snow.It’s been a good few weeks since he’s been in it. But who would have expected to have seen him up to his axles in snow on the 1st of July?
Down the hill from the Stelvio Pass there’s a fork in the road and turning right, I’m in Switzerland. Much to my surprise, there’s no border controls here (Switzerland isn’t, of course, in the EU). I suppose they think that if you’ve made the climb all the way up the Stelvio then you deserve the right of entry.
It’s all downhill from here until you need to climb up and over the Fluela Pass to Davos and Klosters. And so what am I doing in a train then? It looks like the Channel Tunnel train but I’m a long way from there.
The simple answer to this is that the Fluela is a pretty desperate road. It takes about 60 or so kilometres and no end of climbing and descending through a series of hairpin bends. However, there’s a 19-kilometre rail tunnel where, for a not-insignificant price, you can make the journey for about a tenth of the time.
It’s a straight road from there to Liechstenstein and the drive there was much easier than finding a hotel. The first hotel that I tried wanted CHF199 for a night and they can forget that. Then there was a whole series of hotels that were closed. Then we had one that was full (no surprise, that) and he referred me to another two – both of which were closed.
I gave up on the idea of staying for a night in Leichtenstein and headed for the Swiss border. And there, just on the Liechtenstein side of the border I found a hotel. Quite basic but B&B is only CHF70 per night.
And so I’m staying here maybe two nights and tomorrow I’ll go for a bus ride into Vaduz. There’s a bus depot right across the road from here.
