… on Tuesday night with my choice of sleeping accommodation, I can say without any fear of contradiction that I more than made up for it last night.
The issue of the plug for the slow cooker not working is a minor inconvenience really. The rest of it scored a good 11 out of 10 and I’ll be back here again.
I’m not sure who or what awoke me at 04:30 but it was nothing to do with the hotel.
At one moment or another I’d been off on my travels. With a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) where I was invited to a meal given by a friend of hers. Not long after I’d ordered my meal, the person whose party it was started passing round some literature and seeking orders. It turned out that they were all “Biffers” and this was all about freeing their friends who had been imprisoned. Of course, I had no wish to associate myself with them, so I was all for walking out. But as I’d ordered my meal already, I was wondering if I should go and sit on a separate table. But I didn’t want to embarrass my friend.
After a shower I did some work on the laptop until breakfast time when I went downstairs to try out the delicious bread.
My landlady’s story was quite interesting. She’d come from Australian a back-packing holiday, run out of money and so had found a job as a chambermaid in Lech. Here, she had met a local boy and the rest is history.
She’d never seen snow before she came here, and neither had her family when they arrived for the wedding. And so, in June, they had a snowstorm on her wedding day.
“A real white wedding”, I told her.
After I’d finished my work, I went for a walk around the town to see what was going on.
I didn’t manage to make it out there last night and I was keen to take a few photographs to show you what you are missing.
It really is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and I’d be happy to come to live here permanently.
And not for nothing am I here in Lech this morning. Today is the start of a vintage vehicle rally here in Lech and there are all types of old cars on parade in the town.
Ordinarily, every one of the 50 or so that I saw would have made it onto this page but I really was spoilt for choice. But you’ll have to make do with seeing a select few until I have more time to sit down and expand my notes.
After all, it’s not very easy doing this kind of thing when you are limited to irregular hotel internet connections and timed-out motorway service providers.
One thing that we do have to do is to give Strawberry Moose a suitable photo opportunity.
It’s not every day that he visits his favourite town in Europe and so it deserves to be recorded for posterity.
No camping allowed here in Lech, but that’s not a problem for him, although it might explain why Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick never visited the area.
His Nibs has only been here for 12 hours or so, but he’s already opened his own taxi business as you can see. It didn’t take him long to get his feet firmly planted under the table here.
Set up for life with a vehicle like this.
Lech, by the way, is twinned with the town of Beaver Creek in the USA, and you can make of that what you like.
Despite having come here on a few previous occasions, I’d never been right through and out of the other side of the town.
And with the urging of the Lady Who Lives In The SatNav, I set off northwards.
A little diversion was called for though.
There’s a back road that goes out to Bregenz (and had I known how this story was to unfold I’d have gone out that way) where there’s a mountain pass, the Hochtannberg Pass at 1675 metres, that I hadn’t climbed before.
There are dozens of photos going back to the 70s of all kinds of various vehicles photographed on the top of various mountain passes, and we are putting together a little collection of Caliburn there too.
But there wasn’t any parking here to make a really good photograph of Caliburn. A quick flash at the side of the road in between the traffic had to suffice.
But the view westwards was quite impressive too. And you can see what a magnificent area this is and why I was so happy to come here, even though the clouds were closing in rapidly.
It was round about here that I started to have the feeling that it wasn’t going to be my day.
And as I retraced my steps in the general direction of Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Oberammergau, a few drops of rain started to fall on the windscreen.
By the time I reached the German border the torrential rain was lashing down on everything in sight.
Considering the tropical weather that we had been having up to that point on this journey, this was quite a surprise. It put paid to any plans that I had to go sightseeing.
There was however a small town along the route that was crammed full of tourists and it was here that I stopped to pick up some bread.
But do you know – I forgot to make a note of where I was so I can’t tell you anything about it.
I shall have to do some more research in due course when I update this page.
For lunch, I pulled over onto a layby at the side of the road. And here, shame as it is to say it, I fell asleep for a while. I’m not doing too well am I, these days?
This made me run quite late and what with all of the roadworks on the A95 (I decided to fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n down the autobahn after all in an attempt to make up the time) I hit Munich just in time for the start of the rush hour.
And having come from the south, I ended up straight in the city centre too. It was this point that I’d wished that I had come in from Bregenz on the south-west and hit the ring road instead.
As a result, the last 19kms of my journey took me 90 minutes and had I not performed a marvellous “taxi-driver’s creep” on a bright red Audi estate, much to my pleasure and his chagrin (he had a beautiful set of motor horns), I would probably be still stuck in Munich right now.
But it seems that The lady Who Lives In The Satnav doesn’t understand grade-separated junctions. A couple of times now she’s wanted me to turn right onto a road that’s 300 feet below the viaduct over which I’m driving. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With me being so late, I’d missed the vegan shop around the corner from Hans so tea ended up being chips and salad from the beer garden next door.
Later that evening, Hans (who runs a whisky importing business) was having a tasting evening with 10 invited guests.
Everyone seemed to be having a really good time which was just as well. For me, I don’t drink alcohol and even when I did I couldn’t abide the smell, never mind the taste, of the stuff.
But good luck to those who do.
And so with the place smelling like a Babylonian boozer’s bedroom, I settled down for the night on one of the most comfortable sofas in the world.
And here I intend to sleep right through until I awaken.