The Achensee at last!

So, friends on FaceBook will already be familiar with my extensive updates during our recent winter holidays. By popular demand (OK, cos Aunty Po asked!) I am going to do likewise with our summer holiday.

And what a monumental undertaking in it has been to get us here. We left Nottingham at 7pm on Friday evening, bound for the Chanel tunnel. Our plan was to get the 1.20am train to Calais and begin an overnight drive through Germany to Pertisau. Gaz was stocked up with Red Bull; the Jaguar was stocked up with diesel and the iPad was stocked up with enough episodes of Peppa Pig to see us half way across Western Europe. I had undertaken to get us through the tunnel, at which point I planned to  cede the drivers seat to Gaz, who would then take us, at speed, down the autobahn to Austria.

We encountered the first flaw in this plan about 3 miles from the Folkstone terminus of Eurotunnel. We joined the queue to exit the M20 with 2.7 miles to go. It took us 2 hours to reach check in. After check in, we proceeded immediately through passport control (the lack of French border staff was bit a problem here, the one man in the booth seem entirely disinterested and waved us through without even attempting to look at our passports. We headed straight to the queue to embark. Where we waited for a further 2 hours (thankfully, loos are available at this point). At 3.20 we were finally let on a train and began the journey to France.

I thankfully lay down in the, almost fully reclined, passenger seat and went to sleep at this point. Eleanor and I slept through France, Belgium and the Netherlands and woke up when Gaz made a brief stop, to find ourselves in Germany. We remained in Germany for a further 10 hours, as the promised speed on the autobahn was broken, at frustratingly regular intervals, by roadworks and congestion. Gaz, buzzing from 5 cans of Red Bull, took us all the way to the Austrian border, with   only a couple of pit stops. We did stop just before we left Germany, however, at the Slyvensteinsee.

From there it was only a few km to the Aurtria border and then, within half an hour we pulled up outside the Hotel Post am See. We were at the Achensee at last! 

So thrilled, were the locals to see us that they laid on a band! (Well, that might have had something to do with the boat that was being Christened that evening). Video to follow when I can get the iPad and Blogger to talk to one another a little more nicely than they currently are.

The boat duly anointed, we headed back to our hotel to unpack, before heading to the Spesisaal for abendessen. Then bed and sleep, glorious sleep. And the promise of all this glorious scene to explore on the morrow.