Hi.

20^th April

Now in Czechoslovakia we just about drove straight through as it was mostly flat and rural with all fields looking the same and all the small villages looking very run down.

We stayed one night in a very nice lay bye opposite a very nice lake, we both felt very safe, we then carried on into Poland to Auschwitz, we arrived just outside the camp and parked up for the night alongside some iffy flats and this didn't feel very safe so I tied up the doors so they could not be opened from the outside.

22^nd April.

We visited Auschwitz camp along with bus loads of other visitors, it was a very moving experience to walk round the camp and see all the exhibits and information, but the strange thing I felt was, even though it all happened there I felt very removed from it all as though you were visiting a museum and seeing the exhibits but it was as if that was what they were exhibits, not the remains of a terrible part of human history.

We stayed a further night but this time in t the official car park, we asked the car park guy how much and he said 7 Euros for 24 hrs, so we paid the guy got our ticket and settled in for a more secure night.

Next morning we arrived at the gate gave the ticket to the guy in his security box, he examined it and said 7 Euros, No we paid seven Euros but he kept on saying seven Euros and I kept saying no it's on the ticket paid!.

He wandered off into another building and came back with a young girl who could speak English, she said it is seven Euros for 12 hours, to which we came back it does not say that on your price list stuck on the glass, and the guy the day before said it was 24 hours, so if it is the case that it is 12 hours why does it not say so on you price list, but it does say 24 hour parking on all the signs around the car park, She said yes it should say on the price list so next thing the manager came out and to cut a long storey short we were waived through without paying extra.

I wonder how many visitors have fallen for that scam?.

We decided to move further into Poland and look round, it was flat and agricultural so we binned it and set off for Hungary which was quite mountainous for about 100 miles where it then became quite flat and agricultural again, we had a camp site in mind so we went straight to it as it was on the Polish side of Hungary, and what a treasure the site turned out to be, the lat and long we had was wrong but we found it anyway, so we will update it on Motor home Facts later.

We stayed a couple of nights, it was so warm we decided to get the scooter out. The only thing wrong with these countries is the roads are absolutely atrocious with potholes every where, some deep enough to through you off the scooter if you went down one, so you spend all your time weaving around as though you were drunk in charge of the scooter.

I had this brilliant idea of fastening the Tom Tom on the bike so we could get back to the camp site, it worked great until we hit a pothole, the Tom Tom jumped off its mount, I caught it between my knees and I slammed on the brakes. We came to a stop and I grabbed the Tom Tom but before I could put my feet down Sandra looked round to see what I was doing which altered the centre of gravity and we toppled over and we both rolled down the grass embankment ending up in a pile of nettles, we just laid there howling with laughter, nothing broken damaged or hurt so we picked ourselves up dusted ourself down and was bombing down the road back to the village looking for a cash machine so we could pay for the camp site in Hungarian money, Sandra won again and came out with a load of their cash, she always wins on these machines!.

I looked at it and said how much did you get out to which she just looked blank. It turned out to be 200,000 Doh!. The camp site was 550 a night, so we filled up with diesel had an ice cream each, bought a load of grocery's and she still had a mound of money.

Next stop Croatia.

29^th April.

Arrived in Croatia and it is nothing like I thought it would be, the roads even through the backwoods over the mountains are as good as any I have travelled on and puts the UK roads to shame,the scenery is out of this world especially down the coastal strip at the side of the Adriatic Sea, we stopped one night in an off road parking spot alongside an Hungarian couple who turned out to be German, they had been following us for miles and we end up next to one another, they plied me with their own wine from their own vineyard, a good night.

Next day we worked our way down the coast towards Split where we came across a nice camp site and this is where we are now near a place called Trogir, we have been out on the bike to visit the old town and what a nice place it is, we will be on our way tomorrow to Bosnia about 180 K down the road.

Lets see what that brings.

Tues 23rd April.

Here are are a few pic's of Fussen and a closed for the winter Ski Resort we stopped over at on our way to Poland.

And another from where we are now Auschwitz, It would be a bit  "crass" to take photos inside but the one I took say't it all !,

Tuesday 9^th of April.

We are on a camp site for a couple of days in a place called Bad Mergenthein, it is overlooking a nice country scene and is very rural, the site reminds us of “Carry on camping” with Peter Butterworth as the camp site owner who looks very shifty and keeps saying “that will be a pound” or in this guy “ that will be a Euro” as it appears everything is an extra.. Lol....

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Monday 15^th April

On our way to Innsbruck after our stay in Fussen at the end of the Romantic Road, which wasn't very romantic, and I shall re name it the not very exciting but very stressful road, especially when the tom tom decided to roll over and die.

Luckily I have the old Garmin which I use on the scooter but it is a good ten years old and state of art when bought but is very Mickey Mouse compared to a tom tom.. So having fought my way out of a large city using the old Garmin I spied en route what I thought was a German equivalence of a Curry's, so I swung a hard through the oncoming traffic and managed to get in their entrance gate, inside I asked if anybody spoke English to which a young lad said he did, I showed him my tom tom and asked if he had one like it, he took us to a display that had more navigators than you could shake a stick at, and low and behold they had the new version of my old tom tom which would accept the card with all the maps of Europe on, so a quick swap and we were once again in business. That's 270 Euros we didn't count on spending but worth every penny, I mean cent..

So we are sat in a stellplatz in a little one horse town on the German border called Ravensburgh or that is what we thought, actually when we had a walk round it was a very nice place.

After a day down the side of Lake Constance. While parked up in a car park while we had a brew and sorted where we were going next , a car pulled up and a guy started

unloading dive gear, I went over to talk to him if he spoke English, (they all do) it turned out he was an underwater photographer, he gave me a DVD he made of fish and stuff he sees while diving the lake, we will watch it later, he said he has ton's of stuff on u tube.

So tomorrow off into Austria along the Alpine Road the same road JC and co in Top Gear drove the 3 Ferrari's along, should be fun if I can get round the hairpin bends.

The best bit so far by a mile was Fussen, we spent two night on a stellplatz there, got the scooter out of the garage and went on two long rides in the very warm and sunny

mountain roads, we both liked that.

Wed 17^th April.

We pulled into a very nice spot on the way to Salzburg it was a ski resort, obviously empty now as the ski season has ended in this part of the Alps as the snow has just about gone except on the highest mountains, even so the snow around the resort was still piled high where they have cleared the parking lot and there is some snow where it has been packed down by the skiers, there is snow on an outbuilding on a nearby house that is still a good 2ft 6 deep even after all the melting..

I fired up the genny so we could watch Mrs Thatchers funeral on the telly, I was surprised at the amount of stations that was available on the free view, it must have been because it was a beautiful cloudless sky.

Thurs 18^th April.

Now in Salzburg and Sandra has decided we will push the boat out and spend some money so we are booked on a camp site for a couple of days, just so she can do some laundry. We are both showered the laundry's done and it is now 10pm and we are overlooking the city which is all lit up and the mountains have flashing lights on to stop the planes flying into them. Not many stations left there are plenty of news stations but BBC and ITV have now gone

.

In a couple of days we will be making our way into Czechoslovakia, should be fun so lets see what turns up there.  

Sat 20th April.

In Czechoslovakia parked up at the side of a small park and play ground, it seem's a poor country and very dull so we will not be staying but passing through on our way to Poland which we should be in tomorrow Sunday. I can't post any pictures at the moment as I am on a tethered phone and it would cost a fortune to load them, I will wait until we get a free wifi.

12 month European trip.

2^nd April 2013 at the start of our European trip, we set off from home on our way down to Dover to catch the 1 o'clock ferry to Dunkirk on Wednesday the 3^rd of April, all was fine until we tried to get on the M25 orbital round London, only to find it was closed between junction 29 – 30 after an accident, and this was the situation until after 8 o'clock at night. We tried different routes but everything was grid locked and no matter what we tried we were stuffed, so I ended going back the way we came until we found a service station to wait it out, we finally got that fed up waiting we just set off and was prepared to sit it out in the traffic jam on the M25, there were lorries pulled over on the hard shoulder all drivers run out of driving time and couldn't go anywhere.

As we arrived on the M25 a long way from the actual accident and made our way towards it, the message on the overhead gantry changed to the motorway was now open, so we actually got to the Dartford crossing which was now chock a block with traffic pushing and shoving to get through the toll, but at least we were finally on our way to Dover again, arriving at 10 pm much to our relief and us parking up on the Marine Parade for the night.

Wed morning up early to drive into Maplins to buy a 12 volt charger for the lap top, Sandra went into Sainsburys for a final shop and then on to the Ferry only to find we had missed our sailing as we thought we were on the 1 o'clock ferry only to have pointed out that is the time we arrive in Dunkirk, Doh!.. So the guy just booked us on to the next ferry at 12 noon arriving at 3 30pm.

We travelled on into Belgium and went straight to a stellaplatz without any problems and settled down and spent a couple of days chilling out and walking round the town before setting off for Germany and a stellaplatz in a town called Blankenstein which had a nice stop over, and the telly reception was quite good even though it was very cold and snowing, from here we set off for the Black Forest area driving all over looking for a stellaplatz or camp site, the tom tom gave us a couple which we went

only to find they didn't allow dogs, it was then we noticed the French border sign and all the street names and signs had suddenly become French.. Doh! again, getting lost is part of the fun but losing a country..

So we just wild camped in a nice rural spot and stopped for the night, in the morning we set off for the Romantic Road but on the way I noticed a sign for a museum in a city called Sinsheim that included the aeroplane Concord so we diverted to find it and what a place it was it was an enormous museum and it had two Concords, loads of different planes, cars motorbikes and war stuff, we also noticed there was a sister museum in a city called Speyer which turned out to be about 35 kilometres down the road and that's is where we are now as I write this, they have their own stellaplatz where you can stay the night, but it costs 22 Euros a night ouch..but it says you can get in cheaper to the exhibition of space flight, there was a Russian space shuttle and absolutely tons of space memorabilia and different planes you can walk round...We stopped here for the night in their own camp site, but it was expensive at 22 Euros for the night.

A few pictures.