An Adventurous Start

On Sunday, the 5th of May, we started bright and early at 10 minutes to 10 from O.K.'s village. The plan was to drive past Lake Constance, cross the Alps in Austria and arrive at our destination in South Tyrol about 6 hours later.

Well... that was the plan.

Just the week before, O.K. had the tyres on his car changed from winter to summer - surely there wasn't going to be any snow in May... was there?
All during the week, we kept checking the weather forecast for the regions we were going to cross on our trip south. There was indeed snow forecast for the Alpine regions, but the roads would certainly be clear... wouldn't they?
To top it all off, we were lazy after our busy week and did not prepare in much detail; O.K. had been to the same place four years ago, and we did have a good general idea of the route, plus a (rather elderly) clip-on satnav as well as our mobile phones with maps and route apps. We were definitely going to find our way easily with all that equipment... weren't we?

You guessed it - things did not turn out quite like that!

Our ancient satnav did not know some of the roads and kept urging us to "turn round now, if possible" or "go left and then left again" etc., and at one stage, the directions my mobile phone gave us lead to a mistake that cost us more than 2 1/2 hours in the end.

We somehow managed a detour to very snowy parts of Austria and, just when we had got our bearings again and knew where to go next, that next road was blocked because of the snow!

I took these pictures from the moving car. Slowly moving car, I should add. After all, the car was wearing its summer tyres.

Another detour and several hours later, we finally arrived safely - but tired - at our hotel in Gargazzone/Gargazon, a village maybe 12 km south of Merano/Meran*. Our room was large, warm and welcoming, and smelled very nicely of wood.

We had just enough time to unpack before dinner - and that dinner was very welcome, I can tell you!

All things considered, we had been very lucky in making it there in one piece - thanks to our "stars" and of course to O.K. who is a very good driver, not having to be the fastest on all acounts, but always considering the circumstances. We had only ourselves to blame for the longer-than-necessary drive and were determined for the next day not to use any means of transport other than our own feet. And so we did - as you will see in my next post.

* South Tyrol is the northernmost part of Italy, but the population in that area is largely German-speaking. Place names, road signs etc. are usually in both languages.