Austrian Tirol

Austria

While the MoT group went North we set off South on motorways
following SatNav, a written route with a map as well.

The miles sped past and our eta was 430pm.

Then we left one motorway turning right for the next. The sat nav kept
saying do a 180 but we believed the instructions, which said turn
right, and we had. When you think about it there are not many Left
turns on a motorway on the Continent! We turned Right off the motorway
on to an over pass and straight up North at high speed. Some time
later I became restless, as it did not seem correct.

I could hear Marks voice saying 'I need to know where we are! What
towns are we looking for. What are we NOT looking for. Are we going N
S E or W?'

I could then hear my reply of 'I am doing my best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'

We did our 180 and cruising speed increased from 80 to 90 and rose
steadily to the ton, 110 and for a while 120. Our eta was now 5.55pm
but we made it by 5.30.

The hotel is old world Austrian Tirol. Wooden beams, etc etc but
nice and welcoming. Ehrwald is a big village now, a long
way from the hamlet we knew in the 1950s when we came out as a family
to learn to ski. The nursery slope is still there but now there is a
ski lift all the way up the Ehrwalderarm, a little valley, which we as
kids used to walk up, eat out packed lunch and ski down.

We took the lift up and walked down in the drizzle and then went and
walked around the nearby lake again in drizzle conditions. Not much
view at the moment.

Still either drizzling or raining. So we went to see Ludwig II's
castle just over the border in Germany. I think that he must have been
quite mad as he spent a fortune in 1870 building a medieval castle on
a hill top that has little practical use [other than for the tourist
trade, but I don't think that he was thinking of that]. It is easy to
see where the plots of 'Prisoner of Zenda' and 'Chitty chitty bang
bang came from.

After a most charming evening in the hotel where we were entertained
by accordion, zither and Tyrolean songs we discovered on the following
day that we were to move on to the Dolomites we managed to get
everything into the half pint car and were on our way.

No navigational problems this time!!