Day 7

Sunday 24th May 2009

Dave woke up before everyone else so decided to go for an early morning cycle. We then took our time showering, packing up and saying goodbye to the other campers in our corner that we had got to know. There was an retired English couple, a Swiss couple who spoke French and a German couple who spoke excellent English and understood the English sense of humour! Once packed up we set off for the 2.5 hr drive to our next chosen site in Switzerland! The temperature by this point was 27.5C and we were glad of the air conditioning. Having been taxed (for the car AND the caravan) going over the border some 60 euros we cautiously entered this new country, which to be honest was pretty much the same as the German scenery we had just left (not sure if I was expecting the sound of music to kick off and people to suddenly start prancing around in the mountain grass) and actually it became quite industrialised as we headed further south. But then suddenly as we came within 20 miles of our destination we started to see several peaks appear out of the clouds. They became more apparent, until suddenly coming out of one of the numerous tunnels we saw the lake Thunersee before us in a beautiful aqua blue colour strtching for several miles in front of us and to be honest were stunned! We arrived shortly after at our campsite, at which the temperature was 34 in the shade, a bit of a shock after the cars 18. We got a great spot under two big trees which provided much needed shade and the view from the caravan was just out of this world with mountains rising up all around us. Talking to the site owner we discovered the lake is at 14 C and there are streams feeding into it, one of which runs next to the campsite and we used to cool our coke. That evening after tea we went on a bike ride up to the crystal clear lake despite the looming clouds and rumbles of thunder. We managed to have a good explore before the rain started and we headed back. One of the funniest thing we saw was some students on strange bikes... a quadcycle (so 4 wheels and three passengers) and a tricycle with both passengers facing opposite directions - the person facing backwards must have been very trusting! As you can imagine we have loads of amazing photos, but one last one to whet your apetites... the view from the caravan.