At breakfast Dandy was keen to absolve himself of all blame from the farting incident and kept enquiring if my stomach issues had resolved themselves in a particularly loud voice. We said our goodbyes and took some photos.
Outside the guest house in Slovenia
It was a beautiful day and the mountains were stunning. We hadn’t travelled very far when we came across an idyllic campsite beside an amazingly clear, emerald green river. We decided to stop even though it was only early afternoon as we loved the setting so much. We just chilled and watched several coach loads of pished local geriatrics return from their Sunday school picnic by the river, it was hilarious.
Sat with our G & T’s watching the sun go down and the mountains gradually change colour. The night sky was clear and full of stars and the Milky Way. What a place!
View from our campsite at Soca
We decided we would stay an extra day as we liked it so much and that was what the holiday was all about. We had very little food left so instead of packing up the van and driving to the nearest town Dandy investigated catching a bus. The campsite owner told him that we could get one at the junction on the main road, about 500 metres away, at 11am and we could get one back at 1.15pm. Off we set and right enough the bus turned up and we clambered on. The bus driver was busy gassing on his mobile and drove most of the way to Bovac along narrow, twisty roads multi tasking phone and steering wheel. We checked that there was a bus back at 1.15pm but no, it was Sunday so we would have to wait until 3.30pm. This was a pain as we wanted to make the best of the day back at the campsite and it was a very day hot so our perishable food wouldn’t survive till then and the supermarket closed at 12.00pm. We had a quick dash around the very busy supermarket and reached the till only to be sent back to weigh and label our fresh produce, this made us quite unpopular with the rest of the queue.
We went into the tourist office to enquire about taxis back to our site and hey presto before you could say Ljubljana there was one outside for us. We were back in no time at the small cost of 10 euros.
Our neighbours, the Klagenfurts, were a German family who’d travelled on motorbikes and a sidecar combination (the dog went in the sidecar as well as one of the kids). We got talking to them a few times and they seemed very nice. At one point we were speaking to Mrs Klagenfurt point while they were getting packed up ready to go on a day trip. Mr Klagenfurt was clearly not pleased that his missus was not pulling her weight and barked at her to join them to which she responded immediately, Dandy wished he had this effect on me.
We went down to the river to enjoy the sun and the breathtaking colour of the water. I noticed a strange phenomenon in that there was no algae or weed on the stones on the bed of the river, just bleached white stones. It was excruciatingly cold and even paddling in it made your legs go numb. Some swimmers were wearing full wetsuits. Dandy went for a dip and suffered the cauliflower beanbag effect mentioned earlier. I think his genitals actually took refuge inside his body. We barbequed, lit a campfire and watched the stars and mountains again.
Frogmen in the river at Soca
Days Twenty Six and Twenty Seven – Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd August 2010
We reluctantly left the campsite at Soca in order to move further north. We both agreed that we could have stayed there longer. Our plan was to go over the Grosglockner pass, the highest mountain in Austria. This had been planned as one of the highlights of the trip.
To leave Slovenia we had to head over another high pass into Austria. Once more the scenery was stunning and we stopped at the top to take photos. However the arduous second gear climb had caused the engine to overheat and the Hiace resembled a steam train. The aftermarket turbo had caused the cooling system to work overtime so a litre of sparkling water was added to the system. Within 50 metres of starting the descent the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree and a warning buzzer suggested something may be amiss. As quickly as it arrived the fault sorted itself and the lights went off and the buzzing stopped.
We stopped part of the way down the mountain for lunch and to give the van and Dandy a rest. He had been ranting extensively at an old bastard in a Talbot camper that was being too cautious by descending the pass in first gear and at a young guy in a car of whom he enquired ‘how much of the f**kin’ road do you want?’
We got involved in a conversation with an Austrian cyclist at the next table. Dandy asked what he did for a living and he replied that he was a sailor. We looked quizzically at one another then Dandy enquired if there was a huge requirement for sailors in a land locked country. It turned out he was a seller and not a sailor and he explained what he sold by saying ‘you have this in Scotland’. We were thinking Haggis, Whisky etc. but it turned out he was involved with internet and telecommunications. We were quite impressed by his challenging cycle but it turned out he had got the bus from Austria and was cycling downhill back home!
The lights and buzzer returned with a vengeance as we entered a small town at the bottom of the pass. We headed for a filling station and 5 minutes of testing revealed that the alternator was dead and the batteries weren’t charging with over 1,000 miles still to cover before home. WTF? Dandy thought that this was going to be the end of the road for our trip, he wasn’t going to be able to fix this problem readily. We limped into a campsite at Sachsenburg on the River Drau in Austria. This campsite was beside a medieval walled village and was proliferated by masses of Dutch and their hyper, badly behaved offspring. I had to have words.
Between us we hatched a cunning plan to get back to Blighty using a combination of rewiring the three batteries on board and charging them up at a campsite each night with the mains hook up. The down side was that brake lights, wipers, headlights and indicators all used up the valuable electricity and had to be used minimally.
We spent an enjoyable couple of days here and ate both nights in a local restaurant where the owner, Kristoff, poured Schnapps down our necks on a regular basis. On both occasions Dandy was pleased to see that the bill was less than thirty Euros.
We had picked the only town in that area without a bank or a cash line machine. A train line ran close to the site so we decided to have an adventure on a high speed train to Spittal an der Drau. It cost us 12.5 Euros for the return trip so we’ll never complain about bank charges again.
Our train in Austria
Because of the van problems and the poor weather forecast we had scrapped our plans to go over the Grosglockner and had decided on a less demanding route through Italy. I was disappointed but thought it best.
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