14th May - Weather & The Alpine Road to Konigsee

A canny move getting a B&B for the second night.

Based on previous experience I’ve found it takes me up to a week to get properly in rhythm with daily travelling and all the unpacking, assembly, disassembly and repacking that goes on.  So I had planned to camp the first night B&B the second whilst I worked out what I needed to do differently.  The clincher though was heavy rain was forecast overnight and in the morning and I didn't fancy packing everything in the pouring rain!

And rain it did, fair belting it down all night - it looked like the Alpine road might be a wash out.  The first hour was and then the clouds started to break and the full beauty of the landscape opened up before me.

I headed first along a small road by Plansee - a glorious road that snakes along side a river and then the lake - quite level but lovely to ride.

However, shortly after that the rain returned with a torrential vengeance.  Moreover, every-time I headed up an alpine loop, the rain turned to sleet and was so heavy it was all getting a little unpleasant with my mood sinking to match.

It was still raining heavily when I arrived at Konigsee, so I opted for another B&B and headed for the pub to drown my sorrows and try and find a route through the Austrian Alps into Slovenia.  I had found out during the day that all three of the passes that I had planned to use were remaining closed for another 1 to 2 weeks due to recent heavy snow - bummer!

13th May - Annoying niggles & the Black Forest to the Alpine Road

It was a cold night and I woke to a layer of frost on the grass around the tent.  The good news was my  combination of sleeping gear had kept me warm all night, the bad news was that, for some inexplicable reason, I had been mostly awake since 4 am and so was not in the best frame of mind.
‘A good hot shower will sort that’, I thought to myself and headed off to the shower block complete with ‘get this’ heated floors!
So not only was I the ‘only camper in the village’ I had my own suite of heated shower rooms to choose from - luxury!  However, normality resumed when of course the shower token decided to run out half way though and I had to rinse off with cold water!
Anyway, an inordinate amount of time later (I’m out of practice) I had packed up my camping gear, reloaded the bike and was heading off through the black forest past the picturesque church just down the road from the campsite.

For some reason my satnav did not like the route I had worked out and uploaded whilst in the UK.  

I had been trialling a new route planning app, which seemed to be great for planning this kind of trip and allowed each day’s planned trip to be uploaded to the sat nav.  I don't normally use a planned trip in this way, preferring to just have a destination in mind each day and then sort of follow my nose to get there, however I thought I’d give this method a go.

The problem seemed to be that the SatNav’s logic seemed to be fighting for dominance with the route planning app’s pre-planned route,  constantly trying to re-route my to a different road.  Very frustrating and I eventually turned it off and resorted to following my nose again.  I have since found out that you have to switch off -auto re-route’ on the sat nav to stop this impertinent techno behaviour .... its all in the user manual, but whoever reads those 🤣

Need less to say the black forest (B500) was all that had been promised, picturesque scenery, sweeping curves a riding delight (hence very few pictures as I had not mounted my helmet cam yet)

After a couple of hours I headed east towards Fussen and the start of the Alpine road.  The Alps beckoned in the distance.
I stopped for the night at a small B&B just outside Fussen and took a stroll down to the lake for something to eat.

12th May - Hook of Holland to the Black Forest

My first day over the channel was always going to be a bit of a drag, the main objective being to cover some distance and get to the Black Forest area, hence using the overnight ferry to Holland.

The choice of Black Forest as the first stop was inspired by a mate who had originally considered doing this first bit with me.  I had never been and so decided to wiz through anyway and see if it was worth a second longer visit some other time.

Its certainly a lovely area and, as I neared Baden-Baden and the famed B500, the 400 mile dash from the port faded into a distant memory and I went in search of a campsite.

Camping Herrenweiss is in a very quiet spot just off the B500 south of Baden Baden.  Its a small family run site and I was the only ‘camper in the village’.  Tent up, I headed off towards the village where there was apparently a small restaurant / bar.

Something told me I’d made a wise choice.... 

And there it was, the end of day 1.