Tuesday 5thAugust---Nothing doing, the kids needed the rest from traipsing around so we decided we’d stay put for the day. Not much happened until Les spilt boiling water on her foot, turning one of the mess tins she forgot the handles folded in.I’ve done it myself and it hurts, lots of cold water seemed to bring it under control and it wasn’t long before the blisters appeared.Being on the top of her foot we were expecting riding to be painful, but luckily for all of us it wasn’t.
Wednesday 6th August---Cornflakes for breakfast and proper milk in our coffee, yippee!!!Our last day before we begin heading back home, and we’re off to Switzerland.The idea was to go by coach for £40 for all of us, but it was full.The woman at the site office had told us it would only cost 5 euro’s each in tolls so we weren’t too worried about it, until we got to the border.It cost 55 euro’s (£32) to use the motorway to Zurich, fair enough it lasts for a year but we didn’t plan on coming back that soon.It took us an hour to get to the city, and as we were riding in alongside the river Limmat we were all surprised to see a bloke swimming up it the other way.You get pleasure boats going up and down here so I hope they saw him.The next problem was parking, where can you?We got to the train station and there were loads of bikes parked so we followed suit, when in Rome and all that.We chained the helmets and jackets to the bikes and went off for a walk round.
There was a tourist office in the station, which was lucky and we picked up a free tourist guide to help us find the best places to go, and off we went.The first stop was a kiosk for a drink and the obligatory post cards, we sat in the shade of the trees and wrote them out before heading off into the city.According to the guide, Bahnhoffstrasse is THE street to see, it has all the top designer shops-Cartier, Yves St Laurant etc, exclusive café’s and choccy shops.The price of things was a real eye opener, some of the watches in the windows were over £20,000 so god knows what they had inside.It was, as most of Europe, very clean, with none of the chewing gum and litter all over the place like you get in the UK.
At the end of the street you come to the Zurichsee, which is a massive lake.It’s a lovely place to just stand and stare into the distance, boats are going up and down, you have all the old buildings and churches, the mountains in the background, idyllic.We must have been there for about an hour when the belly’s started grumbling for food, so we decided to walk along the river back towards the bikes and get something there.The best bet looked like Pizza Hut so we went in and got ready to stuff our faces.We had 2 starters, 3 pizza’s between us, 4 puds and 4 drinks, once we were ready to leave we asked for the bill and we found out just how expensive Switzerland is---£72, I nearly fell off my chair.
By now it was getting towards 3pm so we headed off to the bikes and the ride back into Germany.I don’t believe it, we both had parking tickets on the bikes for 40 Francs, and so did all the locals who had parked there.We didn’t block anything, nor were we in a dangerous position so it must have been a jobsworth.Needless to say we got ready and high tailed it out of there to avoid meeting any Police, and within several minutes we were back on the motorway.I decided to stop at the border crossing to try and get some money back from the toll, but the tight gits wouldn’t give me anything, so we crossed back into Germany and back to the site.
The kids went straight back to the lake, but Les had the idea of packing all the stuff we didn’t need out for tomorrow onto the bikes, and putting the covers over them.That worked really well, apart from the tents, beds and bags plus the couple of bits we had on everything was away and ready to go.That night we discussed where to head for next, we didn’t really want to go back through France as we found it the dearest of the countries we’d been through, so we elected Luxembourg as our next visit, but we wouldn’t make it in one day.
At the end of the street you come to the Zurichsee, which is a massive lake. It’s a lovely place to just stand and stare into the distance, boats are going up and down, you have all the old buildings and churches, the mountains in the background, idyllic. We must have been there for about an hour when the belly’s started grumbling for food, so we decided to walk along the river back towards the bikes and get something there. The best bet looked like Pizza Hut so we went in and got ready to stuff our faces. We had 2 starters, 3 pizza’s between us, 4 puds and 4 drinks, once we were ready to leave we asked for the bill and we found out just how expensive Switzerland is---£72, I nearly fell off my chair.
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