We left Tennsee at 10.40am, in rain and low cloud with a temperature of just 8 degrees and much more snow on the nearby mountains. We're hoping for better things once we arrive in France. Having said that, our next stop, a one nighter, is still in Germany, Freiburg.
We began our journey heading south, into Austria, and towards Innsbruck. In fact it took us on the same route as when we visited Fussen, earlier in the week. After Innsbruck we headed north west passing Fussen and on to Kempten where we turned directly west towards Friedrichshafen, a city on the shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee in German) in southern Germany.
The weather by now had much improved, clear blue sky and warm sunshine. Lake Constance shone like a jewel as we travelled alongside it. In fact, by the end of the day, we had travelled the whole length of it from south to north.
"Lake Constance (known as Bodensee in German) is a 63km-long central European lake that borders Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Fed by the Rhine River, it’s composed of 2 connected parts, the Untersee (lower lake) and the larger Obersee (upper lake). Ringed by resort towns, it's a summer destination for sailing, windsurfing and swimming." (Not my words, taken from Google.)
In Germany, on Sundays and public holidays, trucks over 7.5 tonne and\or pulling trailers, are banned from the roads from midnight Saturday until 10 pm on Sunday. The consequence of this was that we just could not find a place to stop. All the parking areas, lay-bys etc., were filled with lorries. But at 2.30pm, hungry and tired as we had not stopped at all today, we found a parking area, just off the road, at Uberlingen,almost at the top of the lake and sadly, with a considerably restricted view, the lorry drivers having all the best views. We had been travelling now for four hours and had completed just 140 miles. Still 80 miles to go to Freiburg. 16 degrees and sunny we were able to sit out and eat our lunch.
Fed and rested, we moved off at 3.05pm. As we approached the exit to the carriageway, I felt the car not pulling as it should. A quick check revealed a flat offside tyre on the caravan. Our hearts sank. My mind went back to a small village we passed through some time ago where, with narrow lanes to reduce speed, I clipped the kerb on the offside. Strangely there was no sign of loss of air in the tyre when we stopped for lunch though and the incident had been several miles back.
I rang the Caravan Club, gave them the details, including, thanks to sat nav, the co-ordinates of where we were. They said ADAC, the German AA, would come out and take the caravan to a garage to replace the tyre. They will be with you in 15 minutes she said, one five, to make sure I understood. In the event, no one turned up until 5.45pm and, much to our dismay, with a breakdown vehicle too small to take our van. More calls to CC and, cutting a long story short, at 8.20pm ADAC arrived to remove the wheel, take wheel and me to a tyre centre 10 Kilometres away, opened especially for us at that time of night, and on a Sunday, return wheel and me to van and finally to replace wheel, sporting a brand new tyre.
Both the ADAC man and the guy who replaced the tyre, were great characters and couldn't have been nicer or more helpful, absolutely no complaints about that part of the service, just wished it had happened earlier in the event.
By 9.30pm ADAC man had left and we were ready to journey on. By now the rain had begun, again, and continued, heavy and constant, all the way to Freiburg. It made driving in the dark and rain, through roadworks and a series of hairpin bends, towing a caravan, quite interesting.
We arrived at our pre-booked site at 11.30pm. Barrier closed and no one around. We parked outside, put the legs down, eat tomatoes on toast and went to bed.
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