Day 11 - Saturday 11th July
I woke up fairly early, around 7am, after a very interesting nights sleep, feeling relaxed and well rested. It was a very nice day but fairly cool. I had a very nice shower then had breakfast consisting of jam, bread and coffee. We set off at some time between around 9am and 10am.
Initially the roads were quite nice, until we got out of the mountains again, when they turned into typical tedious Swiss roads. We were negotiating our way around a city when we entered a tunnel. The GPS obviously didn't work in tunnels and unfortunately we missed our turn off which happened to be in a tunnel. This meant we accidentally joined a motorway. It was a few junctions before I realised the GPS had decided that seeing as we were on a motorway we may as well stop on, at which point I got us off the motorway.
Then I noticed the estimated time of arrival on the GPS. Our short stint on the motorway had knocked an hour off our journey! We were both very happy with that as it meant less time in Switzerland!
After a few more tedious miles we eventually crossed the border into Germany. It was like a breath of fresh air. The roads instantly became much nicer to ride on with nice sweeping bends, sensible speed limits, and overtaking allowed! We started enjoying our riding again as we continued into the Black Forest.
At around lunch time we spotted an open Italian restaurant in a small village, so we stopped. We both order pizzas, hoping not to repeat the problems in Italy! My pizza was amazing, without doubt the best pizza I've ever had. Nig really enjoyed his too.
It was only around 20 very enjoyable miles after that to our camp-site (Camping Alisehof). Again we were very lucky as the camp-site was very nice as were the people who ran it. The camp-site had good facilities, with a decent on-site shop and bar which sold the excellent local beers, which we sampled shortly after setting up the tents.
We got a pot-noodle type thing for tea, and had just finished eating it when the Dutch couple in the tent next to us came over and gave us a full plate of pasta each! It was very nice and we had a beer with them afterwards. They were called Maurice and Margaret, Maurice restored guitars which earned him enough to allow him to take very long holidays – lucky man. He had a very impressive mobile phone with integrated GPS which he showed us it in detail.
We had a few more excellent German beers and then turned in. Again I had to get fully zipped into my sleeping bag as it was fairly cold.