2016 Road Trip

[simonc]

Best part of my day @Sailor. Nice and early in the office, no bloody phones going, log on and drool at your photos with a coffee and a fag. Being selfish, I suggest you don't go home, just keep travelling and keep posting to keep me happy
By the way, those view of the Stelvio are magnificent. I can almost hear Michael Caine and the other lads singing "We are the self preservation, society..." Thanks once again for sharing.
I urge you to continue, maybe this time start at Z working backwards from there.

[Sailor]

Thanks @simonc

We were too knackered to sort out any pictures yesterday evening, so the bulletins are a day behind for the time being.

The Forcola di Livigno is a great pass, leading from Italy to Switzerland at the Bernina Pass.




We headed north, collecting the "P". (Or is that taking the P?)




The Albula Pass was next:-




... and after a good lakeside lunch near Silvaplana, we crossed the Maloja.





Somewhere in the middle, we encountered a typical Swiss railway scene.




Back in Italy, we liked Chiavenna. As with the Stelvio, we found a viewpoint similar to one we'd stumbled across via Google.




We had altered our plans by quite a bit by now and headed for the Italian/Swiss lakes. This was a sort of mistake. The top of Como didn't invite us to stay. It was Torremolinos with fresh water. Lugano was full to bursting with traffic. Locarno was no better.
We found our "Q" though:



"R" would be our overnight stop.


We checked into an 89-room hotel in the small village ... and found that we were the only guests.


Here's Johnny!

[simonc]

Stunning - many thanks. Although nowhere near as epic as your alphabetti-join the-dots-athon, tomorrow I'll be blasting down the North-South highway (Malaysia's very own M1), for a quick pork-run to Singapore. As far as scenery is concerned there ain't nothing to see apart from acres of palm trees and abandoned/conked out/burned out Protons on the hard shoulder. I'll take a few piccys if I see anything of note. Thanks again @Sailor, I'm envious of your lovely trip.
By the way, did you see the twins in the lift lobby?

[wurlycorner]

Only guests in a hotel that big... does that tell you something?

[Sailor]

Only guests in a hotel that big... does that tell you something?

Yep. It cost me a fortune to buy some privacy.




(or did I just make that up?)

[Sailor]

We found another hotel nearby that was just as big and just as empty. Re is a pilgrimage destination, based on a story about a painting bleeding real blood. The hotels win when the pilgrim buses arrive. The basilica is astonishing.



Off to Swissland and our "S"


"T" wasn't far away.



The next stop was Moosalp, a place with parking meters in the middle of woods, but great views.



"U" and "V" followed.




We were now heading east again. There was another pass to explore: the Nufenen. It's now definitely in my top five. This is what you see looking south from 2480m:-



The day ended in Andermatt. V-Power on tap in the middle of the small town.



And just to let us know there was no escape ...

[simonc]

This photographic trip is really enjoyable, @Sailor.Thanks for posting them. I may plagiarize your idea for a Malaysian version. Stay tuned.

[Sailor]

The story goes that a deal was made with the devil to enable a crossing to be built over a gorge just north of Andermatt. This finally opened the Gotthard massif to north-south through traffic. The current bridges are the 3rd and 4th to be built there. Only one of them is open for vehicles now.



We went back into town. Time to go west - over the Furka Pass, famous for the Aston-Mustang chase in Goldfinger:-



The Furka drops down deep in the valley at Gletsch ...



... and the road climbs straight up again on the Grimsel Pass.



We headed for the Reichenbach Falls, scene of the Holmes-Moriarty denouement. Wet, but we'd seen better, in particular the Aareschlucht, a stunning ravine:-



Our next stop would be Grindelwald. We took a quick look at the north face of the Eiger in the rain, failed to find the road used in some PS1 rally game I can just about remember, and moved on.

[wurlycorner]

Where/how do you pick your route and what you're heading off to see, before you set off on these epic adventures sailor?

[Sailor]

Where/how do you pick your route and what you're heading off to see, before you set off on these epic adventures sailor?

Last year's theme was "stringed musical instruments", so we researched a few places where guitars and violins were made, then joined the dots. We also allowed ourselves to get side-tracked if we saw or heard of something interesting.

This year was a hybrid. The 'alphabet' theme is pure whimsy; joining the dots had to be by interesting roads where possible. Any urban or other human-based stuff, we took as we found it.

We didn't stop in our "W". (The picture's blurred, but not because I was exceeding the speed limit!)



We stayed in Lauterbrunnen, in the valley of the 72 waterfalls. This was the evening view from our hotel balcony:-


And looking to the right, we could see the Jungfrau:-


In the middle of the tourist stuff, a veg garden!



Many of the waterfalls could be seen from the road. We visited two of them.
The Staubbachfall has a single drop of 297m:


The Trummelbachfaelle is a sytem of at least 10 intertwining cascades inside the mountain, formed from glacier-melt that's worn its way down through the rock:




We turned for home. There were still a couple of days to go. Gruyeres made for a good break.




Our stop for the night was in the old lakeside town of Murten:


Some older features have been retained!