Sprint to the snow

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Our trip began with a sprint accross western europe to catch the remainder of the ski season in the alps. We had an afternoon crossing from dover to calais and ended up stopping the frist night in a half open campsite near Tournai in Belgium. Grand for one night but wouldn't want to have stayed their any longer.

The next day we made it as far as the black forest in Germany after a stop for lunch in Luxembourg. There were quite a few beautiful 'gasthaus' in the black forest but since it was off season they were all closed. We free camped that night at a forest car park at the top of one of the hills and woke up to some beautiful scenery and moved on towards the alps. Shilpa didn't even have time for a black forest gatteux!!!

The next day we saw some stunning scenery and finally got to the alps. We drove from the black forest down along the shore of Badensee (lake constance) into Austria with a view of Switzerland across the lake. We headed for the snow sure Arlberg region in Austria.

We first went to a small ski resort called Gaschurn. The first thing that struck us about Austria was the friendliness of the people the 2nd thing that struck us was how expensive the beers were An example of the friendliness was a guy who ran a snowboard shop (where Shilpa bought a very nice new board) asked us where we were staying and offered us to park our van outside his barn for free. Even offered electrical hook up to the van. Pity our van isn't advanced enough to have electrics!! We spent a couple of days boarding in this valley and had a great time.

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Photos

Secconds later
This was literaly 30 secconds after the previous pic. We were driving at 10mph in really thick fog and it suddenly cleared up.

Shilpa and her new board