Day 3

At first we headed out of the town and again crossed the Rhine where the river was even wider. We took the Autobahn heading South toward the Austrian Tyrol and the further we headed the steeper the gradient and more dramatic the scenery was.

The weather was very hot and the sky  brilliant blue with clear blazing sunshine. We then moved onto secondary roads and made our way into the mountains crossing bridges suspended over steep valleys.

The road became clogged with holiday traffic as we entered Austria and my car started to stutter. Luckily there was a lay-by ahead but it was closed due to a local festival.  Disregarding the tapes we had to park up and try to remedy the fault. O dear! Bonnet up, head tucked into engine bay, I looked up and a policeman had appeared, not happy that we had parked in a closed off lay-by. We had a bit of a language problem so the policeman sent for backup. In the meantime the other two quattro's where parked on the side of the road with Tim and Pete examining the engine. Another police car arrived and I remember thinking that it was turning into a bit of an international incident!

Luckily we are able to explain to the police that a fuel pump had overheated and we would have it fixed in a jiffy. I run two fuel pumps so simply disconnecting the faulty pump fixed the problem and we where on our way again waved off by the police. We continued to climb higher into the mountains and the glorious sunshine disappeared to be replaced by grey sky and rain.

 

My car started to stutter again and as the altitude increased Pete’s WR also began to suffer. Tim’s intergalactic mileage RR however ran just fine as usual! Later in the day the rain cleared and we had a good blast around some lovely hairpins arriving in Nauders for our scheduled overnight stop. We booked into the hotel and put cars to bed and despite a slight language problem we discovered that the term ‘Beer’ was universal.

 

 

 

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Day 4

We woke to a beautiful sunny day, the sky so clear that the views where breathtaking. This day was to be a no driving day so after breakfast we set out to explore the village on foot.

During our walk we spotted a chairlift leading to the top of a mountain with a sign for a restaurant pointing towards the summit and decided this would be a perfect place for lunch. Unfortunatly the chairlift had stopped for lunch so we decide to walk to the top of the mountain following a small road that criss-crosses toward the summit.

An full hour later we where still climing and almost everyone was exhausted with the exception of Pete who was enjoying every minute. Overheated and short of oxygen we come across a fork in the road and decided to give up heading upward and follow the very steep path down to the base, which as it happened turned out to be more arduous than going up.

 

Once we arrived back to the foot of the mountain near the chair lift we hitched a ride to the summit on the chairlift, (which by now has re-started). Once we reached the summet we had a well deserved meal and enjoyed the amazing views, not forgetting that all important well deserved beer!

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