28 April – A misty rain this morning as we drove thru the battle fields of WW1. There are many grave sites of soldiers of the Commonwealth and the USA along the roadside. We drove thru the centre of Reims with lovely tree lined avenues and great buildings. Our camp for the night was at Verdun. This is the site of the biggest battle of WW1 where the Germans were determined to crush the Allies. The battle lasted for 300 days with 300,000 killed from each side!! We walked into town with a stop at the underground Citadel built by the French and accommodating 10,000 soldiers. There was a tour for 6 Euros which was great. We travelled thru the tunnels of the Citadel in an unmanned carriage stopping at various points where 3D re-enactments took place. Very enlightening and technically brilliant. The town of Verdun was very picturesque set either side of a river.

29 April – A lovely morning for our trip from Verdun to Molsheim. We are in the province of Alsace. The farms are beautiful with no fences and many fields of bright yellow Rape. We are using the N and D roads which are slower than the motorways but take us thru some stunning little villages. We swapped our gas bottle so we now have 2 full 15kg bottles. We will need to address the gas issue in 2 months time. Near the end of our drive we came into some hilly country with the first signs of grapes. The houses have a different style and look very Swiss or German. Not surprising as we are close to both countries. The camp was a short walk from the centre of Molsheim which was very quaint and is famous as the birth place of the Bugatti motor cars. Tomorrow we will visit Strasbourg so we explored the possibility of using the train.

30 April – Caught the 9:45 train to Strasbourg. A beautiful city with lots of narrow cobbled pedestrian streets and a fantastic cathedral. We wandered around the river to a café for lunch before returning on the train to “Lefty”. A short drive along the motorway to Eguisheim, a medieval village set on a hillside surrounded by vineyards. We walked into the village which has more narrow cobbled streets, lanes and squares with ancient wood and plaster buildings. At stages the roofs almost touched over the streets. We sat in the main square and had a wine/beer at a local bar before climbing the hill back to the camp.

1 May – Today we are off to Switzerland. We stumbled over the border (Switzerland is not part of the EU) while trying to find a petrol station. A bit of a surprise! Straight away we were into mountainous country and we followed up some narrow gorges and thru some long tunnels to our destination on the shores of Lake Bienne. We had a minor navigation disaster. We have decided not to use any toll motorways as we would have had to prepay for this privilege. Our GPS tried to take us up a route with a height restriction of 3.1 metres. “Lefty” is 3.2m so after about 15kms we had to hook a “U” and return to an N road. Lesson well learned! No more minor roads. The villages in the mountains are like post cards with chalets on any flattish land. Today is Labour Day and although it is Sunday many businesses seem to be hosting a picnic or barbeque for their staff at work. One even was giving the staff helicopter rides. After what seemed like a long drive we found our camp site. It is the school holidays so the camp is quite full.

2 May – We cycled to the local train station and after some investigations purchased 2 x 1 day tickets from a ticket machine. After some further thought we decided that we had made a mistake and that the ticket we had bought would not be sufficient to get us to Bern. We asked the first local that arrived and he thought it would be fine. Then he opened a can of beer. (not the first for the day) Should we trust a guy on his second can at 9:00am?? The next local could not speak English but the third guy, sober and upstanding, assured us our tickets were fine. As it happened there were no inspectors on the train, so we never found out for sure but the penalty is huge if you try and cheat the system. Bern was great with lovely shops and buildings. It is set on a hill with a river below and some spectacular views towards the mountains. Highlights were the Parliament Buildings and the Bern bears. Back on the train (still worried about our tickets) and back to camp for lunch. What should have been a short drive around Lake Geneva to our camp just passed Geneva took ages as we struck the rush hour. The camp is right on the lake side and we had a beautiful sunset. We will cycle back to Geneva tomorrow for a better look. The weather is now really hot! (25C and sunny)

3 May – It rained heavily in the night and is very cool this morning. We cycled back to Geneva (6kms) along the lake. This seems a very sophisticated city dominated by the Rhone River and the lake, with up market shops and many libraries and museums. There is a huge version of the fountain in Oriental Bay – squirts 140m into the air. Also there are many boats and yachts in the marinas. It started to drizzle for our return ride and eventually rain set in for our drive up the other end of Lake Geneva where we are camped for the night. We crossed back into France for a short part of the trip. The borders are very strange in this part of the world, mainly to keep Geneva in Switzerland and not France. It must be confusing for the locals as currency and road rules change at each border crossing. Before dark the clouds have cleared and we have high mountains on three sides.