Camping pitch with a view

Fusina is a locality on the West side of Venice Lagoon from which there is an hourly boat service across the Lagoon to Venice and also has a very large and well established campsite.  It’s busy even in September, but the facilities are good and they never seem to get overloaded, even though the site has a large number of static caravans and camping “sheds” as well as pitches for touring units, of which motorhomes predominate although there are also lots of tents and a few caravans.

I saw relatively few motorcycles during our stay, discounting the small scooters which are often carried on motorhomes to provide local transport, but there were a few bikers camping in tents.  While in UK I admire tenters as well as sympathise with them of cold or wet days, in this part of the world I suspect camping in tents requires particularly thick skin.  The temperature was till over 25 late in the evening and stayed well over 20 degrees Celsius until morning – and there were midges, lots of midges.  Sleeping in a tent can’t have been much fun.

But the reason for staying here has very little to do with touring and once on site none of the bikes ever moved until the owners packed up and moved on; instead Camping Fusina provides a relatively inexpensive place to stay in order to visit Venice itself, which is also why we chose to come here again.  Part of the campsite offers waterside pitches and although these are quickly taken up if they are vacant, it’s usually possible to move on to one on your second or third morning if you want to, as we were able to do.  Shade is vital while you sit and watch the world go by across the Lagoon and the deep water shipping channel passes close to the West shore to add to the spectator interest.  It’s quite a place.

So is Venice itself of course, even though walking the streets and crossing the bridges is a perspiring experience in these hot conditions – and probably would be even for skinny Brits.  Seeking out shade and somewhere to sit to cool off a bit become necessary at frequent intervals.

Most Wingers will have a finite appetite for architecture and art and I’m no exception but Venice is a bit special.  Even though you are sharing your experiences with enormous numbers of other tourists it’s certainly worth the sweat and the struggle.  Ideally you would be absolutely stinking rich to enjoy the comforts and style which Venice can offer such as the liberal use of water taxis to get around and the many stylish, but very expensive, eateries.  But even for a fat (and therefore particularly perspiring) Brit who doesn’t run to such expenses, Venice is a delightful place to visit.

There are lots of churches into which you can wander into for somewhere sit and cool off for a few minutes without being bothered, and at the same time admire the incredibly ornate decorations and skilful workmanship which has gone into them.  There are bars and cafes in the less well trampled alleyways where you can buy a drink or a snack without having to increase your mortgage.   But as you get closer to S Mark’s Square everything doubles in price and if you want to indulge yourself with a cup of coffee actually sitting at one of the stylish cafes in the Square you should expect to pay over 10€ for the pleasure.

French bikers doing it in a tent

Venice is a wonderful place for people watching and we found a splendid spot, shaded in the afternoons, on the steps of Salute, the grand church built by a rich Venetian in grateful thanks for his wife’s survival of an illness, which is across and just up the Grand Canal from St Marks Square and the Doge’s Palace.  This is also opposite some of the best Palaces on the Grand Canal, one or two of which are still private residences.  There’s a constant churning of the water with the passage of water taxis, vaparettos (water buses) and among all this apparent chaos gondolas also make their way, plying their tourist trade.  How the Gondoliers manage to stay on their elevated perches in those choppy waters I really can’t work out; presumably the odd one does fall in and get a soaking but they seem pretty good at avoiding it.

Italian Ice Cream is enjoyable almost any time but when you’re boiling hot in Venice it’s particularly enjoyable, if not life saving.  On one visit we took pot luck with a cafe and enjoyed a latte coffee(for Management) and a beer for me, which due to a misunderstanding turned out to be a large, 660 ml bottle, of Peroni, the local stuff, for only 8€, which is what we paid for two plain coffees earlier on in a more fashionable spot.

Across the Grand Canal to the Doge's Palace

Because we’ve been before we could take our time and cherry pick the things we really did want o see – and in my case avoid the experiences I didn’t want to repeat.   In St Marks Square there is a large bell tower, popular with tourists because you can see across the City and out on to the lagoon in all directions so the first time we went to Venice we made a beeline for it.  Even though there were lots of people in the Square there was a surprisingly short queue for the lift at the foot of the Tower so in we went.

You emerge into a space about the size of two tennis courts where there are large openings in the structure offering views on all sides and through which a cooling breeze could also be enjoyed.  There were a lot of people up there so it was a bit of a bun fight but it was nevertheless enjoyable – or rather it was until Management casually observed that the Tower was swaying.  Na, said I, surely not – but it blooming well was.

Call me a big softie is you like but a medieval tower which is swaying from side to side when there is only a gentle breeze can’t be right – and I remembered from the guide book that this thing had already fallen down once and had to be rebuilt.  And the guidebook has also explained that everything in Venice is built on mud using a technique involving oak piles driven into the mud to provide foundations upon which the stonework can rest.   Oak piles can only be a maximum length of the main trunk of a tree, say fifty feet at most, so no matter how many of them there were underneath it, I couldn’t see how this 200 feet high tower could possibly be stable and clearly, because it was swaying in a gentle breeze, it wasn’t.  “Come on love” said I, “where going”.

There was a small matter of a very big queue for the lift going down, seemingly populated largely by Germans, who have always struck me as potentially defensive when it come to queue  jumping.  I gave this no need at all as I went more or less directly to the head of the queue and marched into the next available lift, dragging Management behind me.  I didn’t actually have to turn on them and declare that we had won the war, not them but if necessary I certainly would have done so. We escaped from the Tower and left St Marks Square to its fate.

If you're really, really rich you can live in one of these

The Bell Tower didn’t fall down again that day and hasn’t done since but although we’ve been back to Venice twice since then I haven’t been back up that Tower and have no plans to do so.  Management went up again when we visited Venice with Bill and Barbara but I found a shady spot at the far end of the Square which I calculated was outside the potential debris zone, regretting that I didn’t have her covered by life insurance.

I thought she was mad and I suppose she must be, staying married to me, but quite why she’s mad enough to go up 200 feet high swaying brick Tower which balanced on a few bits of wood rammed in mud and yet is so risk averse that she doesn’t come on the bike any more does make a lot of sense to me.  My riding isn’t that bad.

The quieter side canals are also very attractive

The boat ride between Venice and our camp site was a pleasant and relaxing experience because it goes fast enough to generate a cooling breeze even when there isn’t one.   Neither was it cold when we came back after dark one evening.  There had to be a system which allowed the boat skipper to navigate the unlit channels across the Lagoon and I didn’t notice that he had his radar going but it was still an impressive bit of work.  And they look so young these boat skippers, as if they are barely out of school.

We got chatting to another British couple, as you do on campsites when you recognise a British number plate on a vehicle; not that I’ve seen any British bikes so far, just cars and motorhomes.  They had come from Lake Garda to get here, which is our next destination, which they mentioned had been extremely busy, with motorhomes queuing to get on to camp sites, which was surprise.  Camping Fusina has filled up more than expected while we’ve been here too.

Apparently there are lots and lots of retired Germans moving South in motorhomes to find warmer weather now that the children are back in school.  I suppose that’s exactly what we’re doing too so I should feel resentful or them doing it as well – but of course I do.  I have visions of towels being laid out on vacant campsite pitches at dawn to reserve a place.  I won’t remind them that we won the War unless I really have to but they will be dealing with a man who made a successful escape from a Venetian Bell Tower against German competition, so I won’t be standing for any nonsense either.

And just in case I looked up the site we want to use on the internet and phoned ahead using Skype to reserve a place.  It was full up and we have had to delay our departure from Venice by 24 hours in order to be accommodated.  Handy thing, t’internet.

Flying on instruments

We crossed a high alpine mountain pass once before in cloud and rain on a biking tour which turned out to be quite a challenge, especially one rider who was of short stature and had a tall windscreen with no “swiper”, with the result that he had to stand on his footpegs to see where he was going – not much fun while you’re trying to negotiate tight climbing bends with on-coming traffic which seemed far too large to be using that road at all.

This time it was easier, both because we had four wheels on the tarmac and it also turned out to be an unexpectedly good and wide road.  I had planned non-motor way routes through Austria to avoid the complicated toll system they operate which requires vehicles over 3.5 tons, as which our motorhome just qualifies, to use an electronic toll collection device called a Go Box.  There are perfectly viable non-motorway routes through Austria and so one of these boxes always seemed to me to be an unnecessary complication.

Unfortunately however fate had decreed that this time we would have a Go Box because I’d driven East on the (free) German A8 motorway one exit too far and ended up in Austria, still on the motorway, by accident.  I had been slavishly following the satnav as it took us into Berchtesgadenland, failing to take notice of the signposts about vignettes until I saw “Ostereich 2.5 km”, by which time it was too late. We were able to stop at the last German Services, where they sell Vignettes and Go Boxes,  but there was no route back into Germany.  I had no alternative but to buy a Go Box.

Our route would take us off the motorway at the very next exit and thence back into Germany to Berchtesgaden, a matter of a few kilometres, but it wouldn’t, I was advised, make sense to risk the 250€ fine (plus the cost of a Go Box) for not carrying one, even for this very short distance.  The police, we were warned, were extremely vigilant and unforgiving.

Our unwelcome companion - the Go Box

The good news was supposed to be that we would be able to return the Go Box as soon as we left the Motorway (to return to Germany) and get a refund for the unused part of the 75€ advance toll we had had to pay.  We would lose whatever the toll would be (charged by the kilometre) and the 5€ handling charge for issuing a Go Box, but we could hope to get away with 15-20€ for our mistake.  There were lots of places you could return a Go Box.  In theory.

We tried several places without success.  There is supposed to be somewhere at every border crossing where you can return a Go Box but we found that in practice the border petrol stations only sold Vignettes.  As I write this in Italy our Go Box is still with us and we hope to return it as we drive back home through Austria in due course.  The moral of this story, a lesson I should have learned by now, is that you should always check the route your satnav is intending to take you before you start driving or riding it.

So it was on a cloudy and drizzly morning that we left our delightful Stellplatz in Oberau to head South for warmer climes.  Driving through Berchtesgadenland was scenic, even in the rain, and even though we had to take quite a big loop around to the North West to get around the rim of mountains before turning South, it was not at all unpleasant.  It was as we crossed into Austria and started climbing the Alps proper than we entered cloud.

On a good day it looks like this

The B107 is, according to the map, both scenic and the most direct route South from Berchtesgaden towards Italy so it was the obvious way to go.  What the map doesn’t tell you is that the avaricious Austrians charge a hefty toll for the privilege of using it, as they also do (in addition to the motorway Vignette) as they also charge for their big non-motorway tunnels.  Twenty kilometres along the B107, so too far to make it worthwhile going back to divert) there are toll booths where you are invited to pay 29€ (or 15€ for a motorcycle) to drive the middle bit.

Although this seemed a bit steep, especially for motorcycles, it is a well constructed and maintained road and, if you weren’t driving it in cloud as we were, it doubtless offers splendid views.  There’s an 8 km diversion part way along it which leads up to a glacier but on the day we crossed it made no sense even to attempt that bit.  It’s called the Grossglocknerstrasse and regarded as a very attractive biking road.

Occasionally we broke through the top of our cloud and saw more than 50 meters ahead but this was the exception.  There wasn’t much traffic and the various cafes and rest stops, of which there are quite a few, were more or less deserted.  It was surprising how many bikes were still using the road in these conditions but I suppose some of them, like us, needed to make the ground – although why we didn’t stick it out in Berchtesgaden for a day or two if necessary until the weather improved before crossing the Alps I don’t really know.  I suppose it was the attraction of feeling the sun on our back in Italy which did it.

The weather improved fairly quickly as we got down the other side and into Italy and the diversion we took to drive through the Dolomites was very worthwhile.  It’s a very pretty area and worth spending more time and it has decent biking roads too.  Unfortunately the dolomites area (and Italy generally) is less generous with overnight stopping places for motorhomes, forcing the use of camp sites, of which there aren’t always a lot a round.

Better weather as we got into Italy

Our German Stellplatz Guide, which in its second volume lists stopping places outside Germany, didn’t list much in the way of stopping places in the Dolomites themselves so we aimed for an area just to the South, where a couple of promising stopping places were listed.  We had had a fairly long day and it was only an hour or so before dark when we got to the second one of these having, foolishly as it turned out, bypassed the first one without even a recce.  In retrospect we should at least have given it a peep because the second one, in a designated area of a very large hospital car park (imagine that happening in UK!) was full up.  There was plenty of room to park elsewhere in the car park but we weren’t confident this would go down well and didn’t fancy being woken up and being told to move on, so staying there would have to be a last resort.

Unfortunately it was looking a bit like it was the last resort because there was nothing else in the Stellplatz Guide, until a very helpful local recognised our plight and directed us to another “Camer Area”(as the Italians call them) a few kilometres away.  We listened very carefully to the directions and set off.

The roundabouts we were told to expect appeared, as did the large brewery we would pass, then it started to get complicated.  The large car park opposite the brewery had several lorries which looked like they were over-nighting, so if necessary we could come back and use that; any port in a storm.

The Dolomites are certainly worth a detour

Beyond the brewery we were warned that we had to turn left around some houses down a narrow road and the Camper Area was “facin”, which I took to mean facing us after this turn. We caught a quick glimpse of a motorhome signpost as we rounded the houses but after that it got confusing and we gave up.  We went back to the brewery car park to choose which lorry to hide behind for the night.

Management cooked us omelettes which filled a hole nicely and the 30 minute break we took also probably helped to clear the brain.  The car park had somewhat surprisingly started to fill up with cars and the people getting out of them were all wearing passes around there necks.  The penny dropped that there was a beer festival of some sort on and it was on quite a big scale.  I had visions of all these vehicles, including the lorries, disappearing towards midnight leaving us sticking out like a sore thumb on an otherwise empty car park which would then, since there was only one entrance over a little bridge, get locked up.

We decided, hopefully with clearer brains, to have another go at finding the Camper Area before darkness fell.  This time we paused to have a proper look at the motorhome sign as we did the turn around the houses and saw that it said “Locality Facen” underneath it – and further around this turn there was a signpost to “Facen”.  The penny dropped that Facen was a place.

In due course we came upon Facen, a small hamlet with an alarmingly narrow main street.  By this time dusk was upon us and weaving our way between the houses along this street was beginning to get me wondering how the heck I would be able to reverse out of the place in the dark if we came to an impossibly narrow section.  We were already driving between houses with only a foot or so to spare and the road had varying camber, so that we were also swaying markedly from side to side.

A safe haven in Facen

Then we came to a fork in the road and it was by no means clear which way to go.  There were no signs to be seen so I stopped.  An on-coming car and one which had been following us had an interesting encounter trying to get past us but I didn’t care; in gathering darkness I didn’t want to end up in any sort of narrow cul de sac and the chances were that at least one of the directions available to me would be just that sort of thing.  In the event the driver of the following car, as she finally untangled herself from the opposition and got past us, peeped her horn and pointed to the left.  That was good enough for me.

We weren’t quite there and it did take a miss and turning back once it was clear that we had left the hamlet, but as we came back into it the view of the Camper Area and its signposts was clear and we had no difficulty identifying it.  There were marked spaces for five motorhomes and only two were in use – and that by cars, which is why we hadn’t recognised the place for what it was immediately – and it was level tarmac.  We had found a safe haven for the night at last.

Within a few minutes of parking up full darkness had fallen but we were comfortably parked.  Indeed it was better than that because I got a TV signal straight away, as Management was pouring us a well-earned drink, we could relax and enjoy the UK weather forecast of wind and rain.  It’s not nice to gloat about poor weather back home when you’re away on holiday abroad and hopefully we don’t do that, but somehow if UK is ticking off some of its ration of bad weather while you’re away it gives hope that the law of averages will favour batter weather for our return there.

There was the distinctive noise of glass bottle being dropped into a recycling container as we unwound and shouting and whistling noises from the nearby floodlit sports field where the local team were training, but we didn’t care; we were set up securely for the night and we enjoyed a night cap to seal of sense of relief and pleasure.

And in the morning we had a nice outlook too

The following morning we awoke to more crashing sounds of breaking glass and looked out to find a lovely view across a valley and to receive pleasant greetings from the locals as they passed by walking their dogs or taking their empty bottles to the recycling area next door.  Judged by the amount crashing of bottles as we were drifting off to sleep and again early in the morning, the residents of this little hamlet do quite a bit of drinking and only the brazen ones dump their empties in daylight.

With only a short run of 70 miles to our holiday destination, a campsite on the Western side of Venice Lagoon, we were at leisure to make an unhurried start. There was traffic and road works along the way which held us up and at one stage we were puzzled by a prolonged stoppage of traffic in both directions until a large tree was suddenly felled in our path. You can’t fault the Italians for laying on plenty of entertainment as your travel in their Country.

Camping Fusina is a large and popular camp site because it’s got good facilities and a waterside view across the Lagoon and it’s only a boat ride from there to Venice.  We’d used it before and so the approach, which is through a large industrialised area, held no surprises and indeed we felt we almost recognised the young ladies plying their trade at the road junction although I suppose there were a different lot, two years having passed since our last visit which might be the duration of a career in their profession.  They seemed more organised this time, with little folding seats and sunshade umbrellas to use while they waited patiently for customers.

The Campsite itself is a different world, an enclosed haven of shaded tranquillity – or at least it is until evenings, when the bar gets a bit lively and the music is loud.  There seemed to be an awful lot of young Australians there, which might have had something to do with the vitality of the social scene.

We arrived about lunchtime by when the temperature was already getting towards 30 degrees Celsius so it was quite a change from cloudy and rainy Austria.  It didn’t take long to dump the motorhome’s tanks and top up with drinking water, get parked, get the chairs out and start sipping a cool beer.  We would leave the tourist stuff in Venice for another day.  So far we had been wanderers but now, for the next few days at least, we would be staying put.

A transit stop near Munich

CLICK ON ANY IMAGE FOR AN ENLARGEMENT

Sorry it’s been quite on the Blog recently – I’ve been touring Europe with very little internet access.  Here’s a tale of what Management and I have been up to during the past week or so.

We had booked a Channel Crossing for our late Summer holiday but nothing else, so it was the weather forecast which persuaded us to go East instead of South to the Loire, which had been our Plan A.  It had been raining as we left Lancashire but we got clear of it not long after crossing the Manchester Ship Canal and apart from a few isolated or overnight showers we struck lucky ever since.

Our friends in Maidstone have a place for us to park our motorhome and yet again offered us an evening meal, so we woke up and set off without disturbing them to make an early Channel Tunnel crossing.  Breakfast was a snatched bacon butty in the Folkstone Terminal and well before 9am (European Time) we were on the A16 heading for Belgium.

A small town called Mettlach, just into Germany and just off the motorway after Luxemburg has a handy overnight parking place for motorhomes which we had used before so that, since we were heading East rather than South, was our aiming point.  We had used this place before on the way home with disastrously expensive consequences because the Town has a large Villeroy and Bosch factory and an associated factory outlet store, in which Management got seriously carried away but this time we were outbound, we had discovered just how much she overloaded the van in the process of a two trolley shopping expedition last time (crockery is heavy in large quantities) and I was therefore forwarded.  We arrived in Mettlach on a Sunday when the shop was closed and we left before it opened the following morning.

Counting England, our starting point, we had driven in five countries by the time we got to our first Continental night stop.  We’ve found that  when you are making these fairly long transit drives to get to your chosen holiday area (n this case in was now to be Lake Garda in Northern Italy, it helps to have a night stop in mind which you can reach by 5pm or so, especially if you want to use a German Stellplatz (a designated motorhome parking place which is either free or only about 5€) rather than pay 25-30€ for a camping site.  Even outside the school holidays these sites often fill up early.

Up market Motorhomesat a Munich Dealership - priced from 200,000€

The weather wasn’t bad but it wasn’t wonderful and the forecast was worse, so eastwards we headed.  Toll-free motorways in Belgium, Luxemburg and Germany coupled with cheap fuel in Luxemburg – always with a fill up if you are passing – were an attractive option since we could make distance reasonably quickly.  Had we been heading for the Loire Valley we would have been using the French N Roads, equivalent to UK  A roads, to avoid the tolls.

Diesel fuel is a big factor in the cost of a motorhoming holiday these days, so I had decided that we didn’t need to rush so we would cruise at a steady 57-58 mph – fast enough to avoid being overtaken by lorries but also quieter and more relaxing as well as economical.  Of course our journey times were longer but we could still do 250 -350 miles per day without difficulty.  We saved at least 15% in fuel compared with 60-65 mph which we had used in previous years.  Our motorhome is capable of doing considerably higher speeds than that but then the fuel consumption really escalates.

We’d been to Lake Garda twice before and the route we’d used last time had worked well, especially on the way home in that we had driven from a site a Mals, just into Italy, all the way through Austria and Germany to Mettlach in one go.  This wasn’t going to be possible outbound because apart from the lower cruising speeds I was restricting myself to, we would be climbing rather than descending the Alps. Somewhere around the lunch stop en route to Mals, or more likely an extra night stop en route to Mals, Plan B was replaced with Plan C and we headed further East into Germany, towards Munich.

For the less well heeled - note the modified badge on the front

Not that big cities are attractive to us but since we clearly couldn’t comfortably get to Mals and we were thinking of going on from Lake Garda to re-visit Venice, we could go further into Bavaria than previously and then head South directly to Venice, taking in Lake Garda on the way back. Hence we made another overnight stop at a large motorhome dealer just West of Munich, the biggest dealership I’ve ever come across outside America, and then continued into Berchtesgadenland, the bulge which Germany’s very South Eastern corner makes into Austria, looking on the map as if at some stage in history there had been a bit of a land grab.

In fact the geography of the area explains why the border has the unexpected bulge because the border follows the line of the high ground, as it often does in alpine regions.  The border would develop where the mountains imposed a natural barrier between neighbouring habitable, relatively lowland, areas.

Berchtesgadenland  is a county-sized area surrounded on three sides by very high mountains between which lies staggeringly beautiful countryside peppered with lesser mountains and hills so that from high mountain sides on the rim there are some really splendid views to the West and North.

Which is why, somewhere along the line Hitler and his cronies took a fancy to it as their mountain retreat and headquarters.  Between his rise to power in 1933 and 1938 Oberslzberg, one of the villages above the Town of Berchtesgaden was completely taken over to build a Headquarters complex for the Nazi Party leadership which included an elaborate underground bunker system as well as a sizeable SS military garrison and grand homes for the key leaders.

Our directory of Stellplatz found us a nice place to stay in a neighbouring village called Oberau which was on a terraced area overlooking the valley which had the essentials plus a bar, where each evening the owner served large (660ml) bottles of beer for only 2€.  It was a bit of a challenge to get to and would have been more or less impossible to find without satnav but we got there and very nice it was too.  Putting me to shame for my timidity on the narrow climbing approach road there was a large (11 ton) Phoenix motorhome already on site.

At only 12€ per night including electricity this place was a very good deal.  Management had stocked up well with food before we left so we hadn’t needed to do any shopping so far and diesel had gone on to the credit card, so these were the first Euros we had spent.  Our failure to contribute to the ailing German economy was however remedied the following day when went to visit Hitler’s Tea Room.

The Alps beckon - heading for Berchtesgadenland

During a 13 month period in 1937-1938, a Tea Room, known in English as the Eagles Nest, was built on top of one of the high mountain peaks from which there were spectacular views across much of Berchtesgadenland and to Salzburg in Austria.  It was a remarkable engineering achievement consisting of a specially constructed access road to within 150 metres or so of the peak where there was a parking area and an entrance into a tunnel from which a lift (elevator) would take the visitors the remaining distance to emerge inside the building at the top.

It had a large circular reception room with a huge fireplace and a panoramic view.  There was a large dining room and kitchen and many other service rooms, including one containing a submarine diesel engine used as a standby power generator.  A special heating system was installed to stop the tunnels from icing up in the winter.

It was designed to be a place to bring people to impress them with what the Third Reich could achieve.  It was building which would appear, by the standards of the time, to be almost on the top of the world.  This was where Hitler received the British Prime Minister Nevile Chamberlain in 1938.

In fact Hitler didn’t much like going there and used it only infrequently, preferring to entertain visiting VIPs in his Borg (castle/mansion) in the village below.  Apparently he didn’t enjoy the drive up to the Eagle’s nest; the climbing turns and precipitous drops made him queasy. Management found it painless enough in the big bus we rode up in and thought he must have been a bit of a wimp.

Hitler's Mountain-top Tea Room - he didn't use it much

The grand homes, garrison buildings and the underground bunker system in the village below were bombed by the Allies in April 1945 and what was left was blown up by the Americans after World War Two.  But the Eagles Nest wasn’t bombed and the locals persuaded the Americans not to blow it up and it was eventually opened by the Bavarian State Government as a Tourist attraction, in which capacity it continues to serve to this day.

Plenty of car parking has been provided in the area of the former village and former garrison and bunkers, of which barely a trace now exists, from which special buses transport visitors up the same approach road which made Hitler queasy.  After reaching the top the visitors pass through the grand entrance to the access tunnel to enter the same large, commodious and brass-lined lift which Hitler used to reach the top.   The submarine engine still serves as the standby generators but hopefully they’ve changed the lift cables since 1938 because it gets an awful lot of use by the tourists, twenty or more of whom are squeezed in for every trip when it’s busy.

Stellplatz with a view

The former reception and dining rooms at the Eagle’s Nest are now a restaurant but apart from the restaurant furniture (and some conspicuously modern toilets for the visitors, the building retains its original features.  It’s quite a place.

There are many mountain-top views and restaurants in the Alps and the Eagle’s Nest is not the highest, nor does it give the best of the views. But it is a nice view, it does have a history and it is worth visiting.  Down at the car park there is also a Documentation Centre which tells the story of the takeover of the village for the Nazi Headquarters but that didn’t appeal so we gave it a miss.

Berchtesgaden town was a useful source of a couple of 4mm bolts to repair my collapsed bed in the motorhome but otherwise, not least because it’s not at all hospitable for parking motorhomes, we gave it a miss.    After a couple of nights on the delightful Stellplatz in Oberau we woke up to cloud and light rain and decided it was time to head further South, through Austria and over the Alps into Italy.

Therein lies another tale of Go Boxes and unexpected tolls which I’ll return to later.

Approaching the Millau Bridge

Dave Sharp, who writes the Wanderers write-ups, has a colourful and entertaining style and this report of their Summer Tour to the South of France and the Pyrenees is no exception.

Lots of good photos and lots and lots of words – a good read of what was obviously a very enjoyable tour – except that is for the gravillions and Tina’s Dripping Tush, whatever that might have been.  Perhaps its Yorkshire dialect.

The Group met up at a hotel in Kent before crossing via Eurotunnel, then rode all the way down through France staying at Tours, Narbonne and Lourdes, where the aim was presumably to cure Barry of his hyper-articulation disorder.  I’ve spoken to him since he got back and I don’t think it’s really worked.

It’s a story of spectacular and sometimes challenging roads but above all of Wingers enjoying themselves together with their bikes and trikes.

You can read Dave’s write up by clicking here.

Good food, plenty of parking for bikes

Grahame Murray, the Landlord of the White Lion Hotel in Ambleside, is a biker himself and he’s also very hospitable to Wingers.

Bill Squires and I were in Ambleside a few weeks ago doing a couple of charity rides and knowing the White Lion from previous visits, it was the obvious place to spend our brief lunch break.  There’s a nice pub-grub menu and, for Wingers, the extra benefit of a substantial discount on the published prices.  Wearing GoldWing emblazoned biking gear seemed to do the trick and our bill got discretely discounted.  We paid half price for two meals, so two for one.  Pretty generous in a tourist town.

Grahame will do two-for-one on selected meals any time and also on weekday B&B for anyone who arrives on or with a GoldWing and can produce a membership card for a GoldWing club – that’s any GoldWing club, even GWOCGB!    If there’s any difficulty getting the discount ask for Grahame but do it discretely so as not to upset the tourists who will paying full price!.

Grahame doing what he's good at

The White Lion is on the left on the downhill section of the one way circuit around the centre of Ambleside and the car park is on the left just before you reach it.  The car park is signposted as the White Lion’s so it’s not difficult to spot.  Take care, it slopes upwards fairly steeply.  There is garaging available for overnight stayers at the top of the car park too.

Our bikes were parked right outside the window while we ate so we could admire the admiring glances our bike’s were getting from the strolling tourists.   Bill was convinced that his bike got more admiring glances than mine but then he always is.  I think it’s down to curiosity about the yellow tinge.

I can’t remember precisely what we ate but it was contraband food for  both of us (being on a diet at the time) involving something like steak & ale pie and chips and it was very, very good.  Grahame won’t mind you leaving your bike parked there while you do a bit of strolling yourself and there’s room enough to park 20 or more bikes, so it’s a good place to stop on a group ride too.

It’s probably best to give Grahame a ring if you want accommodation or if you’re planning to turn up with a big group and his number is:

01539 439901

It takes effect on 6th December so if you are thinking of crossing the Channel next year you might want to beat the deadline.

From December 6th you will only get  THREE times the value.

Eurotunnel Token can be used to make a booking up to six months after their issue date and you can book with Eurotunnel well in advance.  If you might be taking your bike to Europe next year it will be worth swapping your Tesco Vouchers for Tokens before the December deadline even if you don’t yet know when you will be travelling or even if you subsequently abandon your plans.

This is because you can return unused Tunnel Tokens to Tesco for  a refund of the original value in Vouchers, so you won’t even lose out if your plans to tour in Europe get cancelled.

You can only order Tunnel Tokens on line or by post (on line is much easier) and you must do that on December 5th at the latest to get quadruple value.  Further details and an opportunity to order Tokens click here.

The Hallmark Hotel near Hull

Elite Wings have announced the first of their 2011 hotel-based UK Weekend Tours.

As usual anyone who rides a solo GoldWing is welcome to join them for one of their UK tours  to see if their approach to life on a GoldWing suits you. They tend to spend their days enjoying the riding and the scenery rather than parked up somewhere so it’s definitely a riding rather than a posing sort of club.  Not that they are stuffy or stuck up or anal about their riding mind you, they’re a fairly normal bunch – same as Wingers in company anywhere really.

For the Easter Weekend next year they are staying at the newly refurbished Hallmark Hotel just outside Hull, overlooking the Humber Bridge for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.  There is a special room rate of £80 per double per night, including dinner and breakfast.  The normal rate for DBB would be £135 so it’s a very good deal.  Single occupancy is also available at £55 per night.

There will be all-day group rides on Saturday and Sunday, each with morning, lunch and afternoon refreshment stops.  One ride will head northwards up the Yorkshire coast towards  Scarborough and the second one over the Humber bridge and into the Lincolnshire Wolds to the Lincolnshire coast.

As usual with Elite Wings, the ride routes will be distributed as Garmin satnav files by email, so you load them on to your own satnav before you set off if you wish.

Room to swing a cat

You may book your room call the hotel directly on 01482 645212,  speak to  Sarah Fuller and Quote the Reference 60117 GoldWing to get the cheap rate.  You should then email Ian Cardwell at ian©winginit•org to tell him you have done so, so that he can include you in the circulation of route details etc.  At the time of writing eleven couples have booked for this Tour and there are another nine rooms available.

Remember that Elite Wings rides are for solo GoldWings only, so sorry but no trikes or sidecar outfits.

Ring Ian on 07973 836624 if you would like more information or to introduce yourself.

Hartside Tops in November

I had been browsing a Thread on the GoldWing Riders Forum which showed pictures of the Lake District on a sunny day as a reminder of what we could look back on while we hibernated this winter.

So when I woke up to a blue sky a couple of days ago I exercised the retired man’s privilege and got the bike out.   Dry sunny days at this time of year are too good to waste.

I rang Bill to see if he fancied an outing but he was already off and out of contact on an occupational therapy mission, fixing someone’s motorhome so  I set off, perfectly happily, on my own.

And the Thread on the Forum must have put the Lakes firmly in mind because I found myself heading North up the M6.  Traffic wasn’t particularly heavy and the visibility was exceptionally good so I had the opportunity to see the mountains on either side of me way into the distance – and very pretty they were too.

I had used M6 to get past Lancaster as I usually do when I’m riding North because it’s a bit of a traffic nightmare, even on a bike.  Lancaster should be a nice place to visit but I find it unappealing and worth by passing by any means when I’m riding – although there’s a Scold’s Bridle in Lancaster Castle Museum which it’s fun to watch the wife being told about by the Tour Guide.  They lock the wives in a mediaeval cell in the dark for a while on the Tour too.  Come to think of it Bill would probably think that was very good value as an outing; he keeps saying that he needs to reinforce Barbara’s training from time to time.

There was the white dusting of residual salt on the motorway road surface but it was bone dry and there was a clear blue sky.  I had an extra couple of layers of clothing and the heated grip and heated seat were on at half throttle, so I was fairly comfortable and warm.  I was enjoying myself even though I realised I would have to give the bike a thorough wash when I got back to get the salt off.

I decided to take the A6 over Shap to Penrith, which offers a nice set of fast sweeping bends, then north eastwards up towards Hartside Tops before heading back down to Penrith then down past Ulswater to use Kirkstone Pass , one of the easier of the Lake District’s Mountain  Passes, to get back south and then home.  With a stop for lunch it would make a nice day-long ride out.

No soup today!

But there were some tortuous roadworks on the Altson Road when I got there and that wasn’t much fun.  After Melmerby the road was clear of road works but it was rough in places although apart from the odd car, pretty much free of traffic.  The prospects for a decent ride were looking better again.

It was as the big escarpment on which Hartside Tops sits came into view that doubts started to come to mind.  The southern, higher end of it was snowy white, although the Hartside bit looked clear enough.  The road was damp in places, especially in the shadow of trees on sheltered bends and there were streams of water coming on to the road from the fields too.  It was cold and getting colder and there clearly had been frost overnight, because of which this road had been well salted too.  I was definitely going to have to clean the bike thoroughly after this ride.

Lovely bends - on the right day

I was taking extra care on the bends which looked damp or wet and I was beginning to think to myself that this wasn’t going to be quite the ride I’d hoped for but I pressed on, as you do.  As I rounded a left hander which turned fairly tightly uphill through some trees I suddenly saw some slush on the road, quite a lot of it in fact.  There had obviously been a snowfall up here and this bit of road hadn’t had any sun at all and so hadn’t thawed, even if the rest of the road had cleared.

Although I slowed down even more as soon as  the slush came into view I had already entered the bend at a speed which, although caiutious for the bend, was too fast for these conditions.  I felt the back end twitch out fairly spectacularly as I turned into the tightening bend – followed of course by my buttocks tightening up and an expletive bursting forth.  I stayed on the bike and got around the bend but I didn’t enjoy it.

It could have been worse

The rest of the road around the many bends up the hill were slush-free but I took my time.  The roaring climb up a set of lovely bends which I had been looking forward to was kicked completely into touch. And so, tragically, was the bowl of soup in the Cafe which I had been looking forward to.  The Cafe was closed and almost completely deserted.  I’d never been up there when there were no bikes on the car park and this time there was only one car.  There was snow in the fields near the Cafe and I rode carefully on to the car park, trying to make sure the rough bits were just loose surface and not icy patches.  The low sun made it difficult to tell.

As I parked up the two men who were stood next to the lonely car, drinking mugs of hot something, from their flask immediately came over to chat.  None of this British reserve we’re all supposed to be handicapped by; they just marched up and got stuck into conversation.   My first thought was they were aliens or at least foreigners of some sort because I couldn’t understand a word they said.  It turned out they were from Consett, which explained everything – or almost everything.

Even allowing for their impenetrable accent, there seemed something slightly odd about the pair of them and their car which I couldn’t put my finger on.  Why would two blokes, one late middle aged and the other one quite similar but quite a bit younger, be driving a Land Rover Discovery on a weekday from Consett to Keswick and back just for a day out?  They were very interested in the Wing.

By this time I needed to “ease springs” as the Gunnery Branch of the Royal Navy used to say, so I wandered off to a discrete side of the car park for that purpose.  And while I was facing away from them, admiring the scenery, the penny dropped.  At least one of them might be out for the day from an institution of some sort – and I had left my keys in the bike!

Or a lot worse!

My sudden fears of having top walk back down to Penrith, which was even less attractive than riding through that slush again, turned out to be groundless.   The bike and the two admiring men, were still there.  The older man, whose occasional word I could eventually grasp, turned out (or so he claimed) to have had a GoldWing himself.

Since he did still seem a bit strange (even allowing for being from Consett) I was still half wondering whether institutionalisation was part of his lifestyle, so I took all this with a pinch of salt.  Fantasies about GoldWing ownership might feature in the minds of lots of people in Consett for all I knew, whether institutionalised or otherwise.

As his story unfolded however it began to sound more credible (and interesting) because he had apparently had a succession of Wings, starting with a GL1100 and finishing with a 2002 red GL1800 which he kept until 2005, when he finally gave up motorcycles as his only form of transport in favour of a car.  It came across as if he had learned about cars for the first time in 2005, which then caused him to give up biking in favour of more comfort but as I said, he did seem a bit odd.  It was probably just the language barrier and I got the wrong end of the stick.  Or the cold, because it was a mite windy and what with that wind chill thing I wasn’t sure that warm blood was still reaching my brain cells.

Unfortunately because I had taken my gloves and helmet off to sip the contents of my flask of coffee and eat my packed lunch, it was so cold up there despite the sunshine that my fingers were getting very cold very quickly.  In other circumstances, despite the language barrier, I would have enjoyed developing this chance conversation with  a former Winger even if it would eventually have involved empathising with his decline into institutionalisation.  But even holding my cup of hot coffee was uncomfortably cold.   I rapidly abandoned eating my sandwich after a couple of bites so it must have been bad.  I put the flask away and got my helmet and gloves back on at record speed.

The only way to prevent frostbite setting in seemed to be to get back on the bike to benefit from the heated grips as quickly as possible, so I made my farewells and down the hill I went.

Needless to say all the bends were taken very carefully, especially the shady ones because I couldn’t be sure I would recognise which one was hiding the secret cache of slush.  I did eventually see it coming up and got round it uneventfully but one way and another I’d stopped enjoying this ride altogether. Apart from anything else my fingers had thawed out fairly rapidly out thanks to the heated grips but it had been quite a painful process.

The Struggle

As I got back to the main road at Penrith although my fingers had by then warmed up properly  and were comfortable again, I headed into the town to find somewhere to take a break.  I don’t know Penrith so it was very much a question of feeling my way and taking pot luck with whatever I came across.

Unfortunately the first bolt hole I encountered was a McDonalds (I’m supposed to be watching my weight) but any port in a storm as they say, so in I went.  Suffice it to say that my sandwiches and flask stayed in the bike’s trunk and I resorted to a burger meal instead.  (By the way my wife doesn’t know this and she doesn’t read the Blog so I’d be grateful for discretion from those of you who are acquainted with her.)  I relaxed in the warmth of the sunshine in a window seat for a while to work out what to do next.

As fate would have it there was a cash machine outside this McDonalds and I was under Management instructions to get some cash – but it was one of those machines that charge a fee so as a thrifty Lancastrian there was no way I was going to use that one.  We’re by no means as tight as Yorkshiremen and Scots but we don’t waste money either.

By this time I’d decided to abandon the route home through the Lakes in favour of the easy way via the M6, so I had time to explore Penrith to find another cash machine.   As soon as I rode out of the McDonalds car park and took the compulsory left turn at the roundabout into the town’sone way system a Morrisons Supermarket appeared.

Now I like Morrisons for all sorts of reasons including their cafes, which serve up good honest grub at inexpensive prices, so my first thought was one of regret for the burger.  However I rapidly came to the conclusion that after a burger meal and with an uneaten sandwich still in the trunk, even I couldn’t justify to myself going into the Morrisons Cafe as well.  But they would surely have a cash machine which wouldn’t charge a fee, so in I went.

Supermarket car parks vary in their accessibility to traffic and also to their suitability for motorcycles and I would like to have been able to say this one was biker-friendly.   I had also managed to pick a busy time and not a parking place was to be seen anywhere.  Furthermore it was a very tight as well as a sloping car park with a peculiar system of dead-end alleys.  Dodging the Penrith Ladies, all of whom seem to drive big Volvos or 4X4s, was quite a challenge.

Happily there was an empty area of tarmac right in front of the store entrance protected from cars by bollards which looked inviting; it was right by the cash machines too.  Bit of a steep downhill slope to park on, so I would have to leave the bike in gear but the Wing’s reverse gear would easily get me out of that in due course – so in I went.

Ulswater out of season - nice if you can get there

It wasn’t my luck day because both cash machines were out of order.  But a nice man in uniform with an ID Card on a string around his neck walked up and told me I would be perfectly OK to park there while I strode into Town for a cash machine, which was only a short distance down an alley to which he pointed.  He had a funny accent too but I could understand him easily enough when he explained that he was from Carlise, which is why he couldn’t tell me precisely where the cash machines in the Town Centre were.  Perhaps people from Carlisle aren’t allowed into Penrith Town Centre for some reason but that wasn’t made clear.

As he ostentatiously looked at my bike’s number plate and told me that he would let the car park security man know that he’d said it was OK to leave the bike right outside the entrance to the store, I noticed that the logo on his uniform was British Gas.  And as I locked the bike and walked away towards the alleyway into town I noticed a man in Morrison’s uniform pushing a long train of trolleys in the direction of the narrow gap between my bike and the bollards.  Trusting the situation to luck, I wandered off into Town.

Penrith - there is a flat bit in the middle!

The whole of Penrith seems to be built on a 45˚ slope and the “short stroll” into the centre turned out to be a bit of a navigational challenge through several interconnecting alleyways, but I made it.  Then a bit of luck; a cash machine that worked was just across the road.  And another bit of luck when I then got disoriented trying to work out how to get back to Morrisons and had to ask the way. Two nice young ladies on their lunch break who were walking arm-in-arm flicking fag ash suggested I went right to to the end of the road and turned left up the hill; I couldn’t miss it, they said.  Fortunately they were overheard by a lady much more my age who wasn’t smoking, who pointed to a nearby alleyway and said (again in Cumbrianeese, but perfectly intelligibly) “up there dear, it’s quicker”.

I did eventually find the bike with daylight to spare.  It hadn’t been attacked by shopping trolleys and reverse gear did get me out of the bollard patch and on my way.  I did a few challenging laps of the sloping car park making tight turns and dodging Volvos before I found the exit, but it was then fairly easy to escape from Penrith to get on to the M6.

Then I had a dry and sunny ride home and another opportunity to admire the scenery while the bike and it’s cruise control did most of the work.  I got back just before sunset so goodness knows what time I would have got home if I’d stuck to the original route.

And goodness knows what I would have done if I had skidded off the road on a patch of slush on The Struggle, that challenging little road which takes you down from the top of Kirkstone Pass into Ambleside.  I would have needed the entire population of a Consett institution to help me get the bike back onto that road if I’d slid off it and they probably only let them out for the day one at a time.  I could have been in serious trouble either way.

So there are lessons to be drawn from this little winter motorcycling excursion of mine.  One is of course that you should never resort to a McDonalds when there might be a Morrisons just around the corner without at least checking first.

Another is that riding some distance from home late in the season when the days are shortening in the hope that one of your favourite rides up a hill will be free from salt and slush or snow, just because it looks nice out of the window before you set off, is not wise.  Best to check whether the Cafe you are depending on is going to be open too.  Winter riding is for the lowlands and valleys; hill tops and mountain passes are best left until next Spring.

Careful and realistic planning is necessary for any cross-country winter ride if you want to stay out of trouble.  Mind you, swearing your wife’s biking friends to secrecy if you are foolish enough to own up to an illicit burger on the internet would have been good preparation for this Article too – but then you can trust your biker mates not to split on you – can’t you?

And in the interests of being allowed into Consett (or rather out of it in one piece) I’d better finish this Article by acknowledging, in case I ever want to go there, that those two nice gentlemen were probably in perfect mental health as well as charmingly interested in GoldWings and in was me who was a bit loopy when I rode to Hartside Tops that day.

These days SAT is, since it’s certainly not a club, effectively the fiefdom of a British-born rider called Jed Halpern who has lived in Switzerland for many years and who continues to organise an annual, week-long and seriously intensive session of alpine riding.

SAP X-Trémé Tours, as the annual gatherings of SAT are now known, involve an opportunity, by virtue of staying overnight in the same sequence of three hotels in different parts of the Alps and their surroundings as like-minded riders, to ride together.

And that’s as far as it goes and as much as you get to know unless you sign up to join.  It’s made clear that it’s not a guided tour – you will be in the right place at the right time to ride with other alpine riding afficionados but it will be up to you what you do with the opportunity.  Jed will tell you where the hotels are once you’ve paid your money, so you will know where to head for on Sunday August 7th 2011, when the Tour starts,  and Jed has also revealed that the riding he has in mind will take you to six different Countries.  But otherwise, as tours go, this one is a bit of a mystery.

Those who have not been on one of Jed’s Tours before are not even allowed to apply to come unless they are introduced (and considered to be up to coping with the Tour) by someone who has been before.  It’s certainly not a tour on which anyone should consider trying to learn alpine riding; this is full-on engagement in alpine riding for those who know how to cope.  Jed’s Tours must have great appeal to some riders because bookings for this one only opened at the beginning of this month and there are already 16 bikes booked in, with only four remaining places.

The SAP 2011 X-Trémé Tour gets a mention on this Blog because Jed asked me to publish something about it and because he is a GoldWing owner.  He will be riding his 1983 GL1100 Aspencade, owned from new, now done over 220,000 miles, on the European Classic GoldWing Tour in 2011 – but that’s a different tour altogether.  That tour also involves riding in Switzerland (or rather out of it) and is suitable for novices as long as they are happy camping rather than staying in hotels.

So, let’s try to get it completely straight: SAP (Swiss Alps and Passes) organises the SAP 2011 X-Trémé Tour for members of  SAT (Swiss Alpine Tourers), a group which was formed out of what was, once upon a time, the British Alpine Region of the GWOCGB, which doesn’t exist any longer.  The  X-Trémé Tour isn’t remotely like anything which GWOCGB does these days (which the European Classic GoldWing Tour is because that’s organised “under GWEF Rules”) and it’s not tactful (and maybe not entirely safe) to mention GWOCGB to Jed if you ever meet him, but you can mention GWEF, even though SAT isn’t part of it.

Intrigued?  Confused?  You can find out (a little) more about the SAP 2011 X-Trémé Tour by clicking on the link!

Crossing the Channel by Eurotunnel is a very comfortable and convenient for a motorcyclist – and the Bacon Butties at the Folkstone Terminal are nothing short of superb.  But booking a crossing using the credit on your Tesco Clubcard Rewards account is by no means straightforward.

There is a Catch 22 built into the system which makes it more or less impossible to take full advantage of the offer.  And if you’re booking only a few weeks before you want to travel, the delays which are built into the system make it virtually impossible to use because you either end up paying something like half of the cost of your crossing at full price or  all of it because your Tesco Eurotunnel Tokens simply won’t arrive in time to use them at all.

The reason for this is that although you can get a  price for your journey on line or on the phone from Eurotunnel and then immediately order the necessary Tokens from Tesco on line too, Eurotunnel will not accept a provisional booking until you have physically received the Tokens (by post) from Tesco.  At that stage you can make a provisional booking and get a firm price, and then you have to get the Tokens to them within their deadline of four days.  Special delivery is recommended by Eurotunnel in order to meet the deadline and in case they go astray) before your booking is confirmed.

Once you get this far, it's quick and easy to get to France

Tesco take up to five working days to dispatch the tokens (which they only just managed with mine, on the seventh day after I ordered them) so you might get them two or more days later, depending on what mood Royal Mail is in.  Tesco will not investigate Tokens which fail to arrive until 14 days after they were dispatched, so potentially three weeks after you ordered them; if they accept that they are lost in the post you will presumably have to wait at least another week for them to send replacements.

Once you physically receive your Tokens, you can phone Eurotunnel to make your provisional booking, which is accepted on the basis of the Token’s number, which you read to them over the phone -by which time, because of Eurotunnel’s “flexible” pricing policy, the cost of your journey is very likely to have gone up.  Eurotunnel charges more for a crossing the closer to the journey time that you book and in the final weeks and days before the journey the rate of price increase gets steeper.

If you are booking your crossing well ahead (say two or three months) the fare might not have changed by the time your Tokens arrive, so you might have enough Tokens to pay for it as planned.  Otherwise by the time you get the Tokens the price almost certainly will have gone up,  you won’t have enough Tokens to pay for your crossing, so you will be faced with making up the difference by paying full price for the difference.  If you delay to go back to Tesco to order more Tokens, you would inevitably be in the same sort of position again one week or more later when the extra Tokens arrived and you would be paying even more for your crossing.  Catch 22.

There doesn’t seem to be any reliable way to make the system work as advertised, i.e. to get your crossing for a quarter in face value of Tesco’s Clubcard Reward Points of what it would cost you by paying any other way, even if you plan well ahead.

Automated check in at the Terminal is quick and easy, booking a crossing using Tesco Tokens isn't

There is a system for claiming refunds of unused Eurotunnel Tokens from Tesco and you can buy extra Tokens in £10 increments to cover your estimate of Eurotunnel’s price increase while you wait, but there’s a Catch 22 built into that part of the system too.  You cannot claim a partial refund of a Token if you didn’t spend all of it.  So if you anticipate Eurotunnel’s inevitable price increase and add more than enough to cover what you think it might be,  Eurotunnel won’t give any change from the Tokens you use and Tesco will only refund whole Tokens, not partly used ones.  In order to even get close to achieving it you will need to order one Token to cover the fare quoted to you initially plus enough separate £10 Tokens to make up the estimated difference.

Even then you cannot pay for a Eurotunnel crossing entirely by using Tesco Tokens unless you round up with Tokens to the next £10 above whatever Eurotunnel finally charge you.  Potentially therefore you cannot avoid wasting up to £9.99 in Token value doing it this way.

And getting a refund on unused Eurotunnel Tokens is a pain.  You have to return them to Tesco with a covering letter and in due course, after they have processed the refund application, you will get your Clubcard Rewards Points (i.e. 25% of the face value of the Eurotunnel Token, re-credited to your Clubcard Account.  You might find yourself being advised, as Eurotunnel do when you send Token by post to them, to send your unused Tokens back to Tesco by recorded delivery.

In practice what you have to do to use the Tesco/Eurotunnel system without turning it into a laborious consumer crusade, is start the process well ahead of your travelling date, order enough Tokens to cover the anticipated cost of your journey, based on what you think Eurotunnel are likely to charge you when you actually get your Tokens, then pay the difference using your Debit or Credit Card.  At least Eurotunnel don’t currently impose punitive charges for using plastic to pay for journeys as Ryan Air infamously do.  Or at least not yet they don’t – and their excellent Bacon Butties are reasonably priced too, much cheaper than in a motorway service area.

There is some value to Eurotunnel in making the system cumbersome I suppose because they  either get to pocket the change from the Tokens or they get you to pay for at least some of the crossing at full price.   Eurotunnel will not accept Tokens for bookings within 14 days of intended travel and you cannot simply turn up at Check In and use them as cash.  That’s all understandable, Eurotunnel are offering their share of the discount for early bookings only.  You can’t use Tokens to book their premium “Flexi Plus” service either.

There is also value to Tesco in that some of people who over-order Tokens to make sure they can cover Eurotunnel’s price increase will either lose them or never get around to returning them for a refund.

But the other side of this coin is that both companies appear to be operating very expensive administration systems for the sake of these relatively modest gains.  Why, in this computer age, is it necessary or cost effective to require two lots of administrative action (with the possibility of more if there is a refund claim) and two postal journeys by the same pieces of paper to complete what is essentially a very simple financial transaction?

Eurotunnel's Bacon Butties are superb

Tesco’s computer already recognises the Clubcard Rewards Points voucher numbers as valid and as belonging to you immediately you enter their serial numbers when you place the order for Eurotunnel Tokens with them on line.  So Tesco’s computer does then presumably issue the Tokens without further human involvement, maybe not even when they are printed and placed inside an envelope – maybe not until they emerge from the mail sorting process in your local Royal Mail Sorting Office.  Why it has to take up to five working days for their computer to print and dispatch a piece of paper goodness only knows, but that is the performance target which Tesco set themselves for dispatching Eurotunnel Tokens.

Their performance target for investigating Tokens which fail to arrive in the post as promised is not to start the enquiry until at least fourteen days after dispatch.  If that’s a reflection of the confidence they have in their chosen carrier, wouldn’t you think they would change carriers?

It’s by no means obvious why Tesco’s computer couldn’t send an electronic equivalent of a Token directly to Eurotunnel’s computer as the order transaction (on line, with Tesco) is completed on line – a message would appear saying something like “your Tokens have been issued and sent to Eurotunnel, here is the reference number you will need to quote when you make your reservation for a crossing”.  Job done.

I suppose by doing it in a much slower and more cumbersome way they hang on to the money it bit longer; maybe that’s what’s behind all this.  I know that cock up is always supposed to be more likely that conspiracy but I worked for a big retailer once and they don’t do anything by accident and they don’t tolerate incompetence at any level for any longer than they need to spot it.   Surely then mighty Tesco aren’t inefficient in this way by neglect or incompetence?  Surely there must be some commercial reason for them to be operating an administrative system that’s less customer-friendly and less efficient, at least by my experience, than getting your Bus Pass issued by the Local Council?

With a little bit more computer programming effort by both companies you would think that Tesco’s computer could even hand you over to Eurotunnel’s to complete the booking process seamlessly in the same way you have been able to use PayPal to complete an EBay purchase for years, long before Ebay became the owners of PayPal.  It ain’t rocket science and surely the volume of these transactions must be high enough to warrant the effort involved, not least because of the savings in administrative costs which would be made.

In a way it’s puzzling that Tesco doesn’t take the initiative and use its considerable commercial muscle to require Eurotunnel to get its electronic act together, since Tesco appears to be carrying a very substantial unnecessary administrative burden by making the procedure so cumbersome.  I was told on behalf of Tesco that Eurotunnel insists on doing it this way, but I took that with a pinch of salt.

Bikers can pay extra for flexibility but they aren't allowed into the Lounge or to board early, they wait outside in the queue, even when it's raining

Anyway, despite lots of browsing and several long phone calls, much of which was spent listening to recorded messages and trying to remember complex menu options for long enough to press the right button once they’d finished, this is as close as I could get to understanding how the Tesco/Eurotunnel system works and getting it to allow me to make a booking on Eurotunnel.

I had two very nice chats with a young lady called Samantha who understood my problem and would have liked to help, but her hands were clearly tied by procedure.  Oh and I sent an email.  After a great deal of persistence on the website to unearth how to send an email to Tesco’s Customer Service I did so and received, within a few hours, an automatic acknowledgement saying “I just want to let you know that your email has successfully reached us, and we promise to be back in touch as soon as possible.” Ten days later I’m still waiting for a substantive reply, and of course for my Tokens.

Somewhere out there, comfortably remote from contact with actual customers, both Tesco and Eurotunnel are likely to employ someone quite senior as their “Head of Customer Experience” or its equivalent.  This isn’t, as you might first think, the person who  determines the softness of the toilet paper in the loo; he or she is responsible for helping the Company to get the balance right between reducing costs (and therefore maximising profit in the short term) yet keeping customers wanting to come back to yield continuing profit in the future.  Frustrating and/or irritating customers is recognised these days as having a potentially important commercial downside.  For example insurance companies balance very carefully how much they might save by rejecting claims more vigorously against how much they will then lose in renewal premiums.

Hopefully one or other of Tesco or Eurotunnel’s Head of Customer Experience rides a Goldwing (or slightly more plausibly their Dad does!) and comes across this Article.  Maybe they might then do something to improve this seemingly wasteful and frustrating system.

Meanwhile I’m still hoping my Eurotunnel Tokens will arrive in tomorrow’s post.  Funny that Tesco can deliver stuff you order on line from their store within a day or two but not a piece of paper.  I bought a little plastic thing on EBay from Hong Kong for £1.30 recently and that arrived quicker than these Tokens.  At least as the author of this Blog I can pound the keyboard sound off about the frustrations of waiting for my Tokens while I’m doing so; it’s now Day Ten and they still haven’t arrived.

Postscript:

Day 11 after I ordered them on line, the Tokens arrived by post from Tesco accompanied by several sheets of papers explaining the rules and procedures and a form to fill in.  The Tokens are dated (and were presumably printed) on Day 4 but it took until Day 7 for them to be dispatched and then four more days for them to arrive – marked (but not date stamped) as DHL Global Mail although actually delivered to our house by Royal Mail.  Still no sign of a reply to my email from Tesco.

Day 14 – I have made a provisional booking with Eurotunnel by telephone (cannot be done on line) and (since it’s still 21 days to my planned departure and I was able to switch to a cheaper departure time slot) the fare had gone up by only £6, so I was lucky.  I now have to fill in Tesco’s form (which repeats everything I told Eurotunnel on the phone) and post it with the Tokens to Eurotunnel.  I must get them to Eurotunel within 4 days, so Special Delivery is recommended, otherwise the booking lapses.  Eurotunnel will then, at long last, confirm the booking to me – by email!

The overall cost of my Eurotunnel booking (including the extra £6 and £5.05 for Special Delivery but excluding the cost of calling Eurotunnel on their 0844 telephone number) was therefore £46.05.  This is 31% more than the quarter fare which the system theoretically offers.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful; £46 is of course a very cheap crossing and I’m still only paying 33% of what Eurotunnel would have charged me if I had not used Tesco system.

Day 16 – Eurotunnel’s Confirmation of Booking arrived by email.

Still no sign of a reply to my email to Tesco; I wonder if I will get one.