A rude awakening

 

Friday Sep 6th

A fox woke me up yesterday! Yes, really! At about 6am I was jarred awake by something with sharp claws crawling across my neck! I jumped up not knowing what it was initially, but in the dim light of my tent vestibule I could eventually make out that it was a fox, and he was bound and determined to get at the food stashed in my two small panniers at the base of the tent under the fly. Frantic hand waving and shouting was not going to deter him – he then decided to attack from the other direction and made for the bags right under my nose. He chickened out eventually after I had probably woken up half the campground with my yells. I got a really good look at him and he was a fair-sized fox with a steely determination to find food.



It had been a warm night and so I had slept with the outer fly half open, as well as leaving the inner tent zipper partly open too, to me let some air in. I'll think twice about doing that again, and we'll have to be careful how we store our food.


It’s s not the first time we had a fox episode while camping in Europe. Something similar happened in the mountains in Switzerland when Frank had to chase a fox in the middle of the night as he was running away with our food bag.

We are now well into the mountains. We reached Fussen on Wednesday afternoon and had a full day off the bikes yesterday to explore the town. It’s a very pretty town at the foot of the mountains.



Old town Fussen

Friends Sarah and Andrew also joined us on Thursday in Fussen

Mountain and castle views, Fussen

Schloss Neuschwanstein, Fussen. We had to hike a bit to get this view

Dinner at the campground restaurant when we first arrived on Wed.
This was Frank's pork and spatzl

Trout for Nancy

Veal schnitzel and warm potatoe salad for Daphne


Our Alberta friends Sarah and Andrew arrived by train from Switzerland yesterday afternoon, so we are now a party of five for the next little while. This should be lots of fun!


 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Big Plans Ahead! Another European Bike Tour

Image
 The count-down is on for our next cycle tour! On Sat Aug 24th (that is tomorrow!) we leave for yet another cycle tour in Europe. This one will see us flying to Frankfurt and riding from there south towards the Alps via Bavaria, a little part of the west of Austria (Tyrol) and on into Italy, eventually ending up in Venice. Lots of similarities to our last tour two years ago, but quite a different route. We have set aside six weeks for this journey. The main goal of this tour is to cycle a route called the Via Claudia Augusta . This route starts in Donauworth, Germany (located on the River Danube) and ends either in Venice or at the Po River south of Verona (depending which fork of the road you take). The attraction here is that it follows an old Roman road that once connected the northern part of the Empire via the River Danube, with the Adriatic Sea via the River Po or the Venetian lagoon. So there's lots of history attached to it, and it takes you through a lot of beautiful scene...
Read more

We reached the Danube!

Image
  Yesterday's ride on the last day of August will be memorable because of the village we reached halfway through the day, called Harburg. Here an impressive castle sits atop the hill, this one dating from the 11-12 th century, and said to be one of Germany's oldest castle fortifications. Hamburg and its hilltop castle We didn't climb up to the castle (these hilltop establishments are oft best viewed from afar in our opinion, especially when you're on a heavily loaded bike). Instead we stumbled on a delightful little café on the old stone bridge over the slow-moving Wornitz River where we had coffee and the most delicious pieces of homemade cake. We had quite the chat with the owners who seemed quite surprised to have Canadians on bikes in their place. Our large pieces of apple cake and plum cake Chilling in the heat of the day   Anyway the eating was followed by a good hour just relaxing in the shade under the trees along the river, resting up before hitting the ...
Read more

Complications at Reschen Pass: Italy here we come!

Image
 Monday morning Sep 9th Pfunds, at the foot of Reschen Pass, the route to Italy Before leaving home, I had read about a road closure here at Pfunds that would affect the main road, causing the diversion for traffic to use the minor road up the pass that is the official Via Claudia route for bikes. So it sounded like our bike route would not be affected, although it might have a lot of traffic. However, at breakfast this morning we learned that it's actually the cycling road that is completely closed for the building of a rockfall shed, effective Sep 1st. There is apparently an alternative signed diversion for bikes that follows a really rough gravel path. Not the best for heavily loaded bikes, although we did it over Fern Pass in good weather. Fortunately, there is a Via Claudia bike shuttle service, and we've just secured ourselves 3 spots at 12.00. This will save us a ton of hard, unpleasant riding in damp weather up the pass, and get us to the town of Nauders, several km bel...
Read more