Zell-am-See, Austria 2000

Saturday 12 August 2000. Another morning outside Blackpool Tower at 4:30am in order to catch the coach down to Dover for the ferry to Calais!

We set off in a taxi from Blackpool, catching our feeder coach at Preston. We reached the Interchange at Dover without incident and found some time to eat there whilst the other coaches arrived. Leger don't have coaches of their own but instead use coach firms from around the UK.

These pick up at various places on the way down, zig-zagging across the M6 from town to town. One particular coach seemed to have zig-zagged on the actual motorway, the passengers from that feeder had nothing polite to say about the driver or his firm... However, he had nipped off smartly in a car at Dover so wasn't about to put anyone else at risk. He probably stood a good chance of being lynched by the sounds of things!

Onto the boat! The coaches are left on the lower decks whilst we go up to see how easy it is to stand still! (It was!)

In fact it was a lovely day, the sun was shining, the White Cliffs of Dover were receding in the distance so the risk of bluebird droppings was fading and all was well with the world.

Once at Calais we turn left for Belgium and motor through Flanders in order to stop overnight at a hotel in Antwerp.

Tomorrow will be a long day. The drivers of our main coach, Keith and John, warn us that we have to cover over 700 miles to Austria!

Sunday 13 August 2000. Our coach was from the Essex firm of Harris's and was in their dark green livery rather than the Leger white with blue and green highlights. John and Keith struggled to fit all the luggage into the lockers. "I like a jigsaw!" was John's comment. "Ah good," I said, "shall we bring the rest out now?"

We passed from Belgium into Holland and then to Germany. Markers pointed out the distance travelled every half kilometre - every 1/10 in Holland and Belgium - and I had to reflect that this was far better than the English system of none at all!

Late in the afternoon Keith called over the intercom: "You've come to see mountains - have a look through the front window so I can turn round and go home again!" We'll see them later in another article. For now we are at the hotel - the Pinzgauhof in Schuttdorf. "They've not made up the beds!" says Fran.

Never mind that! The loo is back to front! Now apparently this is a feature of toilets in Germany and Austria and sometimes in the Netherlands too. Here's why, because I know you are fascinated... The shelf allows an examination of poo - you may wonder why doctors say "have you seen any blood in your poo? when you know and they know that you would have to go excavating through layers of toilet paper and then dipping to find a bit of poo to examine. This handy shelf accomodates a close examination without all that!

You're dying to try it now aren't you? And...! No splashbacks! There's a whole science behind this but I'll spare your sensibilities for now and just point out that you can get a nasty surprise if you don't check and flush before... well let's just say that a splashback might be preferable...

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Off To Austria in Winter

Friday 25 January 2002. Well, we've never done this before! We are setting off to have a holiday in Austria - in winter! Yes: January, cold, snow, rain, sleet, blizzards, ice, breath steaming in the freezing air - and that's just the early morning wait for the coach...

Friday is spent driving south down the motorways, occasionally nipping off sideways and picking up other freezing passengers, then rejoining the road south until we come to Dover, where we exchange the feeder coach for our main tour coach and get onto the ferry for the crossing to Calais.

Suitably garbed in hat - er... Miss Franny, has yours blown away in the wind? It's proper chilly on deck and as can be guessed from Miss Franny's hair - er... me, has yours blown away in the wind? - there's a howling gale blowing. Sod this for a lark, we're going below!

England slips away behind us, the rest of us just slip as the ferry rolls about. Only one thing to do at a time like this - eat! Never let a tilting floor put you off!

It's slightly foggy off the coast of England anyway and, as it's only January, it's inclined to go dark early still, so there's not a lot of scenery - not even as much as there usually is - in the middle of the English Channel!

By the time we come into Calais, it is getting dark. It's raining and very windy, especially when looking forward towards the port down the side of the ship. As soon as I stuck my head around from the shelter of the ship's structure the wind whipped tears into my eyes.

Then we were off and away towards Liege for the night. Our two drivers introduced themselves as George - a Geordie whose mobile phone played The Blaydon Races and Jock, a Scot whose phone alternated between Auld Lang Syne and Scotland the Brave! The last time we went to Austria we had two excellent drivers both with a great sense of humour, but these two were equally as good and had the whole coach in stitches throughout the holiday. The main journey down through Luxemburg and Germany to Austria would be tomorrow. Meanwhile the Belgian autobhans had a few surprises for us.

Fran and I were on the second row of seats - probably the best to have in a coach as there is not a lot of leg room on the front seats. Suddenly there was an intake of breath from Jock who was driving and a wheel - on its own - rolled across the roadway in front of us from right to left, coming from a looming exit slip road. Traffic slowed down apart from a BMW in the fast lane who simply drove smack into it at around 100 miles per hour. The tyre disappeared and the whole of his bonnet was stoved in. He slowed but I don't think he'd even realised what had happened. It took around 15 seconds for the tyre to come down - he must have knocked it straight up. Luckily it hit empty road and bounced away safely to the verge. The BMW pulled eventually onto the hard shoulder and we saw the damage to the front as we drove past. The photo was taken from our hotel room in Liege.

Saturday, 26 January 2002. After a night at the Post Hotel, Liege, we enjoyed a cooked breakfast. We sat opposite a couple of ladies who were both travelling alone. Sheila was from Whitby and Diane from Cardiff. We made friends and stayed together for meals and at times out on excursions throughout the week. We saw what seemed like a horrendous number of crashes on the way down to Austria, though thankfully only the afternaths and not the events like last night. Most were where cars or lorries had gone off to hit either the central barrier or went off the side of the road. We must have seen 10 such incidents during the day.

Eventually we arrive at the Mariasteinerhof hotel in the Austrian Tirol village of Mariastein. We sat with Sheila and Diane for a welcome meal but when waitresses started carrying it in at the far end of the room Fran said, "It looks like a pile of mash with a fried egg on top!" And indeed it was. Several guests started to complain, greatly upsetting the hotel manageress. Apparently it is considered a favourite dish in Austria and she had thought we would be appreciative of this. To be honest after two days travelling it did us very well! Sheila insisted on paying for a glass of wine for us all but could not make the waitress understand. I cut in with "für alle bitte," at which she (the waitress) said, "Ah!" and took the correct money. "That was impressive!" said Sheila, looking at me.

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On Our Way Home

Monday 31 May 1999. So here we are heading back towards Calais, where a stop at a hypermarket is "in store" for us. The drinks were to prove cheaper than even the duty free - ridiculous really... But I suppose the French must be taxed in other ways. Anyway all the coaches suddenly got fuller!

This is a toll booth on the main road. At Calais Phil informed us that it was busy as the Channel Tunnel was on strike. Then he announced that the bad news was that so were the French port workers...

Our passage was booked for 4:30pm and we had arrived early expecting to be allowed to take the next available ferry. We had only 45 minutes to wait though so we were quite relieved when we later heard that anyone who had arrived without a booking was having to wait up to seven hours for a crossing. We boarded the ship and headed for the restaurant straight away to beat the rush. After quite surprising me all weekend by eating more or less anything that was put in front of her, Miss Franny joined me for a steak and kidney pie and calmly piled up all the pieces of kidney at the side of her plate... A good job we hadn't been expected to partake of frogs' legs or snails...

We sailed from a dull Calais and arrived back to a sunny Dover. As we docked, we went down in search of our coach and I walked past it as they had renumbered each coach. Jimmy shook his head at me and said, "You'd have thought after three days, you'd know what it looked like!" The coach trundled off the ferry and we found ourselves back at the coach interchange where we had to say goodbye to many of our companions.

There was a long ride back up to Blackpool and it was to be 2:00am on Tuesday when we got another chance to compare Blackpool Tower to its older French sibling. As we boarded the coach after a stop on the motorway around 11:30pm I leaned over to cheekily ask 86-year-old Edna if she was behaving herself. Her face lit up in a grin; "Oh no!" she assured me! Well folks, thanks for sharing our holiday - I hope some of the other people on it catch a sight of these pages and once again a big thank you to Leger who made it all possible!

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Travel to France

It's Friday 28 May 1999. Ugh! What's this??? 4:30am and we are tumbling out of bed to get down to Blackpool Tower to be picked up by a feeder coach taking us to Dover to catch the ferry to Calais. The majority of the photos on this holiday were taken on a very early digital camera and the quality may be not quite as pristine as I would normally like! We are on a weekend trip with Leger Coach Tours to Paris and the Palace of Versailles.

We got to Blackpool Tower a bit early for the coach and crossed to sit on a bench on the Prom. This at 5:30am! A family came and stood in the lay-by, then a couple and we stayed on the Prom until the bus came and then got on still half asleep after the others had got on. Then we made a few more stops to pick people up and then motored south, stopping for breakfast on the motorway.

As we stood in the queue for breakfast Fran said "I know that woman!" and the couple who had been picked up in Blackpool turned out to be one of Fran's work colleagues and her husband! One of the feeder coaches had missed someone and had had to go back for them, so many of the tours including our own had to wait for them to get back to Dover. Above we see the coach interchange where the coaches line up in order - each tour is numbered - and luggage and passengers transfer from their pick-up coach to their tour coach before the crossing to France.

Miss Franny's not looking too happy here and this is before the ferry had even moved away from the dock! I knew I shouldn't have taken her to see Titanic at the cinema... In the background a P&O ferry, freshly arrived from Calais, prepares to reverse into its docking bay. A couple of floors below us, the trickle of cars and wagons onto the ferry has stopped and preparations are being made to cast off. Miss Franny is probably contemplating whether she wants to eat or do a little reversing herself...

The ramps are lifted and the water churns as the ferry slowly pulls away from the dock, the land, and England. This will be our first visit to mainland Europe and our first to a country that speaks a different language to us. I won't call it a foreign language because this time it will be us that are the foreigners!

We stood along with a few of our fellow passengers at the ship's rail, feeling the hitherto unknown sway of a ship larger than the local boating pond rowing boat and staring at the receding line of Dover cliffs, wondering whether we would make it across the 20 odd miles of mountainous seas, crowded navigation ways or whether we might be struck by the kraken or plucked from the deck by a giant octopus, only to be half drowned then stung by thousands of irate jellyfish... It were proper boring in th'end though...

Even Miss Franny decided it was calm enough to risk eating something and by the time we re-emerged onto the deck, Calais was only a short surf, swim or jet-ski away.

We were herded back onto the coaches - "Shep, come by...". Once off the ferry, our courier for the weekend boarded the coach and introduced himself as Vallaire. Hailing from Belgium, he kept up a steady patter throughout the weekend and ensured that we knew what it was we were looking at. We motored south through France, staring at all the countryside and wondering where they hid the towns...

We still had a spell in the coach before us, and it was to be gone midnight by the time we reached our hotel in Bougival. We stopped for a break at a rest stop and I tried out my French for the first time since school almost! All went well happily and although Miss Franny ended up with a toastie instead of a sandwich I felt good that I had managed to avoid having to call on the staff's knowledge of the English language - which would have undoubtedly been better than my French!

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