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I’m glad to report it was a lovely peaceful evening and we both slept well. No thunderstorms, rain or wind! The morning was wall to wall sunshine, blue sky and the mountains glistening in the morning sun.

After a much needed shower and breakfast which was toast done by Mr Griff using the Halfords camping toaster which he bought 2 (Griff always has 2 of everything apart from me lol). It browned the toast to perfection and was much quicker than our other toaster which is supposed to do 4 slices at the same time.

The campsite was perfect and we would have liked to have stayed for longer if we could.  Spotlessly clean showers, toilets, washrooms, etc and even the grass had its own gardener who was cutting the grass as we were preparing the van to leave. We will definitely be leaving a 5 out of 5 star rating for this stopover.

Our plan was always to get to Lake Bled which was our next destination on the journey.  Griff had seen a picture of it years ago in a calendar on someone’s desk and he had added it to his bucket list of places to visit and for his birthday celebration year.

The drive was gorgeous as always and driving on sweeping bends, beautiful surroundings and mountain ranges. We had set the sat nav for a winding route but it didn’t quite pan out as it keep taking off the main road to drive through small villages and then back onto the main road.  We soon changed this as it was going to take us forever to get to our next destination.

We made use of the app ‘Park4night’ to find a lovely lakeside stop for lunch.  At the end of a gravel drive to a dead end and a lake. Popular with cyclists but it didn’t detract from the gorgeous surroundings and listening to the birds and seeing the odd dragonfly flying around.

After clearing up from lunch, we found a mountain pass called the ‘Wurzen pass’. It’s a mountain pass in the Karawanks mountain range in the Southern Limestone Alps, on the border between Radendorf in the Austrian state of Corinthians and Kranjska Gora in Slovenia.  Its is named after the nearby village of Podkoren (Wurzen).  It’s only 1,073 metres high but we weren’t turning down another chance of driving wiggly roads.  It was probably the steepest climb yet. I let Griff drive this one and he rarely got out of second gear but it was worth it.

We arrived at Lake Bled and to a mile long row of traffic.  Luckily we chose a Camperconnect site just outside of Lake Bled. We couldn’t find anywhere that was free so we ended up paying €40 for a night. Quite steep but that’s the location unfortunately. The site was clean and tidy with a toilet block, running water and electric.  It was quiet even though it looked like a terraced car park.  It was nearly full and there were only 2 spaces left. Thank goodness as didn’t fancy having to drive to find another site.

After we had some dinner, we headed to Lake Bled on foot to get much needed exercise.  As I said before, you do spend a lot of time driving and having an opportunity to stretch the legs you have to grab it.

Got to the main road from the campsite and there was a steep gravel track running parallel to the road.  Traffic was still horrendous with loads of people trying to get into Lake Bled.

Hmm arriving into Lake Bled its not a peaceful lakeside town but rather an over commercialised tourist trap. It was stunning absolutely and the water in the lake was the cleanest I’ve ever seen.  We even saw fish and you could also see in some cases to the bottom of the lake.  The little island which you can get a boat to during the day was just beautiful in the setting sun.

We bought an ice cream and walked around the few shops that were selling souvenirs.  Griff decided he wanted to collect fridge magnets for the van and we are building up a collection on the fridge door.

We headed back to the van as didn’t want to get caught in the dark and over 16,000 steps done and we were ready for a beer :-). The time it takes to write up the blogs means I usually get one done a day. It’s good to write them on the day but I’m finding I’m writing about the previous days trip. It’s a great way to record the memories.

Tomorrow we are heading in the direction of Italy……