Interlaken and the Alps.

Our plans had been made, we were all set for a week in Scotland and after Scandinavia, we'd once mentioed the idea of camping to keep the costs down. A phone call to Steve the night before;

• Me "Have you seen a weather forecast?"
• Steve "Fort William 8 degrees and raining."
• Me "Europe?"
• Steve "Geneva 20 degrees and sunny."
• Me "9am then, junction 4, same place as last time."
• Steve "Yeah"
• Me "What about camping ?"
• Steve "I dunno, we'll talk about it on the ferry."
• Another trip planned !

Same meet, same ride down to Dover and this time an open return. We'd riden like lunatics back from Paris so as not to miss our crossing and we didn't want to kill ourselves at the end of a trip when we knew there'd be another boat along in an hour.

From our earlier trips we knew what we both actually used and what we'd taken needlessly. We both had a little more space in the panniers. I'd stuffed in a sleeping bag. Upon arrival in Calais, we filled up with fuel and hit the first hyper-market we saw. Forty five euros lighter for a tent fifteen for a roll mat each saw us tearing up packaging in the car park and pulling out the spare bungees to add our respective loads onto the back of our bikes. Then as before, Reims for coffe and fuel, N44, N 67past St Dizier and follow the river Marne.

We pulled off onto the country lanes beside the river and quickly found our first campsite near a hamlet, pitching our tents, with the instructions printed in French and Russian and with all of the pictures showing the finished product took until dusk. The site owner charged a total of five Euros for both tents - we then found out the nearest life was about 8 miles away further up the road in the village of Joinville. Everything closes early in rural France. The only place left to eat was the kebab shop whose licence wouldn't allow them to sell take out beers. B roads before breakfast in Neufchateau before heading to the Swiss border on the back roads.

Swiss road tax is based on your usage of the motorways. Visitors are asked how long they'll stay in the country and then pay a proportion of the annual tax. If you don't enter the country on a motorway and flatly deny that you'll use one, you won't pay it at all. (Unless you're caught and fined for using one). As I showed our non-English speaking border guard our proposed route on the map pushing my finger over every mountain pass that I could he quickly got bored and waved us on.

We stopped overnight in Courgenay then continued on with a motorway dash to get to Interlaken. A quick look at a town map and we found a campsite pretty close into town. We pitched our tents and set off for a quick ride up to Grindelwald for coffee and to compensate for the motorway miles.

Interlaken became a base camp as we left the tents pitched and set off eastwards over the Grimsel Pass, then the Furken Pass to Andermatt for lunch, and returned via the Susten Pass. From leaving a relatively mild town, as we rode up, the temperature dropped above the snow line and into the clouds, visability was reduced and warm clothing and waterproofs became essential. I had a moment of unusual interest as a Dutch caravaner pulled into a lay-by, as I thought, to let us past. In fact he was probably following the kerb line in order to keep to the road. I was mid-overtake and swerved to avoid him as he followed the kerb line at the end of the short lay-by and found myself facing an on-coming lorry. Lesson learnt.

The weather forcast for continued rain saw a truely international group of bikers at the campsite discussing the next best place to be, which seemed like everywhere except Switzerland, even Scotland was sunny. Wet tents were packed and we set off for the southern shore of Lake Geneva via the Jaun Pass.

Pitching our tents in French sunshine just west of Evian we spent the following day riding up back into Switzerland along the D22 over the Pass de Morgins and up to the winter ski resort of Champery before returning to Evian. the next day we continued around the south side of the lake and back towards the channel ports reversing the route we had travelled the year before on our trip out to Monte Carlo. We spent the night at Bar le Duc before using some fast and deserted B roads before our final coffe stop and lunch in Reims.

Over 9 days the tents had easily paid for themselves. They didn't leak. Europeans campsite were of a far higher standard than we'd expected. The only thing we'd missed was a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. and we'd enjoyed nights under canvas far more than we'd imagined.