Into Italy 5 Sept

From Chateau de Chillon we travel 80km almost due south to reach the Great Saint Bernard Pass at 2469m, ignoring the 6km tunnel, with toll, 550m lower. At the highest point is the Hospice, founded in 1049, which is responsible for the St Bernard rescue dogs. It's a most impressive pass, though we ran into cloud and rain near the top. The photo of the Hospice required quarter of a second exposure.

The rain continues well into Italy. We decide to keep driving till Venice, only stopping just before dusk to cook evening meal and have a game of "midnight Frisbee". It was lonely driving on Italian roads at night, after deciding the autostrada was too expensive. The only other traffic was interminable heavy lorries with trailers. We reach the Venice area sometime about 4:30am Italian time after passing through Milan (that was a party game of hunt the road sign), Verona and Padova. We had covered 718km since leaving Geneva, which turned out to be our longest day's travel. It takes some time to find a suitable place to park the car for sleeping. For the first time we try reclining the back of the front seat. It proves to be reasonably comfortable and we slept from 5:00 to 9:30 or so.

We awoke to find sun and little children streaming in. We were both far too hot, but neither could be bothered to do anything about it. Just turned over and went back to sleep. Finally heat became too much and we had to do something. Simply drove 1km down the road to Camping Della Serenissima at Oriago, about 15km from Venice.

The broken window was bugging both of us, something had to be done about it. Obviously the first thing to do was take it apart. This, as usual with Mercedes, was easier said than done. We struggled and heaved and strained to little avail, even sawing through two rusty self-tapping screws - needlessly as it turned out. At last we discovered how to get the door trim off. A great improvement, and the quarter light and frame followed soon afterwards. While Brian played blacksmith with the latter I replaced the rubber seal. At last, with the quarter light frame restored almost to its original shape, we pushed it home and clipped it in place so that it looks as though nothing is wrong.

While the door trim was off we thought we'd make a day of it and try and free off the window winder. "Rocket" (think WD40) was applied liberally. The result was not exactly silky, but it was certainly a lot easier to operate. We think that one of the drive cog teeth is missing. By now it was well into the afternoon. Rewarded ourselves by getting out Frisbee. Then we erected tent, showered and dined. The English people, Tony and Dick, from Geneva, camping across the way, came and admired our handiwork and chatted - about Swiss security. Then they were summoned by their wives to eat. They said it was very rare to be burgled in Geneva! Very reassuring.

We went down to the camp café for a consolation beer. The camp bambino descended on us and insisted that we play 'ping pong' with him and with each other. The intention was early bed and an early start to Venice in the morning, but the alarm clock chose that moment for the alarm spring to break, while I was winding the main spring!