Bryon met me at the house and we packed up the van and set off to Dover - things were complicated by the fact operation stack was in place due to the painful situation at P&O - luckily we were booked on DFDS, and just had to negotiate the queues of lorries. Everything was late due to the packing in of wagons, so we opted for an earlier ferry to Calais, which actually left at our original time/.
On the other side we quickly left and headed north to Brussels then across to Luxembourg where we had a room in an Ibis budget hotel. Arriving at 11pm local so straight to bed.
The onward journey was tedium pronounced as we drove autobahns all the way to the Austrian border, with the exception of a severe blockage around Frankfurt airport causing around an extra hour to the journey. We rocked up at the house just after 5pm, with time to get in before heading out to track down some food.
Everything was closed, although there was not much around. We ended up at a hotel restaurant that only had a Table D'hôte menu. However it turned out great, with fine cuisine and we had a great dinner based around pork fillet, and chocolate cake and apricot puree.
Then back to the house - about a kilometre away in rain which had started whilst we were eating. Tomorrow we would begin this year's expeditions with a trip up to Faschina and a repeat of a route from two years ago, so early to bed.