Day Two: Tuscan bound.

Although one of the first on board the freight traffic had to be let out before our deck was lowered. We were soon weaving our way along motorways following the directions of Google maps.

Down towards Utrecht and then eas-ish towards Arnhem before cutting south through the Ruhr valley and past Frankfurt. The first sign for Basel showed 380km which made my heart sink a little - as we had booked an hotel a good while the other side.

But the kms inexorably ticked by as those super-fast Germans in their Mercs, BMWs, Porsches and Audis bulleted past in the outside lane. How plentiful were the rest stops and service stations.

Eventually as the shadows began to lengthen across the asphalt we pushed ever closer to the Rhine past Frieburg and suddenly we were skirting through the big chemical complexes of Basel. We had to pay €40 to the Swiss road authorities to use the motorway - valid for a year.

Now we followed the signs for Luzern. As we got nearer warnings started appearing about a highway closure. We were directed off the m-way by our Googlette who sent us up tiny twisting roads with no barriers in the growing gloom. At one point she suggested we take a left but this was a road so narrow and so high it was still thankfully closed for the winter snows. After more twisting and turning through neat, well tended hilly farms and huge barns we rejoined the road south and pushed on through Luzern to Stannstad. By now it was pitch dark and the tunnels were taking over from the open road.

The hotel was quiet and very expensive. We could just make out the lake and twinkling lights. It felt like the sort of place you might have reflected on a life lived and its sorrows. We had a pizza and a beer and sipped a little Laphroaig back in the room stunned by all those kilometres.

I left the terrace door open so we could breathe in the crisp air and the silence, punctuated now and then by the creek of a solitary coot on the water.