Soultz-les-Bains, Alsace

We were up at 4am and were all ready to depart by 5am, after stripping bedding off the beds, clearing the fridge and packing the cooler bag, and checking the apartment to ensure that everything was switched off and tided away.

Gavin always drives as he prefers to do so, and I hate long distance driving, particularly in a foreign country when it is the 'wrong' side of the road. However shortly after we left Gavin suddenly developed something wrong with his eye, it went very red and was painful and also puffed up a little. He could not see properly to drive so I obviously took over.

However, it was the trickiest part of the journey, down the valley to Zurich and then on to Basel. There were so many offramps and tunnels and I have never noticed before how much the speed limit keeps changing, even in one short tunnel it changed from 80mph to 60mph then back to 80mph, and I was so busy concentrating on where I was going, and watching the speed limit, that I found it a bit stressful. To make matters worse it was also raining. Anyway just after Basel, Gavin, who had been sleeping to rest his eye said it was much better and he took over the driving again. I don't know what it was but luckily I had eye drops in my bag so he was able to administer them which helped his eye.

After that the journey was plain sailing, the motorways in France are very good and its an easy journey home. For some reason the satnav always directs us off the motorway through this little area of Alsace which is so pretty with all the vineyards, and we stopped so I could jump out the car  and take this photo of this charming town. The trees were all in blossom and the journey home had such pretty scenery with the pink and white blossom everywhere.

With the longer days we got home in sunshine and although it was 6pm we could still take Xena for a walk to stretch her legs - and ours. We are tired from the early start though. I must now see if there is anything in the fridge to eat for supper- probably just boiled eggs on toast.