From Germany, through the Alps to Pnchia.

More than a long day today,  left at 9.a.m.on he button,  no breakfast so at the first fuel stop we topped up both the bikes and ourselves.

Route was originally on both motorways and good roads, however wee change of plan so we headed into the Alps taking a bit of a cross country route !!!!!!  to say the least,  The lady on my sat nav was about apoplectic, telling me to do U turns and recalculating all the time.  Certainly went across country and took what looked like a forest track   had us all fooled as it did end up on a road.   We had some marvellous views, but not enough time to admire them as it was hard to ride and look, especially on hundreds of hairpin bends. I do not have the map handy top say where we went   but we did go into the massive National Park which is part of the Alps and went right up to the massive glacier, over 7000ft up,  dashed chilly, and with rain and very low cloud, not as awesome as it should have been.     In the course of the day we were well above the snow line three times, and on one occasion were stopped for ages while a possible avalanche was broken up by explosives.
If I had problems riding round tight bends before I got here,  not now,  hundreds of hairpins en route, with the bikes in 1st and 2nd gear on some -  pretty hairy and certainly gave you a bit of a rush !!!
As a group we got broken up a bit,  but despite the sat nav managed to make it to our IPA base for the next three days.     Big crowd here, from all over Europe,  noisy and looking to enjoy themselves.  Nice meal when we arrived but being so late we had to sit "dirty" and are now only just getting organised.
One of our group, riding a new BMW 1200RT  has just received an urgent message recalling his bike and forbidding him from riding it -  so BMW will need to arrange transport to get him home, arrange to collect his bike,  and also arrange to get it back to the UK if he has already left here - and we think we have problems.

Anyway, bed time,  if I can get up in time, it is the first of two long days out as a big group through the mountain passes.