We decided not to wrestle all our items of luggage out of the mini last night, so we did not have it to wrestle them back this morning. I had decided it would be a brave thief to attempt it, and I was correct.

Breakfast was taken overlooking the race track with cars circulating on it since first light. There must be an event on today as cars are streaming into the circuit carparks.

The hotel carpark was rammed last night which may explain this car hanging at reception.

A nice early morning drive through forests and then back onto the motorway. My compatriot keeps to speeds below 70 mph today, and although this improved fuel consumption, it did not do the same for the oil. Another couple of pints were needed. This requires me to break open the fresh gallon can of very expensive oil to see if this makes a difference. If it doesn’t, I am going to have to find some suitable classic car mineral oil in three days’ time, which may challenge our Italian!

We had a couple of bits of excitement on the motorway today. The first was when my 30 year old Tom Tom satnav turned itself off and refused to restart. Fortunately, this was just after a command to continue on the motorway for 73 miles so perhaps it thought it was not required. After a period of rest while I searched through the luggage on the back seat for a map and the address of the hotel it, sprung back to life. Phew, perhaps it was only demonstrating it’s importance to the trip!

The second excitement of the day was when we discovered that service areas were becoming less frequent, huge, and very busy. The petrol gauge was on red as we pulled onto one. There were lorries and cars parked everywhere as we followed what looked like petrol pump signs, only to find ourselves in the electric car charging points.

We went up and down every lane in the car park to discover there was no way back to the petrol pumps. I consulted Google and found a garage not too far from a motorway junction some 20 kms further on which we reached running on air. We won’t make that mistake again.

We arrived at our hotel in Munich without further incident. There had been a white BMW mini tracking us in the distance behind for the last hour or so, only to find our friends Jackie and Kevin following us into the hotel carpark in their white mini. Apparently, the last time they came to Munich, they got very lost. They were taking a risk following us.

Once parked up and checked in, we decide to take a taxi into the centre of Munich for an explore, drink, and dinner. Not necessarily in that order.

The city was very busy with tourists and locals as there appeared to be booths with different political parties trying to drum up support for up coming elections.

After a pleasant evening, we returned to the hotel. My compatriot, Kevin & Jackie went to bed (not together), and I joined a small group to drink beer and watch Ireland beat Scotland at rugby.