mushroomman:
Hello Kurt, I was going through my old photo shoebox a couple of days ago and I thought that you might be interested in seeing a couple of photos that I took around 1984/5 of the viaduct that eventually spanned the valley in Nantua, France. As the photos look slightly similar to yours I probably took one of them around the same time that you took yours. As you mentioned, the tunnel up through the mountains was opened in 1987 and if I remember correctly it saved you between 45 minutes and one hour on the journey to Italy.<…>
WEBHOST: Currently still piggybacking but hoping to move to own purpose-built webhost/site soon.
Many many thanks to MRM for his superb detective work.
In brief: I have written the page in chronological order, as far as memory allows. The problem is … memory. There are two ways of determining with certainty: (1) passport stamps. I have that passport still but when I tried to put my finger on it I could not find it. It cannot be far away, it just was not with the other passports. (2) photograph negative reels. These will give images in the order they were taken.
With respect to the DC-3: Pretty sure we were still in Yugoslavia and it was the heat of the day. When I crossed into Bulgaria I think that photograph of the ‘danger: carts’ was taken in daylight so we must have crossed in daylight, regardless of what I think. I know we stopped at the restaurant in Bulgaria and it was dark when we came out. The camera flash went off.
It was dark when we arrived in Sofia.
MACON->NANTUA - WATERING-HOLE - BOURG-EN-BRESSE
Was this on the RHS of the road, with a large hard-core stand in front of it ?
If so we paused here either on this actual trip or on other trips.
NANTUA VIADUCT
I think we must have passed within hours of each other
‘THE TREES’
Where I received the impression that this was a hotel, I know not. But now it all makes sense.
From a look at google.com/maps it looks like ‘The Trees’ was in the section of woodland on the west of the road just before Salviksky Brod.
HOTEL NACIONALE
From the photographs in one of the books on ME Overland, the chairs and tables in my photographs are at the Hotel Nacionale. Arno told that one of the waiters, his brother worked at the Bulgarian embassy, and implied that he could get visas.