Austria
Here the little truck came into its own. As a Kraft delivery lorry it had probably spent its life doing short hops, barley stretching her legs. We had blown the cobwebs out of the top of the cylinders in West Germany, and now we had some serious mountain passes to contend with.
Fortunately the early hills were dual carriageways. We'd spend a while overtaking some of the big artics on the slow crawl up hill, feeling good in ourselves and proud of her. She was a lot older and less powerful. Then they would crawl slowly past us, a different part of the hill, different gradient, and I guess slightly different gears for the big trucks with their multi split gearboxes. Sometimes as many as 12 synchromesh gears with splitter, compared to our 4. The truck successfully took whatever we threw at her, albeit, sometimes a little slowly.
Now, currently there is some confusion in my mind as to whether we went via Innsbruck and then into the very northern part of Italy, just for a few hours, or took a different route to stay in Austria until the Yugoslavian border. I would have thought I would have remembered the Europa Bridge!
The same trucks outside the Ryder office, but from the other side. Compare it to the black and white Kraft truck from a similar aspect. Note the different Bedford badge and word, and indicator / sidelights. Otherwise very similar despite the age difference.
