Football’s coming home to Germany...
Friday, June 22
More cycling, both to Kirchberg and its neighbour Sinninghem, checking out more churches. This is a nice area, very wealthy but quiet... as if the season, such as it is around here, has yet to start. For soft cyclists like us, the options are pretty limited and the campsite itself hasn’t enough to keep us here. So, we’re on the move again, although Baden Baden has fallen off the chart and we’ve chosen Ulm instead, if only for the dramatic minster and the free camperstop. Saturday, June 23 Stellplatz, Ulm An early start and a shortish drive meant we were able to get to Ulm reasonably early and pick our spot on the free area for motor homes, right on the Danube and a short cycle from just about everywhere, but mainly the buzzing town centre. Ulm cathedral is rightly regarded as a Gothic masterpiece (aren’t they all?) and stands proud in the middle of the town plaza, dominating everything around it. The highlight of the cathedral for Jane, though, was the Lego replica displayed in the portico. In front, the townsfolk were setting up the seating around the big screen, ready for the night’s top game involving Germany. We strolled around the cobbled side streets for a while, then cycled back to the van, did a little shopping at the adjacent Lidl and then made plans to move on, satisfied we’d seen the best of Ulm, or all we wanted to see. Sunday, June 24 Campingpark Bad Liebenzell, Bavaria We woke up late after the game, having seen Toni Kroos’ well-worked winner see off the plucky Swedes on our own TV in the van. We plotted a course for the Black Forest and aimed for a site at Horb am Neckar, deep in the heart of one of Germany’s loveliest regions. Sadly, the site didn’t match its surroundings. When we arrived the reception staff were having their lunch so we took the opportunity to have a look around, only to find it a shabby shanty town full of season pitches and scores of regulars sleeping off their hangovers from the previous night’s game in the afternoon sunshine. It wasn’t our sort of place so we had lunch in the car park then headed for plan B – a nice-sounding place in the spa town of Bad Liebenzell. It soon became clear we’d made a great move. The site had a free tennis court, free access to a superb outdoor pool complex right next door (via a private gate for campers only!), had a Lidl next door and good access along the cycle path next to the adjacent river to the town and all its delights. For all these treats, including free travel on all regional trains and buses, we had to pay the princely sum of €1.95 each, per day, on top of our €19 a day site fee. A bargain! On the night we arrived, we had a meal in the tepee that doubled as a biergarten and a TV lounge for World Cup matches. Then, as if things couldn’t get any better, our old friends Dennis and Norman turned up on the pitch next to us! With all these factors in place, we settled down to a week here, right up to the day ACSI ran out (June 30) and would have stayed longer if we could have persuaded the Canadian dragon who ran the site to accommodate us. In the event, none of us had the nerve to broach the subject with her. Nevertheless, in the days we spent here we had a ball. Tennis and swimming every morning, followed by a quick trip to Lidl for provisions, then the afternoon lounging around the site, or exploring the region. On successive days we took a train into Calw, two stops down the line (a disappointment), climbed up to the castle overlooking the town (so-so), saw England stumble against Belgium and, most memorably, had a wonderful day at the thermal spa in Bad Liebenzell, discounted thanks to our campsite tax. Its complex of warm indoor and outdoor pools, jacuzzis, steam rooms and saunas was a match for any posh retreat in the U.K. but at about €13 a head was an absolute steal. Best of all was the naked sauna complex (the 100-degrees heat would have melted any swimsuits, apparently). The whole place was a bit like Cocoon before the aliens arrived, full of the local oldies. But they all looked remarkably well and were all very friendly, although, thankfully, all those who joined us in the saunas kept their distance! On the Saturday night, our last on site, we joined Dennis and Norman for a walk into the town and a delightful farewell meal at the civic centre, then washed it all down with a nightcap or two back at our combined pitch. In the morning we said our goodbyes (again) but the way our paths keep crossing who’s to say we won’t all meet up once more on our road trip. Sunday, July 1 Camping Donnersberg, Black Forest Another good, early start was ruined by some quirky sat-nav instructions which took us up into hills and right into a roadblock at a small mountain village. We turned around and drove the six miles back into Bad Liebenzell to pick up the right road. This took us to another no-go campsite that doubled as a motorhome dealer but, again, didn’t have a good ‘feel’ about it. So we drove on and found Camping Donnersberg, an admittedly lovely little site built around an ornamental lake. It had a natural swimming pool (no chlorine) and we had a very welcome dip in it after we’d pitched up in the late afternoon sunshine. Even so, we decided to move on after just one night, mainly because they didn’t take cards, we’d run out of cash and the nearest bank was miles away.Our initial impressions about the site were justified... on top of the €19 a night, we had to pay another €2.50 each for tax and then a further €2.50 in “administration fees”. All in cash. As nice as it was, we felt robbed and happy to move on to another riverside site in Lahnstein, about five miles south of Koblenz which we’d been told was worth a visit. Monday, July 2 Camping Wolfsmuhler, Lahnstein After first checking for signs of Dennis and Norman, we settled down on a spacious pitch night next to the river Lahn and took in our surroundings. Getting here had been a struggle, winding through some tricky roads and then making our way gently through the side streets of the town. Then, the sat-nav had steered us to the far end of the site but access was impossible thanks to a dead end. Such are the delights of using co-ordinates for directions, instead of addresses. Reaching the real entrance meant a five or six-mile detour but we made it and were glad we had. The site is a lovely linear camp with good facilities and a great cycle track which takes you off road to the town and beyond, right alongside the impressive Rhine all the way to Koblenz. By bike, we explored the town first (another sweet old German town laid low by out-of-town developments) and, on Tuesday we felt confident enough to take on Koblenz, having been advised that it was worth the effort by an English couple on the next pitch (although they said Bad Ems, nine kilometres in the opposite direction was better). With their advice, and tips on how to get to Koblenz’s famous cable car and funicular, we set off. An hour later we’d got to where we thought the funicular was and started pushing our bikes up the hill to where we thought the base station must be. We carried on pushing, and pushing, and pushing... until we reached the top of the funicular, tucked away on the other side of the mountain. No, said the woman who ran the ticket office, we couldn’t take our bikes down it. We were so exhausted that we didn’t feel like walking, with our bikes, through a dull-looking museum just to get to the cable car across the Rhine. So, we gingerly freewheeled back down the cobbled hill, burning out our hub brakes, and found the nearest bridge across the Rhine. Koblenz, flattened during the war, has been rebuilt in that rather brutish, modernist style you find in a lot of German towns similarly afflicted. But the wonderfully stylish houses along the Rhine that we passed on the way back to Lahnstein show what a spectacularly beautiful city it must have been in the 1930s. On Tuesday, we pottered about a little more but really we were just marking time until 8pm when we could settle into the campsite bar and watch the England v Columbia knockout game. We got there just after the kick-off and joined five or six other English folk, plus some Dutch and German couples, to bite our nails and drink a few beers. By the end of penalties, we were all celebrating – it seems the Dutch, the Germans and even the solitary Welshman wanted England to win. A great night! On Thursday, we cycled the trail to Bad Ems and found it to be a really chic, quite grand old spa town stretching along the Lahn. Hidden away down a side street, wedged against a hillside to the north side of the town, is a near-vertical funicular. At last, we’d found one at the bottom! For about €3.50 each, we took a ride to the top, where there was a quiet cafe, and back down to the bottom. We were so impressed that we resolved to head back into the town in the van the following day and see more of Bad Ems. A three-day festival with beer, street food and live bands swung it for us. Friday, July 6 Stellplatz, Bad Ems, Rhineland Knocked up in the car park of a marina, just on the eastern edge of Bad Ems, this place is quite a little find. We’d cycled through it the day before and chatted to a couple of Liverpudlians who had just arrived and were raving about it. For €11 they were getting a pitch on the banks of the river, plus water and waste. Hot, clean showers were €1 and electricity was €0.50 per KwH. It was a bit tight but quiet and it was very handy for Lidl, Aldi and the festival, which we treated ourselves to that night. We had a few beers and bought a terrific bottle of red German wine, then had a van burger before settling down to watch The Acoustics knock out some soft-rock covers, paused to see the end of the Belgium-Brazil game in the Yellow Submarine cafe, then caught The Journeymen, who happily murdered a few Eric Clapton classics before we cycled off home. The next day, we headed back into town in the afternoon to see England wallop Sweden, do a last tour of the festival stalls and head back for a couple of episodes of The Sopranos which, I have to say, were more exciting than the match... and we’d seen them twice before! Sunday, July 8 Camping Schönburg-Blick, Oberwesel, Rhineland “I’ve put in the sat-nav that we don’t want the ferry route,” said my navigator. An hour later, having realised too late that our route across the Rhine didn’t feature any bridges, or tunnels for that matter, we’re sat on a ferry taking us across the Rhine. We’ve paid almost €10 for the privilege but it’s worth it. “See,” I said, “I told you I’d get you that Rhine cruise you always wanted.” About two or three miles from the ferry landing we pulled into our destination, a smallish campsite on the banks of one of Europe’s great rivers. There’s a nice beach, a beer garden, clean showers and an unbroken view of the cruise ships and heavy barges which form a permanent backdrop. Yes, it’s a nice place. The weather is great, too, and on the Monday, after a quick trip for supplies to the Lidl just 200 yards away, we do two loads of washing then have a long walk through the old town of Oberwesel, just across the road. A centre of viticulture, it is overlooked by hills covered in vineyards on both sides of the Rhine, boasts at least two lovely churches and has a bustling little market square where, bizarrely, we saw the band of the Enfield Grammar School in north London give a ‘jazz and funk’ concert. It was about as ‘jazzy and funky’ as a bunch of bored-looking 11-17-year-olds can get and after we’d heard what could have been ‘Walking on the Moon’, ‘We Will Rock You’ and Earth, Wind and Fire’s September, we moved on. Where to next? Well, our new neighbour, an audiologist from Birmingham named Andy and his wife, Jackie, a retired nurse, have managed to tune in their satellite to the BBC and have invited us round for the big game on Wednesday – England v Croatia in the World Cup semi-final. It’s a lovely offer but we can’t decide whether to suffer the crushing disappointment in company or on our own... Tuesday, July 10 Camping Sudeifel, Irrel In the event, we decide to move on and feed the coordinates of one of last surviving ACSI sites in Germany into the satnav, reaching this lovely town centre site before lunch, having made a refreshingly early start on the two-hour journey. The route takes us through the middle of Irrel which looks busy enough to keep us amused for a few days at least. The site, another snaking gently alongside a shallow river, is flat and the pitches are large and by the time we’ve settled down, got the awning and ground sheets and the table and chairs out the weather has cleared and everything couldn’t be peachier. We have a look around and find that, yes, there are luxury toilets and showers, as specified in the ACSI brochure. Even better, the bar is advertising the France-Belgium semi-final so that’s tonight sorted. We walk up to the bar in time for the kick-off but find it full of half-cut locals all flouting the apparent smoking ban. When we try to find a seat, one bloke with a dodgy leg, an ashtray full of tabs and a lot of empty bottles in front of him urges us to sit alongside. We find it hard to refuse so we watch the match puffing his second-hand smoke. He only stops coughing his lung tissue up so he can check the diabetes app on his phone. Mercifully, it doesn’t go to extra-time and we get away at the final whistle... then go straight for a shower and throw our stinking clothes in the wash. It’s amazing how quick you forget (or remember) the effect the smoking ban has had on clean air in the U.K. The bar has forced us to rethink our plans for the England-Croatia game but, happily, I manage to tune the satellite in the van to a German channel showing the game and, after a ride to the nearby Aldi for supplies, we settle in for the inevitable roller-coaster ride of emotions, ending in the even more inevitable disappointment. Thursday, July 12 Irrel Well, we couldn’t sit around all day and mope about what might have been so we oiled the bikes and, on the tip of a Dutch neighbour, we cycled the short distance to Luxembourg, another country we could claim to have visited on this trip. It was a lovely ride through woodland and open countryside on dedicated cycle paths to reach Echternach, the oldest ‘city’ in the Grand Duchy. It was lovely to find such a ‘French’ town (it’s quite a small place) so close to the German border. Walking around the cobbled streets, filled with chic and expensive bistros, grand villas, manicured parks and civic buildings quite got us in the mood for when we eventually make it to France proper in a week or so. Interestingly (or not) we noticed on a visit to the municipal campsite in the town that the official language, at least of the site, is Dutch. Just across the river, though, is another site connected to a pool complex that is unmistakeably German. The next day, as the weather just got better and better, we relaxed around the site and in the evening went to a pizza restaurant in Irrel that turned out to be very disappointing, although the slices we didn’t eat did taste better when we had them for lunch the next day! Before then, on Saturday morning, we visited an advertised ‘Floh Markt’ near the site. This was a flea market, a car boot sale, German style... although the tat and rubbish they were selling (including some suspect Nazi memorabilia) would have gone unsold just about anywhere, not least the ‘quality’ boot sale that’s held in Sully every Sunday in the summer! By Sunday, we were winding down but the weather was still oppressively not. For relief, we cycled into the wooded hills to the north of the town and tried, then failed, to find the museum of the Siegfried Line (just so we could hang out our washing on it!). Undaunted, we did manage to make it to the waterfalls nearby and the ‘Devil’s Rock’, which were part of a lovely nature reserve. Tuesday, July 17 Camping Kockelscheuer, Luxembourg City Monday in Irrel might easily have been the hottest of our trip so far this year. The temperature gauge was showing around 32 degrees in the shade and it could well have been hotter. It was too hot and sticky to do anything, so we just bummed around the van getting hotter and stickier, deciding that as we were leaving the following day it wasn’t worth doing anything, apart from a few quizzes and crosswords. In the morning, we packed up and set off for Luxembourg City, to a campsite just about 30 miles away. En route, we came through some lovely farmland, found the Lidl, then struggled to get through the centre of the city. The slow traffic at least gave us a chance to get a feel for the Canary Wharf-looking financial hub, which is the point of Luxembourg, essentially. At about €19 a night, the site is good value for this time of year and there’s a free jazz and blues festival at the weekend which might keep us around until then. Pictured, from top, Germany struggle to get past Sweden on the big screen at Bad Liebenzell; the impressive model of Ulm Minster, made entirely out of Lego; Bad Liebenzell as seen from the castle about two miles out of the town; our friends Dennis and Norman, on our last night in the town; the wonderful spa... we’re just out of shot, sadly!; the elusive cable car at Koblenz; our pitch at a stellplatz at Bad Ems; the ferry across the Rhine; the impressive church at Oberwesel; a French-style side street in Echternach, just over the German border in Luxembourg; the waterfalls and the Devil’s Rock
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