We are almost at the end of the Romantic Strasse and finally we have managed to get wi-fi as some of you will already know. It has been so very frustrating, we have been making for place after place where they say we can get wi-fi and when we arrive it is not working or worse not available. The Mc Donald’s free wi-fi is not an option as you have to have a ‘T mobile’ number to use it. At one stage we nearly bought a dongle for £19 which would give us free wi-fi anywhere in Germany but we needed a German address to get it!
Anyway whinge over, when we left Garda we had been warned by our next door neighbours that it was snowing in Switzerland but only raining in Germany! Well they were right, in fact all the way to Innsbruck it poured, couple this with the extensive road works and the journey was not great. Joan and I came here 2 years ago and so we were amazed when the sat-nav took us away from the city, but it did go directly to the campsite, just it wasn’t the one we’d been to before.
This site at Natters is really amazing, all solar panels etc plus automatic sliding doors to spotlessly clean facilities. The Ladies looks like a posh hairdressing salon with free hairdryers in front of big mirrors with lights round them and lovely white chairs. (so Joan tells me!) The site also has a huge lake to swim in but it’s a bit nippy at the moment, if the weather is good this must be absolutely brilliant. As we arrived it had stopped raining and the evening sunshine was lovely, so we went to bed with false hope for nice weather tomorrow. No such luck I am afraid, in fact as we started on the drive into Germany it was a lot worse!
Our reason for coming to Germany was twofold. We wanted to meet Joe and Ingrid who we had met in the south of Spain last year, they are a lovely couple and from the first day we met them at Isla Cristina we just chatted and laughed as if we had been friends for donkey’s years.
The second reason was to travel the ‘Romantic road’. This runs from Füssen in the south all the way to Würzburg and consists of 27 towns/villages dating from the middle ages and before.
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In many cases they are fortified, the town walls are still there and you can walk around them. They are beautifully preserved but not in a sterile way. They have shops, schools, churches and restaurants which still keep the towns alive as places to live, plus of course outside the old town walls, modern housing has grown. They have gone to great lengths to make it a good tourist attraction and the cycle routes have to be seen to be believed, in some cases they are better than the roads!
We met lots of people taking their holiday by cycling from town to town, some in organised groups. Sadly the weather was so bad that we really did not make the most of all this but we did visit most places and walked around the old churches and walked the walls, usually with Joan’s brolly at the ready, if not up. So I will not go into any more detail as on the internet you will find lots of information if you want to know more, instead I’ve posted a few photos of some of the places we visited. We were very lucky as Joe and Ingrid had sent us loads of information and maps so we could plan our trip well in advance.
Having said all this we did stop at a few places and when we did it was on ‘Stellplatz.’ These are free or relatively cheap places set aside for motorhomes where you can park and get water, electricity and dump your waste water, plus empty your toilet without causing any problems or pollution. On some of them they have showers and toilets plus washing up facilities all for a few euro’s. We stayed on one at Füsson which has loads of facilities plus outside there are several supermarkets for supplies, and Donauwörth which is free and you get electricity for a couple of euro’s. I needed water when we left but not a lot and it was 100 litres for a euro so I didn’t bother. Later Joe said, well you would pay a euro for a bottle of water so why not? I had to admit he was right, I just hadn’t thought of it like that.
We had seen lots of really nice places and amazing churches but it was cold and wet so we really only just popped in, wandered around, took pictures and left to go onto the next place. When you walk into a walled city and go to the centre, take photos and perhaps have a snack then walk out a different way, you need to walk around the walls until you get back to your van, simple. However on a couple of occasions I had to explain this fact to the small one who was concerned that we had lost our way!
On one such occasion I must confess we did have to walk a long way but finally, obviously not trusting me, Joan asked some young lads where the swimming bath was as we had parked next to it. We were delighted they were so helpful and in perfect English one of them directed us to it. When she commented on his good English he blushed and all his friends poked good natured fun at him. All of this continuous activity meant that we arrived at Ochsenfurt campsite a lot sooner than we had planned and pretty tired. We were also amazed to discover we had passed K&K who had gone to an ACSI site just a few miles back.
This campsite is lovely and is about 12 miles from the end of the route at Würzburg which in turn is a few kilometres from Joe & Ingrid’s home and we are looking forward to seeing them. We do not yet quite believe it but the rain has stopped and there is bright sunshine here so naturally we decided to stay a few days and just relax, get some washing done and soak up the sun. Can you believe it, the wi-fi here is NOT working, aagh! How will we tell them we are here? Finally I realised Joe had sent us his mobile number so we sent them a text but got no reply. We thought we must have the wrong number so decided we would go to their house in a couple of day’s time when we had rested.
When we arrived here they were almost full and we were very tired but we found a place a long way from the facilities and used our bikes to get to the shower etc. This seemed to me to be working fine and off I went to bed.
The next morning the small one went into full overdrive and as we prepared to go for our showers she appeared at the van door with the washing! Next as I returned clean and with the fresh bread, she was waiting with the breakfast, then as I finished the last mouthful it was time to put up a washing line! As soon as the washing was hung up she said, come on there is a much better place down there, so leaving the washing where it was I moved the van! Then as I finally sat down the phone rang and Joe said we will be with you in about an hour! All the married men reading this will know that as soon as Joan heard this we naturally had to clean the van we had only cleaned yesterday!!! Joe actually took 2 hours, so I did finally get to sit down and more importantly IN THE SUNSHINE!
It was wonderful to see them both again and as soon as we had got the initial greetings over they gave us a mobile phone so we could call them at anytime should a problem arise, so thoughtful. I am sure we could have just sat there chatting for hours but they were keen to show us around a bit so we put ourselves in their hands. The first thing we did was go for lunch where we had buns as big as stotties but lighter bread, with so much filling we didn’t think we’d eat again all day! They also introduced us to a drink called a radler which is so called because it is refreshing but not too alcoholic for cyclists.(a RAD is German for bicycle)
This reminded us of lunch with Tom & Kay in Florida.
We spent the rest of the day seeing some wonderful sights and then went to their home for coffee and a lovely strawberry roulade that Ingrid had made. After that we climbed up to the top of the hill for a panoramic view out across the city of Würzburg, then down to a very nice restaurant for dinner. We had a good German beer and our first ever schnitzel. A wonderful day if a little exhausting.
Tuesday 22nd June
Joe & Ingrid had arranged to pick us up about 10.30am or just after and took us again to see more sights. It really is good going around with people who know all the history and you get to hear extra little snippets from them. The trouble is Joe has such a sharp sense of humour we are not sure if we believe him or not when he showed us a building in Frickenhausen with the year 1880 on the lintel but the bottom of the first eight has been left off, a bit like a joined up omega sign. Now, according to Joe this means half an eight, so 1480! We must confess it is certainly a very old building and definitely not 1800 but............? When he reads this he will laugh we think.......or perhaps not.
We then went to Würzburg where we had Bratwurtz for lunch which again was delicious.
We entered a beautiful old building then which was an ultra modern library, proving you can keep lovely buildings and make them functional inside. I was keen to see the painted ceiling in “The Residence” I had heard so much about but we will do that tomorrow. I really do not see how they can surpass those in St Killian’s, the martyr’s church we visited, they were amazing.
There we are, everything is really wonderful but we are a little embarrassed as up to now Joe & Ingrid have not let us pay for anything!
To be continued.................
Love
Bryan & Joan XXXX
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