Into 2012, not in a castle

Today's first treat was shopping! We went past Frankfurrt then stopped at a HUGE out of town retail park and had a fun time selecting salamis, beer and chocolates for our dinner tonight and to take home. I was frustrated to find the McDonnald's wi fi doesn't seem to be working in Germany as I have days of blog to upload.

We headed on up to the Rhine Gorge between Bingen and Koblens- a reportedly beautiful stretch with two youth hostels in castels if we decided we wanted to stay there. The rain didn't enthuse me about exploring the gorge much on foot. so I'm afraid we did most of it from the car but it's a really lovely area ful of disgustingly well kept cute vilages with nicely decorated half timber buildings and pointy churches. The churches here are no longer the fiddly shape of Austria's ones but no nonsence stright and sharp and more colourfully embellished than those in the UK. THere were also grape vines lining the few bits of slope which were south facing when the river curved. I was staggered at how closely they were planted on JUST these areas, no matter how steap the drop- it seemed almost sheer in parts.

We found lots of nice parking up spots and lots of Youth Hostels. Although it was only 1pm we asked the availability in all of them including the gorgeous castle ones but they were all fully booked. We dithered whether there was enough to do in the gorge to fill up the time until the evening so we could use a parking up spot and go to a pub but we decided that actually the asthetic benefits of the area were only relivant in the day time and in this weather all we'd see at night was either the inside of the car or of a pub so we enjoyed the views and headed onwards in the general direction of Calais. We'd picked a national park on the German-Belguim border as a vauge area to try but came across a swimming pool car park on the outskirts of a small town that allowed caravan parking for up to three days before that. It was ok, it wan't lovely and certainly wasn't sociable like the hostels would have been but we'd be in the car and asleep by ten anyway. Alex coked a nice sausage based dinner and we played cards until bedtime.

At midnight , despite a heads up from my German friend, we were indeed woken by a far more widespread and long display of fireworks than I would have ever expected of such a small town. I watched some of it from within the car but it was all small, private displays and after the end of Edinburgh Festival fireworks, visable for miles around and choriagraphed to fit the accompanying classical orchestra it takes a lot for me to get excited by frreworks I so only watched a bit! Alex chose sleep. They went on for ages though- maybe fifteen minutes of solid bangs. The only other distrurbances were two groups of folk racing their cars about the car park-one when we first turned in and another at 4.30am. To be fair, the carpark is laid out like a race track amd there really was NOTHING else going on in town, (we took a drive through earlier), I'm only suprised there were so few of them!

German Sausages

I awoke feeling even better but was still cautious with food. We packed up, paid up and headed on- through the few inches of snow on the hills that fell least night where we were and into the clear green fields below. It was funny driving about two meters below the snow line, seeing it on anything higher than us while below was clear. It was nice to see the attracive Bavarian countryside we had missed in the dark the night before although the damp skies didn't lend it's self to photos. We headed to Regansburg, an attractive and historic town north of Munich. I was astounded at the number of tour groups being led around but it is a pretty place with the first secured crossing cross the Danube in it's time. We seem to be forever crossing back and forth over the Danube since we first encounted it getting over into Romania, it's a very windey, long river. It was a nice place and Alex bought himself his second treat all holiday- a beautiful drinking horn.

We had lunch at the Historische Wurstkuchl, the sausage kitchen orgionally built for the bridge workers. I was disappointed how weedy the sausages looked after the big knoberly ones you get in Turkey and Iran and opted for potato soup instead. It was really nice to be able to just wander about a place and not feel a sense of urgency to get away to be somewhere else by a certain time. When we left we continued our broadly NWW bearing, heading towards a national park area. It was pitch dark by the time we got there and rough camping seemed a little less appealing. The first two campsites the Sat Nav found us weren't open for business so we tried one of the perfect looking tarmac roads that disappeared up into the wood with no car signs on. A wee way up the track we came to a barrier and a militairy sign and Alex twigged that some unusual speed limit signs he'd been seeing in the area were for tanks and jeeps. We headed back to the road, and didn't investigate any more- such a shame, all this perfect free camping land and the militairy had already clalimed it.

I had given up and we headed on to another campsite when just outside of the village we found the perfect place- a small carpark in the woods. We made a note of the place then decided to head into the next town for a tasty resturant meal before we came back here to sleep. It wasn't nearly as cold as many temperatures we've camped in but for one thing we've gone soft and for another it's the pervading dampness in the air that seeps right into you in the way that a healthy mountain cold never does. Neither of us wanted to cook. I managed some proper food tonight, all be it a child's portion!

Motorway Day

I awoke after a good night's sleep to feel magically healed athough when I started moving about I found I wasn't one hundred percent better but I still managed a delicious scrambled egg for breakfast. We took some time to look around the town with it's colourful and very Austrian style buildings. Everyone spoke German as well as Hungarian and asked if we'd prefer to pay in Euros or Florens- they're so used to lots of Austrains poping accross the border for a nice cheap holiday and wine that they've become very adaptable. We bought some groceries and cheap alcohol, some paprika and some goulash paste. Then, after filling up the car and all our cans with the slightly cheaper fuel here, headed on over into Austria, through the unmnned barriers.

We had thought about Slovakia and even the Czech Republic but in the end this was the most direct route. I realised in Austria that these were the first green fields I had seen in a while. We bought a vignette and got onto the motorway. The soundproof barriers ment that we saw little of the country except the occasioanal hill top castle but we made very good progress. Just a few hours later we crossed into Germany- Alex announced we have now travelled over 20,000km or 12,000 miles on our trip. It confirmed to me that has we headed north to the other counrties we wouldn't really hve seen much of them anyway.

The German motoway seemed slightly mad- it was one of the ones with no speed restrictions so while lorries are chugging away slowly in one lane cars a darting past them at umpteen kilometers and hour and with us going a speed somewhere in the middle we sometimes had to overtake in the fast lane. Alex didn't seem daunted though. Being Germany there are lots of campsites and we had ther pleasure once more of calling them up on the st nav and getting us to take us there. I rememberd how when we hit Iran the complete lack of roads on sat nav really threw us but since them we have learnt to rely so much more on paper maps in guidebooks that I'd forgoten the pleasure of being taken there with no effort at all!

The first campsite appeared to be a building site but the second is great. It's bursting at the seams with caravaners- largely of the silver haired variety going by the folk in the very nice looking resturant and bar. It looks full and jolly in there- Alex is just cooking us some food, (since I'm still on small amount of simple food it seemed best) and we shall head in there for some social interaction later.