Tuesday 31 July - Donaurieden

Where's Bertie? He's in a small car parking area, alongside a very quiet road, between the Danube and some lakes, just by Donaurieden (exact location: 48.30989, 9.87070)
Weather: Mainly sunny and a bit too hot.

There's even less to report today than normal. After an early run along the river...

A flat track with distance markers every 200m - perfect for some speed intervals

...and a couple of errands in Ulm, I set out a number of options as to where we could go this week. Mick plumped for continuing the Danube theme, so here we are 20km to the SW of Ulm, heading back towards where we left the river to take our detour down to Bad Waldsee 9 days ago.

Very little has been done since we arrived. I've sat in the shade as much as possible and when I lost the shade for an hour or so, I got the bed down and took to lying as still as possible, feeling that I may melt otherwise. A little bit of a snooze may have accidentally occurred.

We have both wandered around the immediate area, although not at the same time, so as to save having to shut Bertie's windows.

It's a really pretty location in which we have found ourselves, and given a temperature a few degrees lower, I would have enjoyed to explore it further.


View from Bertie's front window, across a field of sunflowers to a castle and church on yonder 'hill' (/slightly raised ground)

The nearest lake to where we are parked, about 50m away

About 200m in the other direction is the Danube. You may notice it's much smaller here than in the photos from the last couple of days, taken just 20km down stream. That's because there's a series of control barrages around Ulm that have made the river there artificially large (to my mind, a series of slowly flowing lakes).

Monday 30 July - Thalfingen (Ulm)

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park on the Danube, only a few km to the NE of Ulm (exact location: 48.43470, 10.06348).
Weather: Sunny and hot.

It was a productive start to the day. At 9.30 we were just heading back to Bertie with two backpacks and one carrier bag full of clean laundry. That should keep us going for a few more weeks, although possibly not quite to the end of the trip.

Once back at Bertie (where the 23 degrees inside felt deliciously cool compared to outside and the laundrette), the laundry wasn't sorted and stowed, opting instead to move straight on to our next destination, hoping it would give us more attractive surroundings.

The journey was so short (5.6km) that as we pulled into the car park (which is, as hoped, much nicer than the one in Ulm), I recognised that I had run past this place yesterday morning, albeit on the opposite bank.

After great consideration of the position of the surrounding trees relative to the course of the sun, Bertie was settled into a spot so close to the river that it wasn't a stone's throw away, but spitting distance.

Bertie is just visible in this snap, if you know where to look. He's on the left bank, just beyond tall tree.

Walking a circuit later in the day, out along our side of the river, then back along the other bank, we took a slight detour to wander through the woods, checking out the access to the adjacent lake. Having seen a few people with towels, swimsuits and inflatables arrive and leave, we suspected there were swimming opportunities to be had, and so there were, in the form of lots of little side-trails leading to tiny grassy clearings at the lakeside.

Thus, as it started getting uncomfortably warm this afternoon, we went and spent a little time doing this...

...although it wasn't particularly cooling, as the water varied in pockets between 'swimming pool' and 'bath' in its temperature.

Sunday 29 July - Ulm

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Stellplatz in Ulm.
Weather: Sunny and hot.

It seems that every Saturday night we find ourselves in a town, even though we acknowledge that this is far from ideal. Saturday nights are not known for being quiet in such locations. However, even though this Stellplatz is not going to go down as a favourite, it did prove to have another plus point: it was quiet overnight.

Today we explored further its position, and, beyond the litter-strewn gravel of the parking area itself, the parkland that sits between us and the Danube is pleasant, with many features and facilities, as we found when we walked through it on this afternoon's stroll.

Snapped during this afternoon's stroll

The river itself is very nice around here too, as I confirmed when I trotted out for a run first thing this morning. I would say I was in good company at the early hour, but the reality is that whilst I ran out along the south bank, everyone else was running along the north side. I could immediately see why - it was shaded over there - but it was some distance before I was able to switch banks, and the river-control-barrage at which I crossed proved to be the landmark at which most people turn back towards the town. I continued onwards on, loose-surfaced tracks, through woodland and past a lake in which people were swimming. All very lovely.


Snapped during this morning's run

The best move of the day came between those two activities, as the daily van-exodus occurred (it has now been reversed and there are even more here tonight than there were last night) when we moved Bertie three spaces to the left, thus taking him out of direct sunlight and putting him under a tree. As a result, it has barely got over 30 degrees in here today, although it's currently showing no signs of getting below 29. Another sticky night coming up!

And that's it for today. There has been no other activity (although, I think 13.5 miles is activity enough, particularly when 9 of them were taken at a run).


I've not even finished this blanket yet, although it has been in regular use since last winter, so was alarmed this morning to find that it had sprung a hole where I had either forgotten to darn in some ends before snipping them, or had done so badly. Effecting a repair kept me occupied for a wee while and I was pleased with the result (bottom photo). I'm in the process of making another 126 Granny Squares to transform it from a single bed size to a double.

Saturday 28 July - Ulm

Where's Bertie? He's at the Stellplatz in Ulm (exact location: 48.40654, 10.00921).
Weather: Sunny intervals. A couple of light showers lasting less than a minute each.

The Stellplatz in Ulm, where we arrived just before 11 this morning, has little to recommend it save for being free, adjacent to some parkland (beyond which runs the Danube), and walking distance to the town (assuming you don't mind a 25 minute walk). As far as we have been able to find, there are no marked motorhome bays, so it's a free-for-all between cars and vans. That's not a problem on a weekend, but it's a bit litter-strewn and it's not the sort of place where you'd want to sit outside.

However, it serves our purposes, positionally, for the next couple of days, so we settled Bertie into a spot and, after elevenses and lunch, we took the longer route into town - along the river.

I didn't capture any of the Stand Up Paddleboarders, or the many people paddling downstream in blow-up dinghies.

The obvious sight-seeing starting point on arrival was the Minster (tallest spire in the world, apparently, at 161.5m), which, in common with many we've seen this year, is undergoing significant building works, with hoardings around part of it and scaffolding around the spire:

We didn't go up the spire. I don't fare well with spiral staircases and I thought the 750+ steps to get up this one would likely have me dizzy for the rest of the day.

A bit of aimless wandering then preceded a walk through the narrow streets of the Fischerviertel district, with its wonky half-timbered buildings:


No more land available to build your house? Well put it in the middle of the river then!

The building sticking out at the end of the row, on the left, is (per the Guiness Book of Records) the most crooked in the world.

Viewed from the other side. I've managed to make it look less wonky than reality here.

Yet more wonky buildings.

And, viewed from the top of the city wall, a wonky tower. The 2m lean occurred when its wooden foundations rotted. By this point I was getting the impression that whilst the wonky buildings are now a tourist attraction, they have only come about due to some really shoddy site choices and design!


Being a Saturday, it almost goes without saying that we encountered a wedding. The ornate building is the old town hall.

Our return to Bertie was the shorter route, through the streets, rather than back along the river, as I wanted to check out the laundrette that I intend to use on Monday morning. The surroundings were less pleasing than the riverside, although we were surprised at how many fancy buildings there were, even as we walked out into the suburbs.

^{(Just remembered, I need to quickly leap back to last night. We ate outside, what with it being in the mid-thirties inside, and just as I had served up, a middle-aged drunk woman, with limited English, decided she not only wanted to watch us eat, but to talk to us the whole time too. The problem was that she was making very little sense and we didn't want to encourage her. She was oblivious to the 'really, just leave us to eat in peace' vibes. Of course, if we had been at home we would have politely asked her to get out of our garden, but as we were sitting in a public place there was little we could do, other than either: a) be incredibly rude, go into Bertie and shut the door (and it'd have to be a far worse encounter to cause me to be that rude), or b) sit it out and hope she would go away. Eventually she did, as suddenly as she had arrived. I don't think we were the first in the Stellplatz to suffer her company; I wonder if she made any more sense when speaking in German?)}

Friday 27 July - Biberach

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Stellplatz at Biberach.
Weather: Mainly wall-to-wall sunshine. Hot.

A busier day today. After an early exploration of the roads and industrial estates of Biberach (worst running route of the trip so far), we set out mid-morning to visit the town's museum.

I'd not been able to find out the entrance fee online, but based on the write-up in the tourist brochure we decided that if it was €5 or less, it would be worth a look, and €5 is what it turned out to be. On this occasion (small municipal museum) we hadn't expected any information to be in English, so we weren't disappointed. The lack of reading matter made our visit relatively quick (2 hours or so).

That said, with a floor of art (no big international names here; all artists with ties to the town) split into 18th & 19th century in one room and 20th and 21st century in the other), and with half a floor of taxidermy and preserved insects (plus a few rooms of stuff of lesser interest), there was enough to justify the entrance fee.

To my eye, this wall varied from 'what's the point?' on the left side to 'brilliant!' on the right.

An excellent wooden model of the town

There was no leisure for loitering in town once we had finished at the museum, as within five minutes of arriving it suddenly struck me that we were half an hour away from Bertie's parking ticket expiring and we had forgotten to buy a new one. Adjudging the risk of being caught to be minimal, we didn't rush at the museum, but did make a beeline to put right our omission as soon as we left.

Beeline via a cake shop, that is!

There was still more we wanted to see in town, so straight after lunch we stepped back out into the heat of the day, heading over to the far side of the town to climb up to the park that sits above the remains of the old town wall, with its surviving towers. It's a good view point over the town:


It was up there that the sole of my sandal suffered a leap forward in its slow disconnection from the upper. The heel has been coming adrift since the start of this trip, but as we made our way down the hill, the toe end started flapping. Within the hour I had new shoes...

...which will end 15 years of this ridiculous set of tan lines:


The main thing that waylaid us between the viewpoint and the sports shop was a visit to the church, which, as per the last two we visited, was made ornate by magnificent ceiling paintings:



Building works currently have hoardings closing off the entire altar end of the building, but viewing holes have been inserted into the site entrance.

The reference to 'only for Protestants' and 'only for Catholics' next to two of the holes looks strange, unless you know the history of the church, which (in a very short nutshell) is that in 1531 Biberach became a Protestant town within a Catholic region. Due to the conflict that resulted, in 1548 the church was designated for use by both (different parts of the church allocated to each; services at different times). It is now the oldest dual-religion church in Germany.

We arrived back at Bertie to find the Stellplatz rather busier than yesterday (when there were only four vans here overnight). It must be the weekend!

Thursday 26 July - Biberach an der Riß

Where's Bertie? He's in a Stellplatz at Biberach an der Riß. It costs €5 per 24hrs to stay here. Water and waste are free. Electricity is available at 50c/kWh. (Exact location: 48.10269, 9.79578)
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine for most of the day. Hot.

We almost certainly wouldn't have found ourselves in Biberach today if it hadn't been for the 'Motorhoming in the OberschwabenAllgäu Region' booklet that I picked up in the Stellplatz in Bad Waldsee the other day. I have been neglecting to look at our (slightly out of date) Stellplatz book, relying instead on the Park4Night App, which, until now, has not had an entry for this place.

Having arrived here late morning, and popped Bertie into the most shaded corner we could find (usually we want the sun for the solar panel, but the current weather is hot enough for us to be seeking shade), off we wandered for a little look around the town. About 50m into our wanderings we turned around and started walking in the right direction to achieve that!

Our verdict: it's a lovely historic town, that is very well presented.


It's not often you find such a public toilet building like this.

The market square, which the tourist brochure repeatedly claims to be 'one of the most beautiful in Southern Germany'. I'm not going to argue with that claim.

The remains of the town's fortifications, dating from the 15th century

After wandering its streets, I deemed it worth finding the Tourist Office to see what extra information they could give us. We came away with five brochures and leaflets, four of which are in English (all well written and informative) - highly unusual on this trip.

This is a town that is obviously proud of its history and culture and wants to share that with all visitors.

The Stellplatz is less than a 10-minute walk from town, and is so close to the river Riß that if I was to throw a stone with some force from Bertie's door, I would get it into the water. In between us and it runs the Donau-Bodensee cycle way. All of that sounds perfect, but in reality, we can barely see the water of the river, there are lots of people passing on the cycleway, and there is quite a bit of road noise coming from somewhere, so whilst it was theoretically less nice (no view; bit of a wasteland look to it) I preferred the Stellplatz in Bad Schussenried, where we spent the last two nights.

^{(Other stuff from the morning: got up extra early to run before it got too hot. Not a great route, compared to what I'm used to on our travels, but still more interesting than repeating routes at home. Running gear was so minging after two uses that it got a quick wash - it didn't take long to get it dry today.)}

Wednesday 25 July - Bad Schussenried

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Stellplatz at Bad Schussenried.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine all morning, but with some cloud this afternoon, including about 4 drops of rain. Hot.

Yesterday I downloaded a leaflet, published by the local Tourist Office, setting out eight routes all with the common start point of the Market Square in Bad Schussenried. Having glanced through them all, I selected No. 5 ('Panormaweg') as looking the most promising.

We didn't get off to a flying start, when we came across this just as we were leaving town:


Not to be defeated, I navigated us around the closure, such that by the time we were 0.5km away from the town, we had walked over 2km.

The back of the old monastery, where we wouldn't have been, but for the road closure.

The rest did go smoothly, if relatively uninterestingly (unless you count multiple attacks by biting horseflies and the accompanying exclamations of 'You bastard!' with a simultaneous slapping sound).

On a clear day you can see the alps from this viewpoint. Today may have been gloriously sunny, but it was also hazy, so we saw not a sign of any lumpiness.

Back at Bertie, there came lunch and reading, both undertaken whilst chasing shade around Bertie. Eventually the shade was lost for an hour or so, whereupon we retreated indoors to (sweat gently and) do the crossword.

Yikes! We were onto our last crossword! The last time I downloaded any newspapers was whilst we watched the World Cup Final, a week last Sunday. That created an urgent need for some wifi, so after I'd finished my latest book (Ken Follett's The Third Twin - it's not going to go into my list of 'books I'd recommend'!), I toddled off into town to loiter within range of a FON wifi hotspot.

The tablet on which we have the newspaper App is a bit old and slow these days, particularly when it hasn't been connected to the internet for a while, so I was almost an hour loitering in a tiny bit of shade between a clothes donation bank and a lampost, which itself was in between the busy butcher's shop and the equally busy mobile roast chicken vendor. Who knows what all of those customers made of my behaviour, but a few of them certainly stared. During that hour (1630-1730ish), the temperature read-out on the building opposite dropped from 35 to 34 degrees.

I think we might be in for another warm night...

Tuesday 24 July - Bad Schussenried

Where's Bertie? He's in a Stellplatz at the brewery in Bad Schussenried (exact location: 48.00289, 9.65954).
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and hot.

After Sunday's awful night, last night we slept like dead people. Today it was difficult to drag ourselves out of bed within a reasonable time of the alarm going off, and we were slow to get going once we did. As we stepped out of the door in our running gear at 8.30 we belatedly realised that we should have made the effort to get up earlier - there was not a cloud in the sky and it was already getting hot.

As we ran our laps of the lake (which was very pretty under the clear sky; should have stopped to snap a photo) another reason for an earlier start became apparent. There were about a dozen groups of children of various ages, all on their way to or from their 'summer camp' activities, apparently with only one adult supervisor per large group. Children aren't renowned for being aware of their surroundings, and are generally oblivious as to what to do when someone is running towards them and their group is taking up the entire path.

I had intended to walk down into the town later in the morning, to pick up the walking map one can claim on presentation of a 'Kurkarte' (the card you get on payment of your Tourist Tax). That plan was thwarted when, after a leisurely breakfast, showers and packing away, I realised that I would hit the Tourist Office just after it closed for lunch.

Instead we left town and headed off to Aulendorf. We'd driven through the place on our way to Bad Waldsee, and after perusing the free 'Go motorhoming in this region!' brochure available at last night's Stellplatz, I thought it was worth a visit.

Making like Goldilocks trying to select a bed, we started off at the Stellplatz at the Carthago motorhome factory (unlike Hymer, this one is not entirely reserved for workshop customers). It wasn't a bad place, but its location wasn't ideal, being a bit further out of town than we would have preferred in the absence of a nice walking route between the two.

So, we moved up to the Health Spa on the other side of the town, battling road closures as we went, and there we would have stayed, except that, of the three car parks, the one allocated to motorhomes was on a slope. We nearly stayed for lunch, and if we had, we would likely have had a little look around the town, but when I realised that the next nearest option was the town of Bad Schussenried, and that it was only 6km up the road, we moved on again.

And here we have stayed. It's a pleasant little town, with a big ex-monastery complex, through which one can walk. Some of it has now been turned over to businesses and part is a museum. Other than admiring the exteriors of the buildings and looking at the sculptures around the grounds, of most interest to us was the church...

...with its magnificent painted ceilings...



...although I confess that part of the appeal today was that it was such a lovely temperature inside, compared to the 30 degrees outside.


The photo in the bottom right hand corner of this page is an aerial view of tonight's Stellplatz. I count 46 vans present when it was taken, contrary to the adjacent info panel where I've circled the stated capacity of 30! It is a very large area - easily big enough for 50 or more, if parked in the right configuration, but there are only 7 vans here tonight.

Monday 23 July - Bad Waldsee

Where's Bertie? He's at the Stellplatz in Bad Waldsee where it costs €6 per 24 hours plus €2pppn Tourist Tax. Electricity and water are available at extra cost. Waste is free. Exact location: 47.91417, 9.76021
Weather: Overcast start, clearing to give a hot sunny day.

Last night was awful. On this occasion it was nothing to do with other people, even though we had a car parked behind us (in a massive car park, all other rows of which were empty) with chatting people and music playing for a couple of hours from just after midnight. As we were awake anyway, they were of no annoyance. The invasion of Bertie's interior by mosquitoes was the problem.

How did they get in? Was it through the door when one of us had gone out earlier, whereafter they all lurked in corners, undetected, until lights out? Was it through the door when we had the fly screen across, whereupon they all lurked between the fly screen and the door? Were they getting through the (relatively large) mesh of the permanent vents in the roof? Or through the dashboard heater ducts? Or did the little biting bastards that we knew to be trapped between the main roof light and its blind find a way to escape inwards? I favour some theories more than others, but the end result is the same: all night long one or both of us would hear the distinctive whining right by an ear, the light would go on, I would spring out of bed and go on the attack. We must have killed a couple of dozen. Two were full of blood. Wet wipes were deployed to remove said blood from the upholstery. The towel we were using for the splatting may never recover.

We managed to sleep between around 3.30 until 5.30am whereupon more high pitched whining in our ears woke us again. Bleurgh!

Today was going to see us move from the museum car park and into the town. As is often the case (and it was the mistake we made in Sigmaringen the other day) we didn't want to commit to the fee at the Stellplatz until we knew that the town was of interest to us. Lidl is far enough out of town to have an unrestricted car park, but near enough for us to consider it an easy walk in. Half an hour later we had decided to stay, not specifically for the delights of the town, to which we had not paid much attention at that point, but because we had confirmed that the laundrette that I had found trace of online (nowt in Google Maps about it though), did exist.

What a fun way to spend a couple of hours...

Having relocated to the Stellplatz (around 0.5km from town), we've had a fun-filled afternoon at the laundrette, featuring the longest drying cycle known to man (in another of those 'open the door and you forfeit your money' machines, so it may have dried quickly but we had no way of knowing). I did take a walk through the town and down to the lake whilst the washing machine was in action, as the timing of that was known (kinda; the machine had a display on the front, although it did occasionally start counting up rather than down).

Random shot of a street in the town

As the town's name suggests, there's a lake here (and a spa, next to which we are parked)

With the laundry situation now calmed from 'critical' (although not set back to zero as today's laundrette was another little independent whose one big machine was too big and too expensive, so we only used a small machine to do the urgently needed stuff), we now have some leeway to dawdle a while between here and Ulm.

(Incidentally, the tourist tax here entitles one to a number of freebies and discounts. One of the discounts is on entry to the Erwin Hymer Museum. If we had known that yesterday we likely would have arranged our stay here differently.)

Sunday 22 July - Bad Waldsee

Where's Bertie? He's in the car park of the Erwin Hymer Museum in Bad Waldsee (exact location: 47.93725, 9.76221).
Weather: Rainy morning and rainy evening, but with a dry spell in the middle of the day.

After weeks of moseying along, moving only a few kilometres at a time, today we travelled a whole hour. Bad Waldsee didn't fit in with the general direction in which we have been heading, but being so close down the road (in the grand scheme of things), we thought we would make the journey, thus taking Bertie back to his birth place.

More specifically of interest to us, the Erwin Hymer Museum is here and we had heard it was worth a visit.

Being gone noon by the time we arrived (and without having had elevenses or lunch, again), we had thought that we would save the museum until tomorrow and just visit the town today. However, when we arrived at the Stellplatz I had intended us to use, it turned out not to be a public one, but solely for the use of customers of the Hymer factory's workshop. We could probably have got away with staying there, as Bertie would have fitted in nicely with all of the other vehicles, but instead we reset the SatNav for the other local option: the car park at the museum. And, once we were here, it seemed sensible to go and visit today.

Whilst it is called the Erwin Hymer Museum, it's not about Hymer. It's a general caravan/motorhome museum, also featuring a collection of vintage cars, with just a few examples from its namesake. It charts the history of caravans/motorhomes right back from the earliest non-horse-drawn caravans.

As the website for the museum is in five languages, as are the welcome flags in the car park, we had expected the information in the museum to also be multi-lingual. Finding it to be in German only was a disappointment (and made the €9.50 entrance fee seem overly expensive if all you can do is look at the exhibits without knowing anything about them). Fortunately, I had a good phone signal, so Google Translate's photo function came to the rescue to transform our visit into a good one. It wouldn't have been practical to translate every bit of written information, but we used it enough to make our visit worthwhile.

It was 4.30 by the time we left (I reckon we would have been at least another hour if we could have read everything there) and it wasn't much later when the big area of ominously dark sky in front of Bertie translated itself into a heavy, thundery shower. The lack of any breeze has meant that two hours later, it still hasn't passed, so it looks like the day is going to end as it started, with many hours of rain. The difference is that this morning we went out running in it (getting so wet that when we got back I went straight for the shampoo on the hair, not feeling any need to add more water first), whereas this evening we will be staying indoors.

I'll finish today with some snaps of our afternoon:


Surprising how modern the teardrop shape of this caravan looks (1930s, I think).


A deluxe model

Looking down the interior of the above, with distinct areas for dining, lounging and sleeping, and with a separate kitchen/bathroom at the far end

A bath ... in the kitchen


Chintzy!


Note the bay window on the back and the stained glass windows in the roof section.

A windscreen this vertical was not designed with aerodynamics in mind.


Roof terrance, anyone? If my memory serves, this was a 1960s model, costing 40,500DM when new. There were 12 built, of which 7 are still in use - including this one.

Or how about a build-your-own? The plans for this 1980s East German model were availble for purchase by self-builders