Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz in Weilheim-in-Oberbayern. It costs €6 per day to stay here. Water and electricity are available for extra fees. (Exact location: 47.84001, 11.13589)
Weather: An overcast and drizzly start to the day cleared to sunshine by late afternoon.
You know that circuit we walked yesterday afternoon? Someone went out overnight and snuck a couple of long inclines (gentle, but long) into it. I say that because they weren't there when we walked the route yesterday, but were most definitely noticeable when I ran it this morning.
After breakfast whilst I was still faffing with something, Mick got Bertie ready for the road, timing his completion to coincide with just about every motorhome in southern Germany deciding they wanted to use the service point at our Stellplatz. We could have managed without any extra water, and there was barely anything in the grey tank to be emptied, but with no facilites at our next stop, the toilet could not wait. He thus reversed his putting-away and we had elevenses whilst the whole world (okay, I exaggerate in the extreme, but 5 vans is quite a queue, particularly when one was of a size to suggest a 300 litre water tank) attended to their filling and emptying needs.
Once we were on the road, we went unusually far. With our desire to be in Munich next weekend, and thus having limited time to visit anywhere en-route, I decided that the most interesting places to go all lay considerably nearer to Munich than to Leutkirch.
The plan was to park atop a hill at Hohenpeissenberg, to the east of Schongau (to whose Stellplatz we had an aborted visit during a tour in 2014), giving us a journey of just over 100km (on slow roads - SatNav said an hour and a half and the reality was a little longer). Things didn't quite go to plan.
The first spanner in the works was a closed road where we needed to turn off the main road to our destination. It was only two days ago that I expressed surprise that we hadn't yet come across such a closure, as last year they seemed to affect almost every journey we took (our observation: the UK uses temporary traffic lights; Germany closes the road). A quick fumble for a map and I could see that we could simply drive past the village and approach from the other direction, adding on only a handful of kilometres, so that's what we did.
The second spanner in the works was that there was a festival going on at the top of the hill, in the very car park we wanted to use. Harrumph! Having had Bertie haul us all the way up there, we were reluctant to retreat immediately, and it was clear that the festival was breaking up, so we drove Bertie into the field being used as a temporary car park, and after lunch we had a little walk, just up to and around the church at the very top of the hill (where there was another car park, but of no use to us as the road to get there was closed).
Bertie masquerading as one of the few remaining festival-goers. Evidence of the festival in the background.
There was much activity taking the festival apart. I suspect that within a couple of days there will be little evidence it had ever been there.
The view towards the proper-big hills to the south would have been spectacular in this afternoon's clear weather, had we been able to stay.
Based on past experience in Germany, this will not be the last time on this trip that we find ourselves thwarted by a festival - particularly once August is upon us.
A decision then had to be made: to back-track to the free Stellplatz in the nearby town of Peiting, or to continue onwards to our next intended stop. The former would have won, if it hadn't been for that road closure meaning we would have had to have gone east to head back west.
So, here we are in Weilheim with a field of wheat starting approximately six inches in front of Bertie's nose, with the spire of the church in the old town visible about half a kilometre to Bertie's left and with the river about the same distance away (but out of sight) to his right.
We strolled along the river this afternoon, in the company of lots of others both on foot and on bikes, deciding to save the old town until tomorrow.
Weather: An overcast and drizzly start to the day cleared to sunshine by late afternoon.
You know that circuit we walked yesterday afternoon? Someone went out overnight and snuck a couple of long inclines (gentle, but long) into it. I say that because they weren't there when we walked the route yesterday, but were most definitely noticeable when I ran it this morning.
After breakfast whilst I was still faffing with something, Mick got Bertie ready for the road, timing his completion to coincide with just about every motorhome in southern Germany deciding they wanted to use the service point at our Stellplatz. We could have managed without any extra water, and there was barely anything in the grey tank to be emptied, but with no facilites at our next stop, the toilet could not wait. He thus reversed his putting-away and we had elevenses whilst the whole world (okay, I exaggerate in the extreme, but 5 vans is quite a queue, particularly when one was of a size to suggest a 300 litre water tank) attended to their filling and emptying needs.
Once we were on the road, we went unusually far. With our desire to be in Munich next weekend, and thus having limited time to visit anywhere en-route, I decided that the most interesting places to go all lay considerably nearer to Munich than to Leutkirch.
The plan was to park atop a hill at Hohenpeissenberg, to the east of Schongau (to whose Stellplatz we had an aborted visit during a tour in 2014), giving us a journey of just over 100km (on slow roads - SatNav said an hour and a half and the reality was a little longer). Things didn't quite go to plan.
The first spanner in the works was a closed road where we needed to turn off the main road to our destination. It was only two days ago that I expressed surprise that we hadn't yet come across such a closure, as last year they seemed to affect almost every journey we took (our observation: the UK uses temporary traffic lights; Germany closes the road). A quick fumble for a map and I could see that we could simply drive past the village and approach from the other direction, adding on only a handful of kilometres, so that's what we did.
The second spanner in the works was that there was a festival going on at the top of the hill, in the very car park we wanted to use. Harrumph! Having had Bertie haul us all the way up there, we were reluctant to retreat immediately, and it was clear that the festival was breaking up, so we drove Bertie into the field being used as a temporary car park, and after lunch we had a little walk, just up to and around the church at the very top of the hill (where there was another car park, but of no use to us as the road to get there was closed).
Based on past experience in Germany, this will not be the last time on this trip that we find ourselves thwarted by a festival - particularly once August is upon us.
A decision then had to be made: to back-track to the free Stellplatz in the nearby town of Peiting, or to continue onwards to our next intended stop. The former would have won, if it hadn't been for that road closure meaning we would have had to have gone east to head back west.
So, here we are in Weilheim with a field of wheat starting approximately six inches in front of Bertie's nose, with the spire of the church in the old town visible about half a kilometre to Bertie's left and with the river about the same distance away (but out of sight) to his right.
We strolled along the river this afternoon, in the company of lots of others both on foot and on bikes, deciding to save the old town until tomorrow.
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