Saturday 31 August - Karlsruhe

Where's Bertie? He's in a motorhome parking space (I hesitate to call it a Stellplatz considering its nature and location) on the S side of Karlsruhe. Exact location: 48.987795, 8.404055
Weather: Sunny and hot (32 degrees)

Our decision to stay by the motorway bridge last night was based on our assessment that the likelihood of being disturbed by a constant hum of traffic was less than the likelihood of being disturbed by people partying in the park, had we come straight to Karlsruhe, as our experience of parking next to parks on a Friday night hasn't been great. There was a short period when we thought we were going to have the worst of both worlds, when a large group of lads chose the benches immediately behind the hedge, behind Bertie, to consume their vast quantity of bottled beer, but then at 9.30pm, the went off somewhere else. And, I'm happy to say that the motorway didn't overly disturb us; I heard it briefly at 4.45am when there seemed to be a whole string of vehicles going 'thunk thunk' over the join between grounded roadway and bridge.

After an early breakfast we came to this 'Stellplatz' which is just two spaces on a service road, adjacent to a dual carriageway. I hadn't been optimistic about finding an empty space here at 8am, as 50% of the reviews on Park4Night said that the spaces had been full of cars, so I figured there would either be motorhomes in residence or cars. We arrived to find once empty space, and the other effectively blocked by a car parked in it.

Given that these two spaces are the only dedicated motorhome parking in Karlsruhe (the larger area we were in last night is also intended to serve the city, but it is 9km away), it was incredibly convenient for us, being within 300m of the start of this morning's parkrun.

The parkrun, on a lovely shaded route through the forest, mainly comprised Germans (as it should be), with just three other British tourists, all from London. They disappeared as soon as they finished, but we stayed around first for water, biscuits and watermelon laid on by the parkrun volunteers, after which we walked the 1km up the road to their café of choice. There we happened to find ourselves sharing a table with an American woman from Boston, and her German friend who spoke good English. It was approaching noon by the time we got back to Bertie.

We talked about the pros and cons of places we could go for the rest of the day, but it then struck me that, despite being next to a dual carriageway, this park up was really quiet, and I had a video intro and outro that I needed to record by the end of the day, so we opted to stay here whilst I did that.

By the time I'd finished the recording and editing, uploaded the video, had a late lunch and done a crossword, it was approaching 4pm and there was no point going anywhere at that time, particularly as it was nice and shaded here.

The shade didn't last (not enough tree cover to the W of us!), but as it got unbearable in Bertie, we went out to walk the 1.5km to the nearest supermarket for a couple of supplies for tea. Once again, we loitered in the air conditioned aisles, before baking again on the way back.

We have a vague plan as to where we're going tomorrow, with the only question being how many detours, if any, we are going to make on the way.

Part of the parkrun course - the shade was appreciated as it was 23 degrees 

Not a flattering photo (Mick should have suggested that I smile!), but I include it to show not just the food/drink but the brutality of yesterday's haircut. No worries, though, it'll grow!

Interesting array of sports on offer at the local sports facility, particularly the penultimate one on the left hand side

Friday 30 August - Maxau

Where's Bertie? He's in a Stellplatz next to the Rhein to the NW of Karlsruhe. Exact location: 49.037232, 8.305690
Weather: Sunny and hot, but with a thin layer of high hazy cloud developing this afternoon.

We had intended to spend two nights in Wissembourg. Looking at what we could do with ourselves there, I had come up with a couple of options (other than just mooching), one of which was to do the guided tour via the mini land-train, and the other was unrelated to Wissembourg, but to catch the (proper) train down to Strasbourg. The argument against both of these options, and, indeed, spending any more time in Wissembourg was the heat. In a few years time the young trees in the Stellplatz there will have grown, but for the time being there is not a jot of shade to be found, and likewise touristing in Strasbourg with the temperature in the thirties didn't sound like the biggest barrel of laughs.

So, we wrote off today from the point of view of doing anything, and moved to this Stellplatz next to the Rhein.

From that brief description, it sounds like a nice location, but we moved here in full knowledge that we were going to be parking below, and adjacent to, a motorway bridge. It is thus a long way from being a peaceful waterside idyll - moreover as between us and the river is a hedge and thus we can't even see the water.

Three things have made the move worthwhile: 1) it's slightly cooler here, next to the water (I think it only got up to 30); 2) there's a nice breeze, unlike in Wissembourg yesterday where there wasn't a breath of air movement; and 3) it felt like an appropriate place to get our chairs out and sit on the grassy margin at the edge of the parking area (yesterday's car park was not suitable for outdoor sitting). Actually, let me add a fourth to that list: the joy of the aircon on the half-hour drive here!

So, the day has been frittered away sitting outside, reading.

Lots of other vans have come and gone during the day, most, I would guess, put off by the level of road noise. We are, however in good company, as more have arrived this evening, and we will also put up with the traffic tonight as it's a convenient location for where we're going in the morning.

Taken from the other side of the hedge, behind Bertie

Until going through my photos just now, I'd forgotten this, taken just before my hair was shorn, removing all the blond. 

Went for a walk after tea. Watching sunset from the river bank is a popular pastime. There were some impressive picnic setups on display too.

Thursday 29 August - Wissembourg

Where's Bertie? He's in an Aire in Wissembourg. Exact location: 49.006508, 7.859342
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and hot (32 degrees)

We seem to have hit a warm spell, with the daytime high for the next 4 days forecast to be 32 degrees, with overnight lows between 17 and 19 degrees. That's not low enough to cool Bertie down, particularly when he has spent the day in full sunshine, like today.

But, back to this morning, when it was a far more reasonable 22 degrees (although awfully humid) when I went for a trot from Col de Pigeonnier. As I'd expected, my route was entirely through trees, but the going varied from wide vehicle tracks, to little walking paths and rooty/technical trails, so I had a good time and enjoyed the shade. What I didn't enjoy so much were the two flies that spent the whole time bouncing up and down next to my right eye, nor the one that flew straight into my left ear.

Forest trails

Mick had been out at the same time as me, but doing a shorter route, and we reconvened in Bertie for showers.

It was then theorectically a 5.5km drive down to Wissembourg, although a road closure and associated diversion sent us around the houses.

No sooner than Bertie's handbrake was applied, we had his external silver screen (his 'eye mask') in place. It makes such a big difference when parked facing the sun on such a hot day.

By then the temperature was such that going out for a walk wouldn't have been top of my list of things to do, but it was only going to get hotter, so off into town we went.

Historic town, pleasing on the eye

We lasted longer than I expected walking around, cooled at one point with an interlude in the church* and at another point with an ice cream each (coffee flavour for me, pistachio for Mick, if you were wondering). Aside from being a pretty place, with lots of half-timbered buildings**, one thing that struck me was quite how many eateries there were. As we were walking around at lunchtime, most people in the town seemed to be sitting at pavement tables.

We arrived in Wissembourg down to our last 5-litres of drinking water. Usually we would simply visit a service point and refill our four 5-litre containers, but the problem here isn't so much that the water costs €5 (making it more expensive than bottled water would be for the quantity we want), but that you need a Camping Car Park card to access it. We could, apparently, buy the card here, but that would be another €4. By comparison, in Germany we were buying beer (both alcohol and alcohol-free) at 50c per 500ml bottle...

We have spent the afternoon gradually baking in Bertie (with a brief trip outside for me when I fixed the handle on his toilet cassette, which came adrift a couple of days ago, but that only took me a minute or so), chucking a bit more heat into the environment with our laptops, and stirring that heat around with our two USB fans (which are surprisingly powerful).

After days of eating salad, I was going to make a cooked tea tonight, but with it being 35 degrees in Bertie, I couldn't face lighting the stove. So to the nearest supermarket we went, loitering in their aircon (long queue for the till? Yes please!) for longer than necessary before returning with cold food. 

Now, at 8pm we are down to just over 33 degrees. We have a rule that we don't go to bed until it gets below 30. I wonder when that will happen tonight?

(*In the church we saw a fresco of St Christopher. At 11m tall this is, so I've since read on t'internet (so it must be true), the tallest painting of a person in France.
**Wissembourg is on the list of '100 most beautiful detours in France'. I'm not sure if something has been lost in translation, but we didn't detour to come here...)

Wednesday 28 August - Simserhof & Col de Pigeonnier

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park on the Col de Pigeonnier, in between Lembach and Wissembourg. Exact location: 49.01575, 7.839577
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and hot (30 degrees)

On our way from Hornbach to Bitche a couple of days ago, we passed Ouvrage de Simserhof. It's part of the Maginot Line and now a museum, and I'd read about it before we headed to Bitche, however, I'd discounted it for a visit as access is only via tours in French or German. Doing a bit more reading once in Bitche, I discovered that there is also a 10km walking route around the site and decided it was worth the 5km backtrack to make the visit.

The large car park at Simserhof had two cars in it when we arrived (and none when we left) - I'd expected it to be busier, with it still being school holidays and with plenty of tourists about.

Route as recorded

The route started with a distance through some pleasant woodland, before we came upon a series of structures, the first being Block 6, which is intact save for a little decay. It was at this point that, looking around us, we realised that the natural forest in which we were standing is post-war; it would make a poor defensive line if visibility only extended a few metres to the trees! The last Block we reached was Block 5, which is the only one showing extensive damage, but not due to any attack from Germany, rather from the USA freeing it from German control in 1944.

Block 6, with firing positions facing east to protect Blocks further along the line

Turrets atop Block 6

Block 5 - with twisted metal sticking out of the damaged concrete due to the American bombardment of 1944.

Before our visit I knew nothing of the Maginot line other than its name. I came away better informed, although of all the information signs, telling of how the design of individual buildings, and the line as a whole, was supposed to be impenetrable, they didn't mention that it was breached so quickly as the German army nipped around via Begium.

Anti-tank defences

After a whole host of points of interest (the first 3km of the route took us over an hour), the route then took us on a big detour down a hill (according to an information board at the start, the route involved 230m of descent/ascent, and most of it was at this point). A perfectly nice walk, and good exercise, but all we saw on that entire loop was a small bunker without a corresponding information sign, leaving us perplexed as to why the route designers, on a route supposed to be about the Maginot Line, had thrown in that diversion that will surely put off many people.

Funnily enough, that turn is where the path became a lot less trodden.

The final two points of interest had signs including plans that answered our questions about the layout of the site (as we'd been weaving around, we had no notion as to the relative positions of the various Blocks), but those signs didn't include an English version - also bizarre considering they looked newer than the tri-lingual ones we'd stopped at up to that point.

We omitted the final loop in the route, by accident rather than intention, although we did choose not to put our wrong turn right for the sake of one last point of interest.

The verdict: an interesting, free open-air museum and worth the 5km backtrack in our travels.

Our onward route involved us going back through Bitche, and as I'd spotted some laundry machines in the Intermache car park when we'd popped in for a couple of items this morning, on our return we stopped by to use them. Lunch was eaten whilst the machines did their jobs*.

Bog standard laundry design, as found in the UK and many other countries. Yes, we could have parked closer, but we opted for shade.

The onwards journey to this car park at the Col de Pigeonnier was a surprise. Such picture postcard villages that we drove through - all looking typically German, and with German names, even though we are in France (albeit only just).

Snaps taken through Bertie's windscreen as he trundled along.

We are only a few kilometres from where we intend to go for tomorrow night, but I wanted to stop here, up on the col, so that I can go for a run/walk from here in the morning. There's a miriad of routes, all waymarked by the Vosges Club, but the map displayed in the car park isn't entirely helpful (we are right on one edge of it), so I've plotted something based on a couple of routes I downloaded.

^{(*Next to the laundry machines was another large machine that was proving popular. It turned out to be a plastic recycling collection point that rewards you for your deposits. People were arriving with great sacks full of bottles. We seem perpetually to have bags of recycling in Bertie's boot, as it's rare to find plastic and paper recycling facilities in public places in France and Germany. In that bag I had a detergent bottle, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to get rid of it. I came away with a store voucher for 1c!)}

Tuesday 27 August - Bitche

Where's Bertie? He's in the Aire at Bitche, about 100m away from where he was situated in the adjacent car park yesterday.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and warm (27 degrees)

One of the benefits of living in a vehicle is that if you don't like your neighbours, you can easily move. We didn't like our neighbours*, so once a space had freed up in the motorhome parking area, we moved into it.

There's nothing else of note to say about the day. We did some work, then we walked to a supermarket for a few supplies (and can report that France is still an expensive place to buy groceries), then we spent the afternoon on the phone. Phone calls, particularly multi-way ones, are best conducted in the middle of nowhere or in town car parks, where we won't be disturbing anyone, so this location wasn't ideal. Our work-around was that we took our deckchairs to a shady spot under a tree, away from all the motorhomes, and used an earbud each so that the only noise was our voices. The only problem was that two hours later we had lost all shade as the sun had moved around, and it was awfully warm in the sun.

We have something more interesting planned for tomorrow.

It beats the months I spent, many years ago, working in a windowless office. Before we were done we were hugging that lamppost and in full sun. 

(*more to the point, with the relative positions of our vans, and the fact that both were British, it looked too much like we were together, and we didn't want to look like we were flouting rules by treating the place like a campsite).

Monday 26 August - Bitche

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park next to an Aire immediately next to the Citadel in Bitche. Exact location: 49.054839, 7.434614.
Weather: Sunny and warm (24 degrees max)

I wasn't appreciative of the 7am alarm this morning, but Mick was quite right when he pushed me out of bed a few minutes later. I was off on a long run and wanted be back both before lunch and before it got too hot.

Hot wasn't a concern first thing. It got down to 8 degrees last night, such that if we'd had the duvet to hand at 5 this morning, it would have been appreciated; as it goes it remains unused thus far on this trip.

Usually I find my longer running routes online (wikiloc is my main resource) and download a gpx file. This one I found in a leaflet issued by the town of Hornbach, but I couldn't find a corresponding gpx file anywhere. You'd not believe how long I spent last night trying to plot it based on a high-level line drawing - I plot my routes on the Gaia App and it wasn't behaving as it ought.

The route turned out to be varied, with some quiet roads, lots of tracks through countryside, a few field margins, some forest tracks and one village. The village was in France, making it a two-country run.

I only knew I'd crossed into France when I saw this sign.

In the French village. Zoom in to see the mail box.

'Mon Réve'. I bet he didn't dream of a garden that shabby.

Gorgeous day for it. There red kites in this photo. I'd just scared them out of a tree.

The high point of the route was at Chapelle St. Joseph at 374m...

Not the style of church I'd anticipated standing by itself at a high-point, a distance above the nearest village.

...altough a while later I took a minor detour to visit another point that was nearly as high.

The views were far reaching in many places, but only of farmland, so I shoved my face in front of this one.

This is how I knew I'd run back into Germany (the label on the bin, not the bin itself)

I was flagging a little with 5km to go, so called Mick who duly gave me a pep talk: "You chose the route and the distance. You can't complain about it!" He was quite right, so I just got on with it. By then I was in a rather lovely forest too - no views, but more pleasing, I thought, than the open countryside.

As usual, outstanding levels of infrastructure. What if the view's not going to be good at ground level? We'll build a picnic platform. And we'll install some umbrellas, just in case it's sunny or rainy.

Back at Bertie I didn't tarry and as soon as I was washed and changed, we were off. Via a quick visit to the service point, to Bitche we came (pronounced Beech, apparently; that's not what I'm going with). This was supposed to be our next stop after Rodemack, 10 days ago; our quick German detour turned out to be rather more extensive than intended!

The main point of interest in Bitche is the citadel, which we intended to visit tomorrow. Then at lunchtime, Mick reminded me that we have a phone call tomorrow and we didn't yet know at what time it would be, so we made haste and went to the citadel this afternoon instead*.

Entrance to the citadel. Bertie is in the car park at the bottom of the ramp

Awaiting the green light to enter the underground tunnels and rooms, where the main exhibit was located.

It was by far the best fortress we've visited, by virtue of the access to the underground elements. However, the tour consisted of a dramatised version of the events of Franco-Prussian war (and seige of Bitche) of 1870/1871, with a section of the story being played on a screen in each room we stopped in, and the timing was such that it gave no time to look at the rooms/tunnels we were passing through. Moreover, it became really confusing as to where we were meant to go in the middle; our group of 6 managed (maybe more by luck than judgement) to figure it out, but the fact that we kept then being joined by more people who had walked ahead from groups behind us told that many had missed out at least one, if not two stops along the way. I would have prefered more of a museum approach, with each room set up as it might have been during the seige, with just an audio description of the story, rather than a TV dramatisation.

View from the ramparts. The curious thing about this citadel is that whilst it is on top of a mound, that mound sits within a bowl, so it's not a textbook defensive position.

The outside exhibits (read with the help of Google Translate) completed our visit, which had been well worth the time and money.

We returned to Bertie (who isn't parked in the motorhome parking area purely because we didn't notice its location when we first arrived, then didn't feel inclined to move) to find he had new neighbours: British vans on both sides. Those on Bertie's door side have parked with their door facing ours, and have put their awning out so far that it's a good job that Bertie doesn't have an awning, as there wouldn't be room for it (not that we would get it out in a car park, even if he did). Bizarre, given that there's acres of space here.

Within those acres of space is a van we were parked next to in the Aire in Rodemack a week and a half ago.

(*At the ticket office, Mick was flattered when they tried charging him full price and the questioned whether he was over 65 when I requested a senior ticket for him. He was disappointed that they didn't then ask him for proof of age. Prices were €11 for me and €9 for Mick.)

Sunday 25 August - Hornbach

Where's Bertie? He's in a commercial Stellplatz at Hornbach where it costs €9 per night. Water and electricity are available at extra cost. Exact location: 49.183626, 7.365588
Weather: Sunny start and end, varying degrees of overcast in the middle. Max 21 degrees.

Those clouds that gathered last evening became thundery rain later on. It fair lashed down for a while, then pitter-pattered on and off. By this morning, we were back to clear blue skies. I approve of rain that only comes overnight!

As I mentioned yesterday, one of our reasons for staying an extra night in Baumholder was so that I could run the parkrun course, and we had a perfect morning for the purpose today: sunny and much cooler than yesterday morning.

That objective was achieved (hard work! I don't often run up hills that are either steep or long).

Having spent an extra night in Baumholder, the question was then whether to still come to Hornbach, or whether to omit it and go straight into France. Reading the reviews of the Stellplatz here, someone had referred to it being an historic monastic town that was worth a visit, so to here we came.

Just one observation from the 1-hour drive to get here: it's Sunday. The German roads are pretty well free of lorries on a Sunday (I don't think we saw a single one on the move), but as we've observed before, they seem to just stop wherever they've got to at the end of Saturday and spend Sunday in that location. So, rest areas and services alongside the motorway are full of lorries parked up for the weekend. They can't be a very exciting places to have a day off!

We arrived at the Stellplatz here to find it to be another campsite-esque sort of a place, with gravelled, delineated pitches. No toilets or showers, but a picnic shed (open on two sides) housing four picnic tables, and a separate barbecue hut containing a firepit and suspended grill. Compared with comparable sites in the UK, the fee here looks more than reasonable, but it is perhaps rather steep for the location in German Stellplatz terms. That would explain why so few of the 30 spaces are currently taken.

Our walk around the 'town' (more of a village really) this afternoon told us we'd set our expectations of the attractions of Hornbach too high. If we'd had a guide to the history of the place it would have been better, but as it was it didn't take us long to walk around all the points of interest.

I shall report back tomorrow on whether I think that the surrounding countryside is what draws people here (there's a large hotel as well as the Stellplatz), as the historic centre of the village isn't (in my view) enough to warrant a special trip here. Fortunately, I wouldn't say we made a special trip - it was barely a detour from the route we were taking anyway.

The main features of the historic monastery

The right wall of this tower, in particular, shows evidence of war damage

What a fine example of a 2CV!

There was one other building we saw that was more interesting than any of those above, but I failed to snap any of the three sides of it that we walked around. 

Saturday 24 August - Baumholder

Where's Bertie? To his surprise, he's still in the Stellplatz in Baumholder, where I've done battle with the payment system to give the town another €8.
Weather: Not a cloud in the sky and hot (30 degrees), until 7pm when it was suddenly cloudy and not so hot. 

We didn't have far to go to the start line of this morning's parkrun, having kipped within 100m of it. We presented ourselves there at just gone 0830 - far earlier than would ordinarily be required, but as this parkrun often cancels due to a lack of volunteers (and they only need two different people to perform all the roles here!), I'd offered to do anything that was needed, as long as it didn't require me to speak German. Hence I became the tailwalker (and, as it turned out, the other volunteers today also didn't speak German; they were Columbian).

They had a big turnout this week, with 12 participants (the average is 4), and all of us, bar a family of 3 English visitors, then repaired to the local bakery for tea, pastries and a good old chinwag.

The plan had been that we were then going to leave town, but having walked the parkrun course both yesterday and today, I'd really like to run it, and Mick had a hankering after one of the big meat skewers from the grill in town, both of which reasons combined to make us decide to spend an extra night here. Three nights in a town that we declared to be quite dull on Day 1!

After a few hours of recording and editing a video (nowt exciting; it's for the TGO Challenge), the temperature in Bertie got too much (approaching 35 degrees). To the Eis Café we went, speed eating our cones as they swiftly melted in the heat. We then discovered that the supermarket next to which we are parked is not well stocked, but we'll not starve before we can get to a better one on Monday.

Walking back into town this evening, we concluded that of all the festivals we've stumbled across in Germany, this one is lacking. Unless the busy time is after I've gone to bed, it seems to me that it should be a one-day affair to concentrate the punters and give more of a bustle and atmosphere. Otherwise, it needs a extra element, like the excellent street art festival we visited in Blumberg in 2018.

Definitely not as big as advertised!

Probably taken from too far away to see the live band on stage

Friday 23 August - Baumholder

Where's Bertie? He's still in the Stellplatz in Baumholder, and today the website worked to enable us to pay.
Weather: Some cloud this afternoon, and a really breezy spell, but otherwise sunny and warm (24 degrees).

Whilst in many respects Germany is an excellent and easy place to visit by motorhome, I've always found it to be lacking in self-service laundrettes. It seems that, as in the UK, 'Laundry Revolution' is spreading here, and there's the usual set of three machines in the car park of a supermarket just a few hundred metres along the road. We walked up there first thing this morning, but at €10 for a wash and dry (assuming everything got dry in one drying cycle), and without a full load of washing needing doing, I decided to just hand wash my running shorts and some smalls. We're not in a location where we can put a washing line out, but Bertie's windscreen wiper held my shorts directly in the sun this afternoon and they dried nicely. I left the smalls on the dashboard, hoping no passers-by would notice the non-standard adornment.

Before that, in fact on our way back from looking at the laundry machines, we fell into a bakery at what must have been its busiest time of day, and with only one person serving. Baumholder has a large military base, and a whole table full of camouflage-clad army personnel were having elevenses and buying their lunches to take away. We got served eventually and only added to the hold-up when I requested the jasmine tea - the only box that was pushed back on the shelf. The lady serving made efforts to reach it with some sort of implement, but only manged to push it even further back. She had to go and get a ladder.

Mick suggested yesterday (not unreasonably) that it's not particularly healthy to be having pastries every day, so we made do with a pretzl between us.

With barely a stop at Bertie, next on the agenda was to check out the parkrun course (hilly!), and by the time we had done that lunchtime was upon us.

After an uncommon amount of research this afternoon into places we might visit and various museums and other attractions (goodness, the Strasbourg-Alsace-Pass website makes it hard work!), at around 8 this evening we headed out into town to see what was going on at the Altstadt Fest. Not an awful lot, really. There are a couple of streets lined with food and drink vendors. The grill place (with two-foot-long meat-on-stick things that had Mick wishing he hadn't just eaten tea) was doing a good trade, as were the drinks vendors, but many stalls looked to be sadly lacking in customers. I wonder if business picks up later, or whether what we saw is the extent of it?

The oompah band on stage wasn't quite what I expected as the advertised 'live music'

Looking, from the same spot, down the side street. 

After a quick walk around there was nothing to hold us there, so back to Bertie with enough time for me to tap these words out before bed.

(Just jumping back to last night: the music at the event next to where we are parked had a loud beat all evening, but it didn't really disturb us and it finished promptly at 10pm. What did disturb us was young kids running around next to us and squealing loudly and persistently at that pitch that cannot be ignored. They finally disappeared a while after the music stopped.

Second belated thought: I got an email back from the Tourist Office about not being able to pay the Stellplatz fee. They said that if I emailed them my name and postal address, then they would mail me an invoice. I'm pretty sure the admin and postage would have cost more than the fee, so a good job the website started working again today.)

Thursday 22 August - Bernkastel-Kues and Baumholder

Where's Bertie? He's in a Stellplatz in the town of Baumholder, where it (theoretically) costs €8 per night with water and electricity available at a small extra cost*. There are also showers (tokens; don't know how much they cost) and toilets, but probably only open during the day. Exact location: 49.611280, 7.34946

Weather: Sunny and warm after a coolish start (still around 17 degrees, so not cold, but cool enough to need a jumper first thing).

 

We were away from our pitch at Minheim only a few minutes after 0830 and after a service-point-faff and some roads that were distinctly unGerman in their roughness, we arrived in Bernkastel-Kues. Had we tried a bit harder, we could have found some free parking there, but after a false start in a huge car/coach park on the Bernkastel side of the river, we drove out to the motorhome/coach park on the Kues side where it costs €2 per hour. We paid for two hours, but ended up with 2hrs45 as we had arrived 45 minutes before the chargeable hours started.

Mosel, river cruise boats, castle up on the hill

 

We were in the town before any businesses bar the bakery were open, but that's not to say it was dead. As well as the two cruise boats in the photo above, there were another two or three the other side of the bridge, and the town was already alive with organised tour groups and individual cruisers. Many American and UK accents were heard.

 

If Disney made a German town...

Bit of a lean going on there

Really looks like it should topple 

We wandered around a bit and concluded that we were going to be able to see everything within two hours, which meant we could fritter some of the bonus 45 minutes on our parking ticket at the bakery, to fuel us for a walk up to the castle. 

The castle was still quiet when we got up there, but we did get chatting to a couple from one of the cruise boats, who (small world that it is) come from a village not far from where I grew up. 

 

Good view point, up by the castle

 

Looking the other way

 

And the castle itself 

I asked Mick to pose prettily, then I cut  his legs off.

By the time we got back down to the town, it had transformed in a manner that suggested that the cruise boats and tourist industry are by far its main purposes in life. Eateries or drinkeries abound, with tables now lining the main street.

The main square, now free of delivery trucks, and with tables having replaced them.

Even with a quick walk around Kues, we were back at Bertie with fifteen minutes to spare, and there we found some workmen just removing the motorhome parking signs. There was also no evidence of the service point that had been there on our arrival. How curious! 

With lunchtime upon us, we didn't drive the whole way to Baumholder in one go, but stopped in a hikers' car park en-route. We could happily have spent a night there, but the only thing around was hiking trails through the forest, and Mick's preference was to spend two nights in one place, so with lunch over, we came on to Baumholder.   

The jury is out as to whether this will prove to have been a good move. Wikipedia tells of a long history of the town, and that it is a state-recognised tourism resort. That makes it sound like there's something interesting here. Our walk around the place this afternoon suggests otherwise, unless we count the fact that we've managed to time our visit for the Old Town Festival, which is just setting up today and starts tomorrow. That could be good as it will give us something to visit tomorrow, or could be noisy.

We are parked next to the town's swimming pond, where there's a separate eating/drinking/music event going on tonight, but only until 10pm. 

As for the Stellplatz, we are currently the only vehicle here, and the sparsity of the reviews on Park4Night would suggest that it doesn't get many visitors (although that's not a reliable metric, as the vast majority don't leave reviews). There are six marked bays, and each one has a QR code to be used for paying the fee. The problem is that the QR codes don't work, and the links from the town website and the tourist office website don't work either. I've sent an email to both the Mayor's Office and the Tourist Office asking how we can pay and await a reply.

(*We have plugged Bertie into the mains for the first time on this trip, although only because there's a total of 4kWh left on the two hook up points nearest to us. That said, at €1 for 4kWh it's probably cheaper than running on gas.)