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.
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.
No food pics!
ReplyDeletePerhaps Mick was totally satiated with that tree branch speared with hunks of meat?
I've double checked my photos to confirm: not a single food photo was taken either yesterday or today. I'm slacking (or we just didn't eat anything photo-worthy).
Delete