Tuesday & Wednesday 10-11 July - Donaueschingen

Where was Bertie? He has just spent two nights back at the Stellplatz at Donaueschingen, arriving there 15 days after departing, and having driven in a circle during that period.
Weather: Largely overcast but with sunny periods. Wednesday felt cooler than of late (20-21 degrees?).

I've got behind in my blogging and it's all the fault of Stephen King. I picked up The Outsider on Monday and the time when I should have been tapping out words on the keyboard was spent reading instead. I finished it this morning, so normal service can now be resumed.

My time hasn't all been spent with my head in a book (not just because I was reading on my Kindle...). On Tuesday morning I trotted along some of the tracks in between agricultural plots around Bachheim (I hesitate to call them fields, because they don't tend to have field boundaries here; there will be a field-sized plot of, say, wheat, then next to it a plot of maize and so on, going off into the distance, broken only by the occasional track). Mick then joined me for a look around the village before I availed myself of the free town wifi to download some stuff, after which we made tracks back up the road to Donaueschingen.

Good finger posts in the village of Bachheim

The SatNav thought that the 23km to our next stop was going to take us an hour and thirty seven minutes, and it was only when I removed the intermediate stop at the service point (which sits about 0.5km away from the Stellplatz) that the time dropped to a more reasonable 23 minutes. Bizarre!

Back in Donaueschingen (and once again plugged into someone's left-over electricity), an afternoon stroll got extended due to inadvisably pre-empting a closure of the path we were following, only to find that our diversion left us stuck on the wrong side of the river, standing under the bridge we wanted to go over, and with no way of getting up to it.

Then came the main event of the day: the football. My thinking was that we needed to walk into town to watch the France v Belgium match on the basis that, if for any reason it wasn't being shown then we needed to have a rethink about where we went for the England match on Wednesday. We hadn't seriously expected it to be an issue, so it came as a surprise to find the bar closed for its staff summer outing.

After Mick's initial thought that we hadn't seen any other bar (other than the sister of the closed one - also closed), I remembered the 'Irish Pub'. Yay! Not only football, but also some atmosphere, in that there were plenty of others also watching. The downside was that at least 90% of them were smoking.

Yes, I did take a photo of the toilet roll holder in the Irish Pub. I loved the detail on it!

Wednesday morning was cool, so I didn't need to get up quite so early to go for a run, but I wasn't to know that until I was up, by which time there was no point in delaying.

Pottering and reading, with a bit of strolling, took us through to the evening, when we decided that given the choice between the no-smoking bar with no atmosphere, or the Irish Pub with atmosphere, we would go for the latter. I think there may have been one other chap in there supporting England. There was definitely more cheering for Croatia's goals. There were plenty of tooting cars driving through the streets afterwards holding Croatian flags out of the windows. Whilst I'm pretty sure that I'll not forget the result, I'll record it here just to be sure: 1 all after normal time, Croatia won 2-1 after extra time, thus eliminating England from the World Cup at Semi-Final stage.

It was a dark walk through the park back to Bertie (it was the extra time that did it), and a late night by our usual standards.


Taken during a walk through the park earlier in the day. Two weeks ago there were two swans and 9 cygnets. This time there were two swans and 9 significantly bigger cygnets. That can't be normal, having that many survive!

Monday 9 July - Blumberg and Bachheim

Where's Bertie? He's in a walkers' car park at the village hall at Bachheim (exact location: 47.85634, 8.40763).
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine for most of the day, gradually clouding over this afternoon.

This morning we answered the question I posed at the end of yesterday's post. The street art had not been scrubbed off the roads overnight, but it was gradually being worn away by the passage of tyres on the reopened road:


Almost all other evidence of the festival (the stage, the mobile bars, the food stands, the portacabins full of public toilets) had disappeared overnight. I had to wonder what we would have made of the street covered in art had we not arrived in the town until this morning, oblivious to what had gone on over the weekend.


There had been queues yesterday to view the 3D works, but today we were able to play around and pose without holding anyone else up.

It was gone noon by the time we finally left town, via a couple of supermarkets...

A display of sock yarn in an ordinary supermarket!
...having decided, after even more dithering on the subject, to head for Bachheim, taking a little bit of a punt that it would be a good place: a) for a walk; and b) for overnight.

We've managed to find ourselves a not-too-slopey space in the car park (finding a space was not difficult; once the walkers had gone home we had a choice of all bar one of the 60-odd here - the slope was more of an issue), and had a surprisingly nice walk too (advertised as 8km, actually 6.5km). I'm not sure whether there's a saturation of nice walks in this region, or whether we just keep randomly hitting the good ones.


Bachheim is, incidentally, to the NW of Blumberg (which we departed this morning) and SW of Donaueschingen (where we left 2 weeks ago today). Thus, if you were to plot our journey of the last two weeks, it might look as if we are driving in decreasing circles. We shall go against that appearance when we leave here, as our next destination is Donaueschingen, with the intention of staying there until after England has played its next match on Wednesday evening. Unusual, I know! It's only Monday and we know where we are going to be on Wednesday!

Sunday 8 July - Blumberg

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Stellplatz at Blumberg.
Weather: Mainly sunny, with some cloud. Warm.

It was a mundane sort of a start to the day. After a run (7.5 miles off-road alongside the railway track; just me - Mick's still injured), it was time to take advantage of having electricity, with haircuts for us both as well as strimming of legs and beard (should I clarify that was for me and Mick respectively?!). All electronics were charged and I was just about to start on boiling water to fill the flasks, ready to move on, when Mick said that he'd like to stay here a second night and visit the art festival today. So we did.

Below is a small snapshot of the creations on display, all created with chalk directly onto the surface of the road. There were 99 2D works and 10 (?) 3D. The quality varied enormously from amateur to 'Master' and I would say that about a dozen were extraordinary.













Having intially walked through starting late this morning, we returned at 5pm to see the finished works. I didn't take as many photos this afternoon, hence many of the snaps above are of works in progress.

We did, of course, pay the €4 each entrance fee today (as today we were there to join in, not just to find a pub with a TV) and it was worth every cent.

Now we wonder what happens to all of the art. Do they send a street sweeper in overnight and erase all that hard work, or is it left to wear off by the passage of traffic? Either way, a lot of work has been put in by a lot of people (in hot, sunny conditions, but all things considered, hot is better than rain!) for a very temporary exhibition.

And now, as the day marches into 'late evening' we are hoping for a quieter night. Last night was blighted by boy racers nearby. The squealing tyres would have been bad enough, but these were accompanied by much tooting and yelling. After today's exertions, I'm after a good kip tonight!

Saturday 7 July - Bonndorf and Blumberg

Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz at Blumberg. It costs €7 per night, plus €1.50pppn tourist tax, plus €1 per day for electricity. Exact location: 47.83957, 8.54225.
Weather: Mainly sunny, but with some dark clouds drifting in every now and then.

Last night's parking spot was rather nice. This morning's breakfast spot was less so, but it was practical: the car park of Lidl in Bonndorf. The plan was: breakfast in a location with a phone signal, then whilst I shopped, Mick would go and check out the town, to make sure there was somewhere to watch the football before we paid out for the Stellplatz.

With both outings successful, we then encountered a problem: the Stellplatz was closed.

There was an easy Plan B - the one that had already been in place for the event of there not being a sports bar in town: we would go to Blumberg instead.

There was almost a late change of plan when, en route, we considered taking the turn for Donaueschingen instead. It's now 12 days since we left that town, but today we found ourselves passing 9km to the south of it, so it would have been an easy option to return there for the free Stellplatz, a smoke-free bar to watch the match, and a known route for me to run tomorrow morning. On reflection, maybe that would have been the wisest choice.

Two road closures were encountered on our way here (one with a well signed diversion, one without), and it was the second one that was later to cause a bit of an annoyance.

We had parked up in the Stellplatz and walked to the town, only to find that the closure of the town's main street was for an art festival. Specifically, a pavement art festival. Entry was €4 a head, which wasn't unreasonable if your purpose was to soak up the atmosphere of the festival and enjoy all of the pavement art, but €4 each was unreasonable when your purpose was simply to visit one of the businesses along that street. Harrumph!

We managed to obtain entry without paying and as it happens the only place we found for the football was outside of the payable zone. Everywhere within the zone was focussing on music today, not on having their TVs on. I imagine that would have been different had Germany been playing...

Relieved to have found a football viewing location, it looked for a while like we were going to get away relatively smoke-free, when there was just us and the (smoking) bar man in the place. Then it started to fill up, and I'm coming to the conclusion that the only people who go to bars in this region are smokers. At least this place had ceiling fans and an open window, so it could have been worse. Of course, it was worth it for being able to witness England progress to the semi-finals of a World Cup for the first time in a while.

Friday 6 July - Schattenmühle

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park at a place called Schattenmühle (Exact location: 47.84327, 8.31925).
Weather: Rainy start, then gradually clearing to give some sunny periods later this afternoon, interspersed with threatening skies.

Our car park for the last two nights, up in the woods by Schluchsee was delightfully peaceful, with the main sounds being tweeting birds and the occasional cowbell drifting on the breeze. Comings and goings of cars were relatively few. So, whilst it was surrounded by trees and boasted no view, we would happily have stayed there a third night, to return to Schluchsee (the town) tomorrow for the football, except that by elevenses time this morning we were going to run out of drinking water*. And if we were going to move to find a tap, then we may as well move on.

Via a quick stop in the motorhome Stellplatz in Schluchsee to fill and drain Bertie, we headed the 20km to where we are now sitting.

All I knew about the location prior to arrival was that it was a car park, located by a gorge and that there were nearby walking routes (although I'm not sure it's possible to park in this region and not be near to a walking route). That the car park was fairly full when we arrived was a good sign - to attract this many people there must be something interesting nearby.

The presence of an information board with a map setting out the local walks was handy, as we had no mobile phone reception at all to download maps or routes. Of the European countries we have visited, Germany stands out as having the poorest mobile phone service - a complete contrast to Spain, where I can only think of one occasion when we couldn't get a signal, and it's almost always 3G. In Germany, except when we're in a town, it's normal for at least one of us (and very often both of us) not to have 3G.

The walk, whilst 2km longer than advertised, with a bit more ascent, was good and interesting. I've written more about it over at http://gayleybird.blogspot.com.


Engineered walkways and a modest waterfall as we made our way up the gorge

A field of cultivated wild flowers was buzzing with bees and aflutter with butterflies.

Crossing a river before following an undulating path alongside it, on the retirn leg of the circuit.

By the time we got back to Bertie the first of the day's World Cup semi-final matches had kicked off and I gave Mick the option of decamping to the nearest town so that he could either find somewhere to watch or follow along on t'internet. The decision made was to stay put, but I did manage to find a French-speaking radio station, on which one of the two commentators spoke clearly enough for me to be able to get the gist of what was going on.

This evening two other vans have joined us in the car park (which is, otherwise, now empty), and there was a brief visit by a man and a woman, both dressed in work clothes, who arrived in separate cars and disappeared off up the footpath for a while. There could have been many an innocent explanation for the meeting, but I stand by my first assessment of "They're having an affair!".

^{(*As we have owned Bertie from new and can peer into his water tank to check there's no algae growth, it's questionable why we don't just drink water from his tank. Colin had no such access to look inside his tank, and he had been a hire vehicle before we bought him, so we always carried separate drinking water in four 5-litre containers. We've continued the same regime in Bertie.)}

Thursday 5 July - Schluchsee

Where's Bertie? He's exactly where he was last night, in the car park on the SW side of the lake at Schluchsee.
Weather: Rain until 2 or 3pm, then increasingly fine.

Heavy rain, drumming noisily on the roof, disturbed us at around 3.30 this morning. It did eventually slow down to a more normal pitter-patter, but I'm blaming the disturbance for not waking until 9.30. If there's going to be an accidental lie-in, today was certainly the weather for it! Alas, it was also the weather to scupper our planned pedalo outing on the lake.

The rain continued all morning, but at noon I finally changed out of pyjamas and into running gear. Then I had a dither and checked the weather forecast in the hope that it would dry up this afternoon. No such news was forthcoming, so out I went and 4.5 miles later I was really quite wet.


When we passed this point on yesterday afternoon's stroll, finishing touches were just being put on the scaffolding on the building plot. I said that there would be a house there in two days time. When I ran past the first time this lunchtime (it was a 2-lap run), the ground floor was up, complete with doors and windows. When I ran past the second time, a tarp had been erected over the top to keep the rain out.

Such were my intentions for the rest of the day that, on returning to Bertie, I put pyjamas back on. Then the rain stopped and Mick needed to get a little exercise, so we nipped out for another circuit ... except that a short way in I decided that the sky was looking ominous and I didn't want to have another set of wet clothes and shoes to get dry today, so I turned back. As it went, the rain didn't return, so instead of returning 'home', I walked back and forth, up and down the road/forest track off which Bertie is parked, until eventually I met Mick on his way back.

Gosh, it's all exciting action at the moment, isn't it?

Wednesday 4 July - Schluchsee

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park at the end of a dead-end road on the SW side of the lake of Schluchsee (exact location: 47.80416, 8.17443).
Weather: Plenty of sunshine, lots of cloudy periods, a few spots of rain, rumblings of thunder, warm.

We came out of the pub late last night stinking of smoke. It was bad enough last weekend, sitting outside of a smoking establishment. This time we were inside, but it was a choice of putting up with it or not seeing England snatch victory against Columbia in a pentalty shoot-out. Is it only just over a decade ago that smelling like that every Saturday morning at home (assuming you'd been to the pub the night before!) was a normal thing?

This morning's run, which featured two unexpected long staircases (and one not-so-long), was hard. Because of the late night in a smoky atmosphere? Because I didn't have any carbs with my salad for tea last night (accidental omission, not an intentional dietary decision)? Because it's so humid? Psychological? Who knows? Whatever the cause, it gave me the inclination to spend the rest of the day doing nothing more energetic than pottering.

There was a walk into town so as to find some wifi to download a week's worth of newspapers...

The temporary office
...whilst Mick wandered off down the street to find a bakery, returning with pastries almost as big as my head:

I did only eat half today, even though the other half will be stale by the time I eat it tomorrow.

Our ticket at the Stellplatz expired at 2.30pm, and it was just before that we rolled away from town, continuing to roll a whole 7km to our new location (which, as the crow flies is under 1.5km from where we were).

We did stir ourselves to walk a circuit through the woods and along the lake side this afternoon and, as we have come to expect of this area, it's all lovely. The number of guesthouses along this road suggests that we are not the only people to think so.

Looking up the Schluchsee from its south west side.