Tuesday 19 June - Schwetzinger and Eppingen

Where's Bertie? He's in a Stellplatz in Eppingen, where electricity costs €1 per 2kWh, and water and waste cost €1 each.
Weather: Sunny start and sunny evening with varying amounts of cloud in between. Very warm.

Our day was not over when I posted yesterday's blog. At about 7.30pm we set off to walk back into town, which is a decent length of stroll away from the motorhome parking, to find ourselves somewhere to watch England's first match in the World Cup. I'm sure the bars would have been buzzing with people shouting at the TVs on Sunday afternoon, when Germany was playing, but to watch a couple of foreign teams play we had no problem with finding a front row seat and joining the only two other people intent on watching the match. Mick was the only person who reacted in any way to what was going on on-screen.

A couple of hours later we left, Mick happy that Harry Kane had grabbed a late winning goal, and me happy that I had made good progress on the sock I'm currently knitting.


Mick with beer and football; me with knitting and water. I am so Rock n Roll!

With the late kick-off (8pm local time) and a decent stroll back to Bertie after the match finished, it wasn't the earliest of nights.

Accordingly, it wasn't the earliest of mornings either, and I probably would have lounged around in bed even longer if it hadn't been for a desire to run before the day got too hot. I took myself around the outer perimeter of the Schlossgarten and sweated in a very unladylike way. I'm going to have to start getting up earlier.

Grocery shopping before we left was an easy affair, with Lidl being about 100 paces from Bertie's door and once our haul had been stowed (which always seems to involve a game of 'fridge Tetris' even tough Bertie's fridge is very generously sized), we were away. Again, it wasn't a long journey, taking us 45km to the town of Eppingen (twinned with Epping in the UK, appropriately).

The town looked like it was going to be interesting as we caught sight of it on our drive in, so soon after lunch we walked the very short distance to the centre. This is the first notable building we passed on our way...

...and from there it was half-timbered houses agogo, many of them exhibiting a delightful wonkiness:



The town is not a big one and it didn't take us long to decide that we had seen all there was to see, whereafter we ambled along some of the cycle paths nearby, not that we found anything noteworthy there.

Our preference at the moment is to spend at least two nights everywhere we can and whilst Eppingen it is a very attractive town, I'm struggling to think of what we might do here tomorrow if we stay. As there are a lot of Stellpltäze in this area, I'm favouring a short hop to another one, to see what we find there.


Yet another 'I've no idea!', this time in the form of a water tap.

Monday 18 June - Schwetzinger

Where's Bertie? He's exactly where he was last night, at the Stellplatz at Schwetzinger.
Weather: Sunny start, then clouding over but dry and very warm.

Armed with a backpack containing both elevenses and lunch, off we set to walk all the way around to the other side of the Schlossgarten (castle gardens), to their entrance. We knew nothing about the place (indeed, we didn't know about its existence until we chose to come here) but from its representation on the map, it looked to cover a considerable area and contain a lot of paths:


Well, what a place! I knew the gardens were going to be quite a size, but I expected a large chunk of it to be semi-wild. The reality is that it is a huge ornamental garden, with a significant smattering of follies (temples, a mosque and various other buildings). Later reading the Wikipedia entry, I could see where the author was coming from when they described the palace as being a modest size (in the context of palaces, I suppose; compared to, say, our house, it's ... palatial) with the gardens being completely out of proportion, such that the place should be described as the 'Schwetzingen Gardens and Palace' rather than the other way around.

With benches appearing in even greater number than sculptures and follies, it wasn't difficult to find nice spots for elevenses (overlooking a lake) and lunch (next to a fountain). Shade was required for the latter break; it was jolly hot when in the sun today.

We certainly didn't cover all of the paths, but after 3 hours of ambling around (covering over 4 miles), we felt that we had seen a bit of all of the sections. By then we had decided that the €6 entrance fee was a bargain. It would have been so for the gardens alone, but it turned out also to cover entrance to various buildings, such as the bath house, mosque and orangery, as well as a couple of information/museum rooms, where we probably would have spent a chunk more time if our German skills were up to the job of deciphering the information presented.

Below is a selection of photos of the day. Ordinarily I would add captions to give a hint as to what they show or why I've included them. However, because of how I've put this blog post together (a much quicker method than I usually use), I can't see what photos I've put in or in what order they have appeared, so please forgive the lack of info.

Sunday 17 June - Mannheim and Schwetzinger

Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz in a car park in a retail area, just outside of the town of Schwetzinger (exact location: 49.37788, 8.5581).
Weather: Glorious start, but soon clouding over. Still warm.

As yesterday morphed into evening people started returning to their cars from the strange allotment-esque area next to where Bertie was sitting, many pulling folding trolleys, and within an hour or so the car park had almost emptied. That set me thinking a bit more as to what that area really was, and the conclusion I reached was that it is the inland German city equivalent of British beach huts. Many people in cities live in flats without gardens - these are their gardens, complete with substantial mini-house-like 'sheds'. That theory was backed up when I re-read the entry in Park4Night, which said the car park was next to the 'gardens'. I had originally thought that was just a poor translation of 'park', but when I switched to the German and French text my theory was supported.

By nightfall there were just a few cars left and we suspected, from seeing the manner of dress of their owners earlier, that they belonged to people attending some sort of a do nearby. That do finished sometime just after 4am and twenty minutes later, after we'd been woken by various chatting people passing by on the street, we witnessed the phenomenon where a car parked nearby will suddenly grow extra doors, all of which need to be opened and closed before the owner can drive away. I reckon the two nearest cars had at least eighteen doors each.

It was probably only a quarter of an hour before the chatting and door slamming stopped, so far from the worst disturbance we've ever come across (and as I've said before: if you're going to sleep in public car parks, you can't complain about other members of the public using those car parks at any time of day or night).

Opening the curtains this morning, a little later than intended, it was a clear blue sky that greeted my eyes. I made haste: a long(er) slow(er) run was on the agenda for me this morning and I wanted to get out there before the day hotted up too much. As it goes, Neckarau Park is a fantastic location for exercise on a hot morning, as so much of the extensive path network has a heavy canopy of trees overhead, meaning I was seldom in the sunlight. Even at 8.45 on a Sunday morning, there were hundreds (and I don't think I exaggerate at all there) of people out exercising. The Nordic walking contingent were particularly noticeable, as it's unusual to see so many people independently undertaking the activity.

It must have been knocking on for noon by the time we dragged ourselves away from Mannheim and we didn't come far. Ideally we wanted to visit a service point today, and that we could achieve here in Schwetzinger, a whole 14km of driving from our start point. We weren't sure if we were going to stay here, but arriving to find plenty of other vans in residence, we thought it couldn't be as bad as the couple of reviews I'd read had implied (their only complaint was the road noise and perhaps Sunday afternoon isn't the best time for us to be a judge of that).

The map told us that just along the road are the castle gardens, so after lunch we ambled along for a look. It turns out that one has to pay for entry and the only entrance is right on the other side. When we finally reached it, we discovered that it's not just gardens, but also a Palace. Unfortunately, there is only one English language tour of the building each week and it takes place on a Sunday at 2.15pm. We arrived at 3pm. So, we won't be visiting the Palace.

We will take in the gardens, but we decided to leave that for tomorrow, instead taking a stroll around the castle square and the bit of old town nearby.

I'll leave you today with a selection of the many sculptures/art installations we saw around the town:

I've no idea!

The town is famed for its asparagus, which is the subject of this sculpture. The market stall behind was an asparagus vendor.

Of the four corners of this junction, three contained art installations (two are visible in this shot).

Saturday 16 June - Mannheim

Where's Bertie? He's in the same car park as last night.
Weather: Mainly sunny. Warm.

I had a good night's sleep, oblivious to anything going on outside, and would describe this spot as a nice quiet one, with very little traffic passing at night (it's a dead-end road, that leads only to the car park of the Strandbad recreation area).

Mick, on the other hand, did not sleep well, although on analysis, probably only because he was too highly alert for anything going on outside, rather than because anything did go on.

As a result, when I sprang out of bed just after 6.30, deciding it was early enough to have some breakfast before running at 9am, Mick continued to slumber - or as much as he could with me banging around making porridge and tea.

The ParkRun surprised us by taking a slightly different course from the one shown on the website (and thus different from the route we recce'd yesterday), but it was good and enjoyable - for me at least. I finished having beaten my previous overall ParkRun PB (set at Toulouse in December 2016) by 18 seconds.

Unfortunately, it was an understandably grumpy Mick I found when I crossed the line jubilant at my success. He had suffered yet another recurrence of a calf pull that has plagued him for years.

About two thirds of today's participants were locals, the rest Brits, and when we went for coffee at the Strandbad restaurant after the event we found ourselves sharing a table with some of the former. Perhaps a good thing from an 'immerse yourself in the local culture' point of view, but a bit tricky when you seem to have forgotten most of the limited German language you once knew. Thankfully, the chap next to whom I was sitting spoke good English. His son was around 14 so mainly communicated by grunting...


ParkRunners chowing down on breakfast. The terrace proved to be a good place to watch passing traffic on the Rhine.


Looking upstream from the beach outside of the restaurant.

We had been the first to arrive for coffee and were last to leave, just before noon.

A decision then had to be made: where to go next? We looked at a map. We pondered. Then we moved all of half a mile back down the road to last night's location. It's a nice area, and Mick was going to be resting his leg for the rest of the day (employing our bag of frozen peas well), so why not stay?

Canoeists and other people too

I took another stroll this afternoon, taking me first to another section of the river, where people were out canoeing and water-skiing, then looping around to the area behind Bertie. There I found a community that looked to me like it was originally allotments with large and substantial sheds that have now been converted to houses (weekend houses?). The plots are all very modest (allotment sized, really), and most of them are growing fruit and veg, with the rest sporting well-tended lawns. All of the pedestrian avenues that criss-cross the community are gated, but with the gates mainly being open today I walked through. All very neat, twee and nice.

Now we're sitting around for the evening (in a balmy 30 degrees inside Bertie as I type this; that dress I bought at the start of the trip is getting plenty of wear!) we should probably look at the map some more and decide where we're going tomorrow. In reality, we'll probably do that about 10 minutes before we leave in the morning.

Friday 15 June - Bad Dürkheim and Mannheim

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park at Neckarau Park on the south side of Mannheim (exact location: 49.44984, 8.46362).
Weather: Sunny intervals and warm. Most sun this morning.

Last night's Stellplatz at the vineyard at Bad Dürkheim may have given us pleasant green surroundings, but (as I mentioned yesterday) it was also right alongside a road. That road wasn't massively busy and, thanks to how often we sleep in laybys, we're reasonably immune to passing traffic, but this road was particularly noisy - not helped by the number of tractors that trundle up and down. Thus, I was awake not long after six this morning, which wouldn't have been so bad if I had gone to bed earlier and/or hadn't suddenly remembered at 2am that I hadn't put last night's leftovers in the fridge (at least in Bertie the kitchen is only two paces from the bed).

This morning was a relaxed affair with the main feature being a bit of laundry. I think I've mentioned before that, for me, laundry is the one downside of living life on the road, without mains water or electric and with little load-carrying capacity for labour-saving devices. We can go for three weeks without needing to find a laundrette (not because we carry lots of clothes, but because we wear the same things until they start to become offensive), but there are certain things (mainly running gear) that can't wait that long. So this morning I set to a bit of hand washing so that we won't smell too bad when we run in company tomorrow morning.

A grocery shop and a failed attempt to obtain wifi at McDonalds waylaid our departure from Bad Dürkheim and I'm a little ashamed to say that we left the town without having made any attempt to look around.

The drive to Mannheim wasn't long (less than 30km), but a bit of excitement was thrown in when a 2.1m width restriction was suddenly announced about 100m before it applied. Bertie's only 2cm above that limit, but it would have been a tight squeeze to fit him through the width barrier that had been put in place at the start of the roadworks to which the restriction applied. Thankfully there was no-one behind us as we made a very late dive for the adjacent road exit, and a bit of a panic on the part of the navigator (me) with the sudden need to redirect us to the next bridge along the river.

It was gone 2pm by the time we arrived at our destination, by which time we were ready to eat a scabby dog. Thankfully, a plate of bread, cheese and salady bits doesn't take long to prepare.

After lunch came the only real activity of the day, as we set out to fulfil the reason why we wanted to arrive here today, rather than first thing tomorrow morning: to walk a recce of the ParkRun route.

The route mainly runs through a green tunnel of trees...

...although there are some open areas...

...and a nice stretch along the Rhine, which is running very high and fast at the moment (the barges were making hard work of getting upstream):


A ParkRun is always 5km long (give or take a couple of hundred metres, particularly if it's a wiggling course and you take the racing line), but we managed nearly 6k on our recce. It was an incident of neglecting to look at the map whilst busy chatting and a resultant backtrack.


Plenty of people were out enjoying picnics at the recreation area that sits the opposite side of the car park from the ParkRun course.

After all of that, the day was rounded off nicely by me finishing my latest yarny project. Following on from my success at crocheting blankets and knitting socks, I decided a couple of months ago to see whether I could manage to knit a jumper. This evening I was most chuffed, not so much by the successful completion of said jumper, but by managing to un-cast-off half of the cuff of one sleeve, to drop four stitches down six rows and to pick them back up again in pattern to correct an error I had spotted.

A big woolly jumper over my frock. It's not currently the weather for such a garment and I hope it stays that way for the rest of this trip!

As for tonight's nightstop, I always have concerns about staying in a car park in a location such as this on a Friday night. We've opted for the car park that looked the slightly less likely, of the two options available, to attract undesirable company overnight, but I won't be holding my breath for a quiet night. I'll report back tomorrow.

Thursday 14 June - Echternach (Luxembourg) and Bad Dürkheim (Germany) via Landstuhl

Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz at a vinyard in Bad Dürkheim, where it costs €6 for 24hrs. Electricity and water are extra (50c per 0.5kWh, and €1 per 80l respectively). Exact location: 49.41699, 7.57083.
Weather: Sunny intervals.

Our day started early (but not bright; there was a fog hanging low over our surroundings) with a run around the lake at Echternach. In fact, two rounds, which amounted to 4 miles.

The early start was occasioned by uncertainty as to how busy the parking would be in the town once the working day got started, so we wanted to relocate the couple of km down the road as early as possible. We were there before 8.30, finding four of the five motorhome spaces free (and the other occupied by a truck). Why had we not stayed there the night, you might ask? Because the town has been so thoughtful as to put in very generously sized motorhome spaces, and a full service point ... and then banned overnight parking of motorhomes.

Now better located for the walk we intended to take, a leisurely breakfast was had before we headed out into the sunshine.

The walk was excellent, taking us past some very shapely rocks, although a little trying as the area has suffered significant flood damage and we were repeatedly thwarted by closed roads and paths. If you want to see more snaps, and read more words about our outing you can click here to be transported to the relevant post on our walking blog


Wanting to be in Mannheim by tomorrow afternoon, we didn't spend a second night around Echternach, but instead headed for a Stellplatz in the town of Landstuhl. I knew it wasn't going to be an attractive place, being nothing more than some motorhome parking and a service point in a town car park, but thought it would do for the night. It likely would have done too, had it been later when we arrived, however, at 1645 it was still full of commuters, including the motorhome spaces, with not a single slot available into which we could squeeze even Bertie's modest length. We suspected the place would empty significantly within the hour, but being opposite a railway line (and by a station, hence the commuters), and in an industrial/commercial area, it wasn't attractive, so I reviewed the options again and onwards we continued to Bad Dürhkeim.

The Aire here is much more pleasing to the eye, being grassy with plenty of trees, and has masses of space (our German Stellplatz books says there are 170 spaces; it doesn't look that big, but it is spacious) but the road that runs past does seem rather noisy. According to our parking ticket, our €6 fee includes entry for 2 people into something ... we're just not quite sure what the something is. Swings and roundabouts, though; whilst we're not going to enjoy our free entry, we have taken advantage of the credit left by others on the electric point, using up the available 0.9kWh. We wouldn't otherwise have bothered plugging in as running Bertie on gas is cheaper than electric.

Wednesday 13 June - Wiltz & Echternach

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park next to the Youth Hostel by the lake, just outside of Echternach (exact location: 49.80063, 6.41633).
Weather: Overcast but dry, with a bit of sunshine late in the afternoon.

Even though we stayed in Wiltz until early this afternoon, we still failed to see the castle. That was because I decided that the 10km walking circuit looked more interesting than the 7km one I had originally intended us to do, and it wasn't until we got back to the town that I realised that the longer route didn't take us past the castle. Admittedly it wouldn't have been a large detour to nip past it on our way back to Bertie, but Mick didn't feel so inclined and I wasn't fussed enough to argue.



A couple of snaps from our walk.

I'm sure that at almost any other point in this trip we would have stayed put in Wiltz for a second night, as it was quite a pleasant place and the motorhome parking was quiet, but we have a date in Mannheim on Saturday, so after lunch off we rolled.

Our first stop was a small detour off route to a LPG-selling petrol station at Diekirch. There we filled Bertie's gas tanks at 52.7c/litre and filled his diesel tank at 111.7c/litre. Even at today's reduced exchange rate, that equated to diesel at less than £1 per litre. As for the LPG, we had only used 30 litres in the 6.5 weeks of Bertie-use since we last filled up, which is an unusually low amount, but we stayed on campsites/places with hook-up on 12 nights over that period, meaning the fridge has been run on electric more than normal, plus in Scotland I didn't feel the need to heat water for showers in between campsites, which must also have saved a reasonable amount of usage.

Anyway, with Bertie's fuel tanks full, onwards we tootled along the Luxembourg side of the border with Germany, along the edge of the area marked on our road map as 'Little Switzerland', to the town of Echternach.

It all seems rather nice around here, although today's explorations have only extended to a walk around the lake:


Having never been to Luxembourg before, nor to the immediately neighbouring areas of Belgium and Germany, we had no idea what to expect of the country. With meadows abounding, and lots of forests and lumpy terrain, some of what we have seen so far has put us in mind of mountain villages in France. The main difference here is that the highest point in the entire country is not much more than 550m above sea level.

Even though we've only been in the country for a couple of days, we've seen enough to have formed the intention to visit the south of the country on our return route in August, albeit it will likely be another passing sort of visit (the lure of cheap diesel and gas is a bonus, but not really a consideration in this decision!).