Wednesday 19 June - Bad Waldsee

Where's Bertie? He's back in the same space at the Stellplatz at Bad Waldsee, having spent the day at Hymer's workshop.
Weather: Sunny and hot.

It was an uncomfortably warm night, with the temperature inside Bertie not falling below 22 degrees. It didn't result in a great night's sleep.

When daylight woke me at 0530, I did as I usually do and closed the blind on the skylight above the bed (we slept with that window wide open, hence the open blind). However, I didn't go back to sleep, not because I couldn't, but because it occurred to me that if I stayed awake, I could solve my problem as to how to fit a run in this morning and not be horribly rushed to get to our 10am appointment at the Hymer factory.

It's not possible in a living space the size of Bertie for one person to get up and put the kettle on without disturbing the other, so I was restrained and lay quietly until 0600. I then crept around making as little noise as possible.

I'm not sure what the temperature was first thing, but running was a sweaty affair. I do know that it was 21 degrees when we drove out of our space just before 9am.


The Stadtsee was beautifully still and reflective as I ran my first lap.

As I said the other day, my expectations of our visit to Hymer weren't high. I thought we would be in and out in half an hour and was thus tempted not to go prepared with a day's worth of food and drink. However, we've made that mistake elsewhere before, so I duly packed a couple of flasks, a couple of bottles of water*, some sandwiches and a couple of pastries (bought from the mobile bread van when it visited the Stellplatz this morning - we nearly missed it until it suddenly occurred to me that bell we've heard the last couple of mornings heralded the arrival of said vendor).

To our surprise our allocated technician at the workshop was thorough in finding out from us what the problems were. He then came with us on a decent test drive so that he could hear the noise the bed makes when we're driving. It probably goes without saying that, having creaked and groaned without fail on every single leg of the journey to date, it stayed absolutely silent on that drive. Grrrrr. We can only assume that the hot weather has caused sufficient expansion to shut it up. (Later, driving back from the workshop, it rattled again. Is Bertie in rebellion? Did he not want to come back to his birthplace? Is this like a child trying to embarrass his parents?)

With Bertie taken off for investigations, this became our view for the day:


Unlike our experience with our Belgian dealer, here we received an update after about an hour and were told we were free to go out for a couple of hours. Any temptation to do so was checked by the thought of walking around in the midday sun on a such a hot day. Not that it was significantly cooler inside the showroom.

By mid-afternoon parts had been ordered from the parts facility (also in Bad Waldsee), received and fitted. So, that's the fourth design modification that has been implemented. Funnily enough, this design of bed, which was new in 2016, was discontinued last year...

By the time we had Bertie back we didn't feel inclined to move on. The concensus was to return to the Stellplatz for one more night and we got the same space back - a fact that was clocked by those neighbours who remained from yesterday (we're the sole GB van, so stand out; there are a couple of Dutch and Swiss and an Andorian, but the rest are German).

Yesterday we had dithered over whether to deploy the 'silver screen' insulating covers for our cab windows and later, as the temperature inside Bertie escalated, rued having decided against. On arriving back today, with the sun full on Bertie's massive windscreen, we had those covers on within minutes of his handbrake being applied. It was a wise decision and bore out that they will be just as useful to keep heat out in summer as to keep warmth in during winter. Once applied, the interior temperature remained relatively stable, peaking at just 31 degrees. As I type this at just gone 9pm (with the screens having been removed as soon as the sun had gone), it's a mere 25 degrees and falling - that's 2 degrees cooler than it was when we went to bed last night.

(Goodness me, I'm wittering on a lot about having done not a lot today. I'm nearly done...)

After tea (which nearly involved the use of the oven, until I thought about the implications, whereupon I changed the menu to salad), a walk into town was on the agenda. A very quick shufty around Google hadn't confirmed that the laundrette in town still exists, so we wandered down to look. It is still there (and every bit as dated as it was last year; more so, I suppose), and as laundrettes are thin on the ground in Germany, I'll be making use of this one before we leave town.


Random snap looking along one of the streets in town. Eating out was a popular choice tonight, with pavement seating being put to good use.

^{(*The reason for taking a full day's worth of drinks with us is that our dealer almost never offers us a drink (it reserves that for prospective customers; once they have your money, you no longer merit refreshment). At Hymer they have a pleasant seating area with two drinks machines (hot and cold). You do have to pay for drinks, but at 40c for a cup of coffee (decent coffee, not instant) or 50c for a bottle of chilled water, I came down on the side of "We've driven 1200km to get here, an extra 40c is a mere bagatelle" rather than "We've driven 1200km to get here and they can't even give us a free cup of coffee!".)}

Tuesday 18 June - Bad Waldsee

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Stellplatz in Bad Waldsee.
Weather: Another lovely sunny day.

Looking down on the Stellplatz from route TK1

Not much to report today.

It had been our intention to leave the pay-Stellplatz when our ticket expired and install ourselves at the free customer Stellplatz at the Hymer workshop, ready for our appointment tomorrow. But the surroundings are pleasant where we are, the parking spaces are huge and it's acceptable to get the chairs out. So, when our ticket expired, we bought another one.

There has been a little bit of activity (6 miles worth in my case). Behind the Stellplatz are some meadows and woodland that are criss-crossed with paths. I think I've walked every one of them during today's three outings, including marked routes TK1 and TK2. Mick joined me for the pre-lunch stroll.

Looking across a meadow from this morning's first walk.

You don't need to know where the footpaths lie to go for a walk in Germany - they're not shy of using signposts.

Bertie has also had his floors de-gritted, his cupboard handles polished amongst other 'housework'. Can't have him all dusty and dirty for his appointment tomorrow!

The pursuit that has taken up most of our day, however, has been chasing the shade around Bertie. We don't have a sun canopy, because it's not worth the money and weight penalty to carry around something that we are seldom in a position to use (our usual sorts of night-stops aren't such that it would be appropriate to be winding out a sunshade), so the best we can do is to huddle into whatever shade is being cast by Bertie's body.

Monday 17 June - Ulm and Bad Waldsee

Where's Bertie? He's in a Stellplatz at Bad Waldsee, where he last spent a night on 23 July last year. It costs €10/24hrs to stay here. Water and electricity are available for an extra fee.
Weather: Sunshine with just a few fluffy clouds dotted around this afternoon.

I intended to get up a bit earlier than usual this morning, so that I could run before the path on the north side of the Danube lost its shade. Unfortunately, I forgot to tell my phone of my intentions, so I wasn't quite as early as intended. Even so, it was still relatively cool as I set out, initially along the unshaded side of the river.

I didn't run anywhere today that I didn't run during last year's visit to Ulm & Thalfingen (albeit last year I did it across two separate outings), but I'd forgotten what an attractive route it was, along the riverside, through bits of woodland and passing a couple of lakes too. An hour and three quarters later I was back in the parkland adjacent to Bertie's parking space, where plenty of red squirrels were frolicking around.

Meanwhile, Mick ran a shorter distance (only his second outing on this return from injury - he's trying to be sensible) in the opposite direction along the river.

Breakfast, showers, a visit to the service point (we'd completely run out of drinking water) and a quick supermarket run and we were heading the hour south to Bad Waldsee.

Unusually, given there is both a free and a pay option for motorhome parking in Bad Waldsee, we have chosen the latter, with last year's mosquito-blighted stay-from-hell at the former having not been forgotten.

Like Ulm, having been here before, we didn't feel the need to explore Bad Waldsee, but did take ourselves off for a circuit of the Stadtsee (town lake) this afternoon. It's such a pleasant location and the water was well-frequented in this afternoon's hot sunshine.

Hmm. Massive photos again. No idea why. 

<sup>(I feel I should give a little detail about why we've come to Bad Waldsee two years in a row, so here you go:

Our German tour last year came about because we had been told by our Hymer dealer that they were unable to fix the problems we've had (since new) with Bertie's drop-down bed (in fact, his only bed; he's only a two-berth van) and that we would therefore have to visit the home of Hymer: Bad Waldsee. Hymer subsequently refused to see us, insisting that our dealer could fix the problem, but by then our minds were fixed on southern Germany, so that's where we came. We didn't need to come to Bad Waldsee on that tour, but when we found ourselves an hour away we thought we may as well make the detour, to visit the Erwin Hymer Museum (an interesting place; click here to see my blog post of that day), as who knew if or when we would find ourselves so close again?

At the end of August 2018 our dealer implemented a major design modification to our bed. It made its operation much more acceptable than it had been, but it still wasn't right. By early this year, after another mod, the conclusion reached was that we needed to visit Bad Waldsee. Hymer finally agreed to give us an appointment, so here we are. I'm not hopeful of actually reaching a resolution with the bed, but we felt we had to at least see what they have to say.)</sup>

Sunday 16 June - Ulm

Where's Bertie? He's in a stellplatz in Ulm, where he also stayed for a couple of nights at the end of July last year.
Weather: Grey and slightly showery morning, clearing to give some sunshine this afternoon. Feeling cooler and less humid.

There was a severe weather warning out for thunderstorms in the south-west corner of Germany last night. Bertie was sitting right on the very edge of the affected area and the weather forecast told us we were in for a night of heavy rain. In reality, whilst there was drumming on Bertie's roof loud enough to wake us briefly, it started later and finished earlier than forecast. Not a single rumble of thunder was heard. By this morning we were down to just a few light showers as we drove the hour down to Ulm.

Given our unfavourable opinion of the Stellplatz in Ulm when we stayed last year, it's perhaps surprising that we opted to come here again. The benefit of the place, that drew us back, is the location, not just in terms of our journey down to Bad Waldsee, but because the parking area is next to a riverside park, through which one can gain easy access to the Donauradweg path, providing a nice running route for tomorrow.

Ulm is a city worth seeing, but having been here before (click here for last year's posts with photos of the bits I found notable), we didn't feel any obligation to go out and explore.

Having finished the book I'd been reading, the lack of activity got too much for me and before lunch we took a stroll around the parkland and along the river. After lunch we walked the other way along the river, found ourselves in town, did a quick circuit of the centre, then walked back along the opposite bank. Being Sunday, people were out in droves. It's amazing how such strolling can add up - it has amounted to over 5 miles today.

A couple of views along the Danube from this afternoon's walk

^{(Today's aside: we often pull into a motorhome parking area and immediately suspect that a van (or some vans) already there is in long-term residence. There's often nothing you can put your finger on indicating the full-timer-in-residence status, but it often becomes apparent during our stay that our first feeling was likely right. Similarly, we'd not long been in Esslingen when I suggested that the only other van there was owned by a local who was using the Stellplatz as a handy parking area for a couple of days whilst he loaded up for the weekend. Again, subseuqent comings and goings suggested I was right. Last year when we arrived in Ulm we didn't immediately form such an impression of anyone here, but it didn't take us long to notice that the occupants of three vans didn't fit the usual motorhomer demographic and behaviour (particularly the behaviour...). When we returned to Ulm a couple of days after we had left, the vans in question were still here and we began to wonder whether they were, in fact, in residence, even though they seemed to move to different spaces at least five times a day. Arriving here this morning it didn't take us long to find the same three vans, still here. They seem to have been joined by another 8 that we can identify. I think we can safely say the '48 hour max stay' either has a loophole or isn't enforcable/enforced.)}

Saturday 15 June - Esslingen and Kirchheim-unter-Teck

Where's Bertie? He's in a Stellplatz that forms part of a large car park in Kirchheim-unter-Teck (exact location: 48.64989, 9.45898).
Weather: Mainly overcast but warm and humid. Some sunshine this afternoon.

StreetView coverage is a hit-and-miss affair in Germany (far more miss than hit; I've found few places with coverage) and thus I'd not been able to check out the access for a Bertie-sized vehicle in the car park for Esslingen's parkrun this morning. We thus arrived early in case we needed to park elsewhere and walk in - which happily turned out not to be the case. We were able to settle Bertie within metres of the start line.

About an hour after our arrival, others started to congregate. We weren't expecting a big crowd as this was only the 11th week of this particular event and they've only yet attracted an average of 20 participants (I'm sure it will grow as word gets around; parkrun is proving popular in Germany). Today was an average day (i.e. 20 of us took part) and it was a nice riverside route with the added interest of going through one of those wooden, roofed bridges, with an open doorway at either end.

I was disappointed in my time today (didn't look at my watch the whole way round and wasn't going as quickly as I would have liked) but consoled myself with cake at the end.

There were more cakes than people, so I got two and Mick got one too

Ten of us took the 10-minutes-or-so walk, along the riverside cycle/foot path, to the post-run coffee location and there Mick received a much lesser breakfast than the one he thought he had ordered. Ne'er mind. I helped him with his bread and jam. The small bag of gummy bears and a single lettuce leaf were bizarre additions to the plate.

It was knocking on for noon by the time the breakfast gathering broke up, we'd walked back to the car park and we were on our way to a local Lidl. Gosh, what a crush of people we found there! I suppose we don't usually find ourselves in supermarkets during peak times, and with shops being closed on a Sunday in Germany, the middle of Saturday is a popular time to shop.

It was then but a short hop (18km) to Kirchheim, where we arrived to find these signs:

We obeyed what we initially thought the sign means (park facing this sign - i.e. everyone has to be neatly facing the same direction), but that leaves Bertie nose-down. We have therefore decided that later this evening we will re-interpret the sign to mean 'park perpendicular to the edge of the car park, not parallel' and we will turn around to give ourselves a more comfortable sleeping position.

Our walk around the town this afternoon (less than 10 minutes away) showed it to be another attractive and interesting place. We again did a walking tour based on a leaflet from the Tourist Office, from which it became apparent early on (by a mention in reference to every building) that one event had had a major impact on the town's history: The Great Fire of 1690.

A typical street in the town centre

Looking up past the Corn Exchange (one of the survivors of the Great Fire) to the Town Hall

A grand Town Hall (plenty of wedding parties there today).

Having almost been sidetracked by the art gallery, the next possible distraction was avoided by virtue of entrance to the castle being by guided tour only, and tours in English have to be pre-booked. We thus went for a different sort of cultural waylayment on the way back to Bertie, in the form of a large beer/glass of water (Mick/me) at the tables outside of a bar opposite the Town Hall. My water cost only a few cents less than Mick's stein of beer; I suppose beer is generally cheap in Germany.

^{(Today's aside: Considering how common motorhome service points are in mainland Europe, it's impressive that we have managed to spend eight consecutive nights in locations without one. We almost detoured to one on the way here today, before deciding the toilet capacity would last one more day, but we will have to visit one tomorrow.)}

Friday 14 June - Esslingen

Where's Bertie? He remains unmoved, in the Stellplatz at Esslingen.
Weather: Mainly overcast but warm and humid (26 degrees).

Last night, just before dusk, we went for another little stroll and decided that the thing I referred to yesterday as a 'castle(y-thing)' is indeed a castle. Google confirmed that when I did an idle search this morning, and in that process it also told me that there is a tourist office in town.

Thus today, after descending via the 280 steps of covered walkway that leads down the outside of the castle wall...

Part of the covered walkway is visible in this snap

...we didn't waste time with aimless wandering, but went straight to said information point. There we found that they charge for all of their leaflets and brochures (not come across that before), but 50c for the 'Old Town Walking Tour' leaflet in English didn't seem unreasonable, so we bought a copy and off we went.

What an interesting, and attractive, place Esslingen is! It also seems to be a place that likes to make claims to age related records, including:

The oldest half-timbered house in Germany (1267)

The oldest terrace of half-timbered houses in Germany (1328-1331, but done up in 1980 so they now look: a) too new; and b) a bit 'Trigger's Broom' when you look closely at how much woodwork has been replaced).

One of the oldest stone bridges in Germany (1286). We were taken with the very small chapel.

We also saw...

The New Town Hall

The Old Town Hall (which was much more interesting than this front facade, but I didn't take any snaps from other angles), where so many weddings were taking place that the next was going in just as the previous was coming out.

...and visited two of the three churches. We'd been accosted by a chap searching for the entrance door of the most notable one, St Dionysius, located in the Market Square, and were amused to meet him again inside The Church of Our Lady a couple of hours later. The only other obvious tourists we spotted all day were a couple with broad Yorkshire accents.

Just another view of a bit of the town from one of the bridges. The walkway between the two church towersare striking but the English translation in the tour guide was dubious; we think it was added due to stability issues.

With the sights seen, a detour took us back across town to the Post Office, where the woman who served us positively rolled her eyes and tutted that we had done something as outrageous as to queue for stamps. Unfortunately, our language skills weren't up to: a) asking her why it was such an inconvenience to her to have to open her desk drawer and get some stamps out; or b) explain that we couldn't use the stamp machine because it didn't have a price list and we didn't know what value stamps we needed. (Actually, I did ask Google for this information, but by the time I had the answer we were next in the queue to be served, so we opted for the human interaction.)

I'm not sure whether it was the attitude of the Post Office or our distraction with buying exceedingly large cakes that threw us, but either way we arrived back at Bertie to find that we had forgotten to buy the postcards that were supposed to go with the stamps.

We thus headed back down to the town late this afternoon to put right that omission, and were entertained on the way back both by overtaking a bicycle on our way up the hill (we went for the road route rather than the steps this time) and with spectating on some boules matches going on in the park. There were some skilled boules players there today!

I'll finish with a couple more snaps, both on the same theme:

^{(Incidentally: During last summer's German tour I picked up a leaflet about Germany's 'Half Timbered House Road' - a series of cultural driving routes, totalling 3500km. A few days later I got over-excited at finding a paper recycling bank and accidentally discarded it. I wasn't able to find another copy in any other Tourist Office, but did download an electronic copy before the start of this trip. Not long into this morning's walk around Esslingen I began to suspect that we had stumbled upon one of the featured towns, and the e-leaflet on my phone confirmed that was the case. On the one hand I now feel more inclined to visit more of them (maybe starting tomorrow), but I do fear that after a few we may get 'half-timbered out' and find them all a bit samey. We'll see.)}

Thursday 13 June - Esslingen (via Annweiler)

Where's Bertie? He's at a small (3-space) Stellplatz at Esslingen, to the east of Stuttgart (exact location: 48.74721, 9.31044)
Weather: Mainly sunny and increasingly warm, topping out at 25 degrees.

With a couple of errands and a 3.5-hour drive on the agenda today, I resisted the urge to continue to sleep when my alarm went off at 0715 and within minutes was up and clad in Lycra. To my surprise, Mick followed within minutes. I was off out for a run and, after his latest set of injuries, Mick had decided to see how his body reacted to recommencing the same activity.

We didn't go together; I was targetting a Strava Segment and Mick was going to endeavour to take it slowly. Within the hour we were both back at Bertie. I'd done a lap and a half of the ox-bow (including taking the 2.7-mile Strava Segment course record by a margin of 2 minutes - sadly a reflection on how little Strava is used by women rather than a reflection on my speed) and Mick had done a couple of miles, hopefully without aggravating anything too much.

Showers would have been next on the agenda, but with Bertie's water tank guage flashing empty (which actually means somewhere between 0 and 30 litres (we left home with less than half a tank and haven't added any since)), it seemed wise to conserve that water until we found somewhere to top up. That wasn't going to be in Saarlouis, as the service point was removed last year and hasn't yet been replaced.

So, via a quick shopping trip, we headed for the town of Annweiler where a Stellplatz could be reached with only a couple of kilometres added to our journey. Conveniently we reached there at lunchtime, so it became a multi-purpose stop as water was filled, lunch eaten and showers had and waste tanks emptied. It was tempting to stay the night, as we were stopped anyway and as it looked a reasonably interesting place, but Mick's preference was to get the driving done today and spend two nights stationary. (It's probably a good thing we have an appointment in Bad Waldsee next Wednesday, otherwise I suspect that we could have spent a month getting as far as Stuttgart; there are plenty of Stellplätze in interesting looking places along the way.)

A couple of traffic jams held us up for probably only 10 minutes apiece, but by late afternoon we were descending to the River Neckar (along which we toured a little last year, to the east of here), crossing over the bridge in Esslingen, then ascending the other side of the valley. There's not much of a view from this elevated Stellplatz due to trees, but there's a castle(y-thing) almost next to us and a footpath that will take us down to the town. We've had a very brief shufty at the castle(y-thing) today, but have saved the town (and a recce of Saturday's parkrun location, which is why we're here) for tomorrow.

Views from inside the castle(y-thing)

(A complete aside: we started watching 'Free Solo' last night and finished watching over tea tonight. It's probably the best climbing film I've seen, without the over-hyped jeopardy that one tends to get on most TV adventure programmes (although, it's difficult to see how one can over-hype the jeopardy of someone climbing a difficult 3000' sheer wall without a rope). I'd recommend it. It's available on All4 for another few days yet.)