Thursday 29 August - Merzig

Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz at 'Das Bad' in Merzig. It costs €7.50 per night to stay here, including electricity. Water is available for an extra fee. Exact location: 49.44652, 6.62492.
Weather: Some cloud this morning, but gloriously sunny this afternoon. Hot (low thirties).

A man, speaking a language that did not sound European, decided that Wadern's motorhome Stellplatz was an appropriate place to carry on a phone conversation at 12.45 this morning. That may have been because he was availing himself of the free internet, but I wasn't awfully amused at his lack of volume control.

Once he'd done his chatting all became peaceful until 6.30am when a work crew arrived with a JCB and started removing the curbstones in the Stellplatz. Yes, really. In a place designed for people in motorhomes to sleep, they decided this was an appropriate time of day to clank, bang and shout instructions.

By 8am my opinion of Wadern was low, yet we stirred ourselves to walk into the town, albeit without expectation of finding anything interesting. With low expectations, we weren't disappointed and when our intended route to the Schloss, just outside the town, was thwarted by the lack of a footpath we decided we'd seen enough.

Straight to Merzig, or a one-night stop somewhere en-route? We opted for the former.

The Stellplatz here in Merzig is kept a secret, hidden away without a single sign pointing towards it (an unsual state of affairs), but the SatNav located it for us. However, we found it to be behind a barrier (again, very unusual in Germany), with no signage as to how to gain access.

No great investigative work was needed. There's only one building immediately nearby and that's the swimming pool/spa, so we presented ourselves at their reception.

"Sprechen sie Englisch?" we asked.

"Nein" came the blunt response. It didn't occur to me until later that, being so close to France I should have tried that language as the next option, so the entire transaction had to be carried out in German.

Had this occurred at the beginning of last year's trip, we would have struggled. However, our German vocabulary has come along nicely this year (purely from absorption, not from structured learning), so we came away triumphantly clutching a set of keys and a receipt. We'll be keeping that receipt safe, because they *really* don't want you to drive off with the keys - there's a €50 deposit on them. Yep, you read that right, we had to hand over €50 against a €7.50/night stay. Fortunately someone had mentioned this in their online review so we had been pre-warned.

As for Merzig (where there are to be found branches of Woolworth and C&A!), the town centre is functional, with only a small handful of slightly-eyecatching buildings. I'd noticed on the drive over here that the places through which we were passing didn't have a German look about them, and Merzig is no different, being so close to both the French (5km) and Luxembourg (25km) borders. French and Luxembourish number plates are plentiful on the roads here.

With only four days left in this trip, we'd likely move on tomorrow, to split the journey home into more even sections, but our purpose here is our final German parkrun on Saturday, so we'll be sticking around tomorrow.

Only four days left! Where did the summer go? And how am I going to cope with the British autumn after three months of shorts and t-shirts?

There's a marina just along the river from the Stellplatz, and a little chapel up on that hillside opposite.

Tuesday and Wednesday 28 & 29 August - Altenglan and Wadern (via Peterberg, by Braunshausen)

Where's Bertie? He's in a free Stellplatz in the town of Wadern, where water and elctricity are available for a fee but wifi is free (exact location 49.54266, 6.89211). Yesterday he spent a fourth night in Altenglan.
Weather: Yesterday: hot gloriously sunny until late afternoon when clouds bubbled up for a time. Today: an overcast morning, gradually clearing, but hot all day (low thirties again).

Although there was little to see or do in the immediate area of Altenglan, it was a nice spot to spend a few days lazing around. Once the weekend was over, few vehicles used the car park just along from the motorhome Stellplatz and thus only a handful of vehicles passed Bertie each day. The views were almost entirely of woodland and meadows and we had a tree under which to seek shade. The only thing marring the location was the external compressor unit (presumably related to refrigeration) at the Chinese restaurant (currently closed for the owner's annual holiday) just the other side of the railway track. It was so peaceful every time it stopped, but it started up regularly. At least we're not such light sleepers that it disturbed us at night.

As pleasant as our stay in Altenglan had been, it was time to move on. We'd been seeing and greeting the same locals, some multiple times per day, and it was getting to the point where it was beginning to feel rude that we didn't know each others' names!

Thus after a final run along the old railway track this morning, a relatively long (by our standards) drive of 50km was taken to a car park on a hill just outside of Braunshausen. The attraction there was a 1km-long Sommerrodelbahn (summer bobsleigh track). I haven't been on one of those since 2014 and fancied a ride.

Mick humoured me and we bought two rides apiece. My theory from 5 years ago was that you need the first run to get to know the track, then the second run to maximise speed. Today I employed a slightly different theory: it must be safe to go down at full pelt, without braking everywhere that signs advise slowing, so that's what I did.

Going up! On this track you get hauled up to the top in your sled, before riding it back down. Obviously, the upward leg is straight. The downward leg (which I couldn't photograph) is big on the wiggles.

I knew that Mick had ascended just behind me, but when I got out at the bottom I seemed to wait an age for him to appear.

Here he comes!

He had slowed for every turn and was surprised by my kamikaze approach. With a school outing having arrived during our first ride, we wasted no time in going straight in for the second, before a queue developed. Mick adopted the 'no braking' approach this time and finished just behind me.

All good fun, but two rides was enough; the joins in the stainless steel tracks come every few feet and don't half chatter your teeth!

The adjacent car park would have been a perfectly nice place to while away the afternoon and evening, but after a bit of dithering we opted to move on, to Wadern. The photos I'd seen of the Stellplatz here didn't make it look very nice and the reality is slightly worse. It's not going to go down anywhere in the top half of the 'attractiveness of places we've stayed this trip' table*. My immediate impression is that at least three of the other four vans here are full-timers who may have taken root.

Graffiti of various standards on the community hall behind which we are parked. On the other side of us is a bus parking area, approached through a petrol station and across the road from that is a multi-storey car park of a design that was probably the height of modern design when it was built.

Hopefully it will be fine for the purposes of sleeping and there may be stuff of interest nearby - but that's something we won't find out until tomorrow.

^{(*For the avoidance of doubt, we don't actually rate the places we stay and I'm not quite sad data obsessed enough to have such a table.)}

Slightly random snap of the day:


Cigarette vending machines are a common sight on German streets, sometimes even to be found on entirely residential streets. I couldn't help but think that the arrangement photographed here, with the kids' machines right under the tobacco one, would make youngsters look forward to the day when they could use the adult version. Smoking certainly seems more popular here than it is in the UK, including amongst teenagers. We walked past a school at break time one day last week and an incredible number of students were outside the gates, puffing away.

Monday 26 August - Altenglan (via Kusel and Burg Lichtenberg)

Where's Bertie? After visiting a couple of other Stellplätze today, he's back in the same spot in Altenglan.
Weather: Gloriously sunny except for a spell late afternoon when clouds bubbled up and rumbles of thunder were heard. Hot (low thirties).

Whilst we want to spend a couple more days loitering in this area, the next nearest Stellplatz is only 6.5km along the road, in the town of Kusel, so that's where we headed this morning.

It wasn't a successful visit. Incorrect positions info in Park4Night, caused us to drive narrow town centre streets until I called a halt at a point where the next turn looked like retreat would be difficult if we couldn't proceed. An on-foot recce found no hint of a parking area. Digging out our 5-years-out-of-date Bord Atlas (German Stellplätze directory) I found the correct location and directed us back through narrow, cobbled streets only to find it closed due to being occupied by a fairground. It's incredible that we've got this far through August before having this issue; two years ago we were being thwarted by fairgrounds on a daily basis.

With thoughts of looking around Kusel abandoned, I suggested we may as well go on another 4.5km to the castle at Lichtenberg.

It was moments before we arrived that I pointed out that it's Monday and thus it was likely everything would be closed. Initially indications didn't look good:

Bertie, all alone in the bus/motorhome parking area

First view of the castle - one of the largest in Germany and dating from 1200

It turns out that you can wander inside the castle walls at any time, where you'll find located a large Youth Hostel, three museums (open on Mondays!), a restaurant (closed on Mondays) and a tower, amongst the historic remains. We had a good shufty around and (of course!) climbed the tower...

Mick admiring the views

...for good views of the surrounding countryside:

Having decided against any museum visits, it didn't take us awfully long to look around, after which the only things we could see to do in the immediate area were to go for a walk or to sit around in a tarmac car park with little shade. We weren't in the market for any significant walking (rest day today after yesterday's long runs) and if we were going to loiter somewhere then the surroundings at Altenglan are much nicer for the purpose. So, back we came.

Our neighbours set out on a bike ride just before we left this morning and got back shortly after we returned. I'm sure when they saw us sitting out on our deckchairs they must have assumed we'd been in that position all day. Soon after their return, they left, leaving Bertie currently all on his lonesome.

Worthy of Fountain of the Day? I'm not sure.

Sunday 25 August - Altenglan

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Stellplatz in Altenglan.
Weather: Gloriously sunny and hot (29 degrees).

I'm struggling to think of a day on tour when we've spent so much of it sitting around. We're experts in sitting around when at home, but it's a rarity when we're away.

We've not been entirely without activity, having started the day with a run (9 miles for Mick, 12.7 for me (I miscalculated a little on my intended 12-miler)). It was a lovely cool start (the forecast said 18 degrees but it felt cooler), but by 10am it was heating up fast.

Snaps taken mid-run

The benefit of the heat was that I knew that the hand-washing I did at lunchtime would dry. Using the drying rack that hangs through an open window, we were then forced to stay in (that's my excuse anyway!) - or to sit out on our deckchairs, initially under the shade of the adjacent tree, then in the shade of Bertie.

Between 10am and 2pm we had plenty of passing pedal-powered-train-carriage-thingies. I had assumed yesterday that the rideable route would only extend 4 or 5 miles down the disused branchline, but noted today that almost everyone had coolboxes and bags on the back of their carriages and it thus looked like they were out for the day. Curiosity got the better of me and I turned to the internet for some answers. It turns out that the ride is 25 miles long and the cheapest of the pedal-carriages (carrying up to 4 people) costs €39/49 (mid-week/weekend) per day to rent. As it's a single track, all of the traffic goes in one direction only and we'd hypothesised yesterday as to how the logistics work. Today we noted that the traffic was flowing the opposite way and the website confirmed that on odd days of the month you ride from, and on even days to, Altenglan (we're sitting about 200m from the end of the line). There are various places you can stop en-route (how does that work? Sidings?) - hence the picnics.

Other than keeping abreast of the cricket score via the BBC Sports App (a more modern version of when I used to 'watch' snooker via teletext), that has been the extent of our day.

Saturday 24 August - Altenglan

Where's Bertie? He's in a 4-vehicle Stellplatz on the edge of the small settlement of Altenglan. It costs €5 per night to stay here (honesty box). Electricity and water are available at extra cost. Exact location: 49.54977, 7.46435.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and hot.

Over 33,000 people currently serve in the RAF and within moments of Mick chatting to one of them (a chap also called Mick, but who I'll call Michael) at this morning's parkrun they had established that Michael's current colleague at Ramstein previously served with Mick on CXX Squadron at Kinloss. By lunchtime Mick had received a message from that ex-colleague and we're due to meet on Tuesday. Small world, eh?

Photos taken from Seewoog parkrun's Facebook page. I'd love to know what I'd just said to Mick when the first one was taken and what he'd said to me before the second one

As for the parkrun, it was good! Whilst it may not quite be the hilliest course in Germany (I think I said a couple of days ago: per my measurements, Kräherwald just pips it), I couldn't dispute today's slightly different assertion: that it is the hardest. I finished seconds ahead of Mick, who beat me convincingly on age grading. (Meanwhile, the other Michael set a new course age-grading record, and I took my hat off to the woman who finished in a speedy time whilst pushing a double buggy - she didn't just have hills to contend with, but soft and uneven gravel on some of the tracks.)

It was nearly noon by the time we left, by which time, in spite of cake brought by one of the runners, I was hungry enough to feel a raid on the fridge was in order. However, I was also aware that it's a sunny Saturday and that our chosen destination for today was a Stellplatz with only 4 spaces. To maximise the chances of there being a space free (and I wasn't optimistic), we paused neither to wash nor to eat, but came straight here.

We arrived to find just two other vans*. The lack of busyness was explained a couple of hours later when we went for a look around and found that there is nothing nearby to attract the masses. We discovered three supermarkets, one restaurant (currently closed for the owner's holiday) and plenty of residential streets.

We'd read before arrival that the railway line that runs alongside the Stellplatz is disused.

What the Stellplatz does have, however, is nice surroundings, with views of lumpy terrain, meadows and woodland. Oh, and a passing riverside cycle route, which is what drew us here, for running purposes.

The railway line isn't quite disused, but its pedal-powered carriages are good fun to watch as they pass!

It didn't take me long to knock up the second sock of this (not quite matching) pair, but I'm now going to rip back the first one, made earlier in the summer, because it's a bit on the snug side.

^{(*We left the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg (where school holidays will continue until 11 September) and entered Rhineland-Palatinate last week and I think the school holidays have already finished here. However, I'm not convinced that makes a significant difference to the number of motorhomes in the sorts of Stellplatz we usually frequent. Our neighbours are usually retirees, not families. Of the two other vans here, one was parked by us in Bad Dürkheim - it was their dog we recognised first. They recognised us, probably because British vans are a rarity - I don't think we've seen many more than half a dozen other GB-plated vans in our 11 weeks to date. I don't understand why Germany isn't more popular amongst our countryfolk.)}

Friday 23 August - Ramstein-Miesenbach

Where's Bertie? He's back in the same spot as he was last night, in the Stellplatz just outside the Ramstein USAF base.
Weather: Gloriously sunny and warm.

I may have been scathing of this Stellplatz yesterday, but it did exhibit one point of great merit overnight: it was peaceful indeed. A good night's sleep was had.

I opened the blinds this morning to the suprising sight of another motorhome next to us. No idea when they arrived!

Over breakfast I searched at length to find anything within a 10-mile radius that looked worth travelling to see. I came up with nothing. That gave us a day to kill and given the choice between sitting here or returning to Seewoog (the lake we were at yesterday), there was no contest - to Seewoog we went.

Always good to get your ducks in a row...

A day of pottering, knitting, walking and people-watching ensued, accompanied by a smattering of American accents from those around us. Most of the signs around here (including some road signs) are bi-lingual as well, which feels odd after our experience everywhere else in Germany.

Another view of the lake

As the parking area at Seewoog started getting busy at around 5pm, we took it as our cue to leave. We could have tried out a spot to the north of Seewoog for the night, but working on the principle of 'better the devil you know', we returned to Ramstein, arriving half an hour too late to enjoy the stream of national anthems being played over the tannoy at the air base next door (we assume it's a nightly ritual).

A sign showing the scheme of improvements being made to the recreational facilities at Seewoog. Note that No. 8 is the creation of 4 motorhome parking places. Pity they haven't got round to that bit of the programme yet.

As we've done so little today, I'll give an update on a couple of things Bertie-related:

1) Remember the issue with the bed making a noise when we were driving? The noise that went away for one journey only, and that was the journey when the Hymer technician was on a test-drive with us? I'll just go back a bit further in the history of this problem: it was a constant issue for the first two years we owned Bertie, then in January this year, when yet more adjustments were carried out on the bed, it stopped. It stayed stopped until May, when it suddenly reappeared and worse than before. It annoyed us on every journey until a week or two after its brief and mysterious disappearance on the day of our visit to the Hymer workshop. Being  familiar with the workings of Bertie's bed mechanism, I wracked my brains to try to decide what was causing it and how it could have been silent for four months before returning. I decided the likely culprit was movement of the retracting spindle that forms part of the release mechanism against the ledge upon which it sits when stowed. The only explanation I could see for its period of silence was that it had been greased, but the grease had worn off. I eventually stirred myself to get the WD40 out and spray the relevant bits of the mechanism. And what do you know? The noise went away! It's been quiet for weeks now. What a relief!

This is Bertie's living room. The bed is stowed against the roof, above the cab seats. The light-coloured panel in the middle of the front of the bed is a lever that is pulled foward from the bottom to release the retracting pins to allow the bed to be lowered.

This is Bertie's bedroom, with the bed dropped down for use. Blimey, even got matching bedding on it at the moment! 

2) Remember the flooded garage we had on the third night of this trip? After that incident we put pieces of kitchen towel in various places around the garage, to try to narrow down where the water was coming in (i.e. which of them would get wet after rain) and on many occasions I've stuck my head into the garage (via the internal door) during rain to check for ingress. We've had a lot of heavy rain this summer (in our experience to date, it seldom rains for long in Germany in summer, but when it does, it pours, often accompanied by thunder) and not once have we had a drop more water in the garage. Mick came up with the theory that would appear to explain how this can be: when the ingress happened we were parked on a marked slope with Bertie's rear driver's side tyre downmost. His garage door on that side only secures with one lock in the middle (the other door is bigger and has a lock top and bottom). Being parked at such an angle applies tortional forces to Bertie's body which must have been enough to twist the body away from the top of the door. Also because of the angle and the position of the solar panel, water would have been cascading off his roof in that corner, thus channelling it into any gap between the door and its seal. We can only confirm this for certain by continuing to stick a head in the boot when it rains heavily if we find ourselves parked at a similar angle, but for now it doesn't seem to be a worrysome problem.

Thursday 22 August - Ramstein

Where's Bertie? He's in a free (but no-facilities) Stellplatz just outside the perimeter fence of Ramstein US Air Force base. Exact location: 49.44629, 7.57129.
Weather: Gloriously sunny and warm.

Bertie started this morning. A big 'Yay!' for Bertie!

That was a good start to the day. Things then went downhill when, after getting away early, specifically so that I could do laundry, we had a laundrette failure. The first such establishment lay only about 20 metres off our route and we didn't find anywhere obvious to park nearby. I'm sure that a small amount of effort would have yielded somewhere, but as there were two other laundrettes near our route, we continued onwards. It turned out that both of the others (both listed on Google Maps, both with reviews, none of which mentioned this one key feature) were sited inside of US Air Force bases.

We're not desperate for anything (in fact it's possible we could get home without doing more than the odd rinse of running gear*) so after a bit of dithering we continued onwards to Seewoog, a small lake just to the north of Ramstein.

My purpose there was a running recce of the parkrun course, having been told last weekend, by a chap involved in setting up the course, that it's the hilliest in the whole of Germany. I dispute that claim - I did 310' of ascent today, versus 330' at Kräherwald in Stuttgart. The difference here is that all of the ascent comes in the first half of the course.

Mick, nursing his thigh niggle, walked the course** whilst I ran it and once I was done I walked back to meet him, rather than just sitting around waiting.

The start is on the side of the lake...

...goes across arable land...

...but mainly runs through woods.

We had hoped to be able to spend a couple of nights at Seewoog, but it wasn't clear what area was covered by a nearby 'no stopping 2230 - 0800' sign, so we opted to move the short distance to this official motorhome Stellplatz by Ramstein.

Not representative of the norm for German motorhome parking places!

It has to be the most inexplicable German Stellplatz we've come across to date. It's a medium-sized car park (it would probably fit 50 vehicles) with woodland on three sides. So far, so good. The oddness comes in its wasteland appearance (normal in Spain and Portugal, not in Germany) and the fact that other than a swimming pool complex across the road, there doesn't appear to be anything to see or do in the immediate vicinity, other than to walk around the perimeter of the air force base. I suppose Ramstein-Miesenbach is within walking distance, so maybe we should have ventured there to confirm our assessment, although nothing on the map suggests its worth a visit. It's no surprise that we are the only vehicle here.

Perimeter fence of the US Air Force base on the right, woods on the left. Not the most inspiring walking, although made more interesting in places by a *huge* building project going on and glimpses of action on the American Football pitch at the on-base High School.

(*It's a bit like running out of food. When our supplies are low, it's never a case that we're about to starve, it's just that without a visit to a shop subsequent meals would involve non-standard food combinations. Without doing laundry we're not about to run out of clothes, nor be forced to wear things that are dirtier than usual - we just won't have available to us the items that we choose to wear the most.
**Since last week's lost-in-the-woods incident Mick has installed ViewRanger on his phone. I marked out the parkrun route for him AND he took his reading glasses with him, so he knew where he was at all times.)