Rain stops play

England in August, with the correct helping of rain which has halted todays driving and viewing of Dartmoor.  So special extra blogging from the campsite ;-)

Tis fantastic holidaying in this country!  We've been in Dorset and Devon for 4 days now.  Today it is raining... lots.  It's wet everywhere and we tried to sightsee a bit but got all moist so gave up.  Now we're camped near Tavistock in the West of Dartmoor, and it's still raining!

But our world is happy, and I'm looking forward to a DVD or two while Fran does some painting - I'll attach a picture of the still life and then we'll see how it turns out...  Shall I go for Men in Black II, Time Bandits or Snatch?  I'm erring towards Snatch!

Just noticed a small technical glitch in that I'm using my laptop what doesn't have a card reader so there is no way to get photos to web.  If we get on Frans laptop at some point I may upload some piccies later.  Don't hold your breath.

Home now, for good?

Back in Blighty today after a very uneventful ferry trip sur la Manche.  So it's back to reality and the admin of life such as sorting out the bank and other useful things like emptying and cleaning the van.

The Le Mans museum and track visit was followed by a couple of leisurely days in Chartres, on the Seine and in La Touquet.  It did rain as we entered English waters this morning, so we felt welcomed home.  It's good to be home, but would love to get back out there and do it all over again.  Tired now, but still have a buzz from so many sights and scenes.  We'll be putting together some sort of concise(ish) record of the last 3 months in the next few weeks to bore or enthrall anyone who shows the remotest interest.  So look forward to that..

Next trip?  There should be a couple of weeks somewhere at the end of August, possibly Devon, and day trips in between.  But nothing exciting again for a a while.  It's job hunting now ;-(

Champagne et Chateau

A day off in Verdun, so plenty of reading done by all.

We left Verdun after the fireworks feu d'artifice of Bastille day and passed by the WWI monument, which is really quite something.  I saw a gravestone number 12,557 so I shudder to think how many men it truly commemorates.

In the Champagne region you have to do champagne, and in the Loire you have to do Chateau, so we've tried to do both in the last few days.

We stayed overnight in the driveway of a small champagne producer, and bought a bottle of rose bubbly for the trouble.  This was our view from the van.

And the we moved on to the Loire and have seen more than a few Chateau, some more closely than others.  Actually, we've been into 2 and probably seen another 5 or 6...  Not enough for Fran, so we have promised ourselves we will come back to this area in the future

To the chateau.  Fontainbleu first, and lots of Napoleanic details - very big building and some gardens.  Actually, most of the grounds are public access for free, which is quite refreshing!  Spent a couple of hours going round the exhibition inside, which I felt gave more than enough access to the royal apartments etc.  Quite tired / bored by the end of this...

Stopped over in Jargeau, on the river and took a wander into town for a bite in the evening, and happened apon the "Grand Table" event.  This is where loads of tressles are arranged through the main streets and the restauants and bars put on food for modest charges and everyone comes and eats, from what seems miles around.  Very sociable, very french and very weird!  We had a drink and went back to the campsite for grub ;-)

Chambord next, with it's impressive architecture and big gardens.  I refused to go inside, but instead took a 2.5km stroll around the canal in the garden, with Fran waiting in the shade for my return!  Again, this was free access and we only paid to park the van here.  By not going in we missed out on the famous double helix staircase, boohoo.

Spent the night in the centre of Blois, which allowed us the chance to visit the chateau in late afternoon (including sword fighting), grab some food in the town (pizza on a bruschetta!) and then go back for Son et Lumierre after dark.  This was ok, but was basically a storyboard of french history with french narration, so I wasn't really able to translate quick or accurately enough for Fran.  I struggled myself although we had the advantage of having met most of the story in the afternnon tour of the chateau.  Some of the light show was impressive though.

This morning was a slow start with a walk around Blois, before carrying on past other chateau towards Tours.  Caught glimpses of Cheverny and Chenonceau, but no visits this time.  Then up to Le Mans and took in part of the circuit.  The plan is to return to the race track tomorrow and "do" the museum.

Bastille day, en france

We thought we'd set ourselves up so that we didn't have to do anything today, since it's Bastille Day and only the french understand how that affects life, shops and general movement

So we're in the campsite until tomorrow, we ordered bagette from the bar and we're not moving all day.  It's back to baking hot, so that's not a bad idea, and the camp spot is right by a lake under a tree so we have the best of all worlds.  A good breeze is blowing through too.

Yesterday afternoon, post blogging, we walked into Verdun to have a look and try and work out what happens today.  It's a good little town with the river Meuse running through and some little pedestrian streets.  Plus the tourist office who inform us that the celebrations today (14th) will be a large feu d'artifice (may have got that wrong), but it's a fireworks display that starts at 2300!

Reading the information boards it seems there is a military celebration at 1100 and the fireworks at 2300.  This will be followed from 2330 until 0300 by a big party.  So, if we can stay awake we will go take a look later on.

Tomorrow the plan is to have a look at some war memorials before heading to champagne country, so fran can enjoy a tipple?

Au revoir deutchland

Bienvenue en Francais, encore.  We're back in France having spent the last few days in germany.  And the satnav is back up and running so me and the wife are still talking to each other.

We spent a couple of days in the Black Forest (Schwartzwald) area looking for the nice bits, since we were told there aren't any!  Not true, we found lots of bits we really liked, some fantastic roads, great scenery and good food.  Plus football which made the germans blush a bit.  They were quite quiet during the Spain game...

Then Stuttgart, or rather Porsche; Stuttgart. 

A couple of hours at the new Porsche museum which competes with the Mercedes one down the road, which in my view is no competition.  Both of us really enjoyed it and saw some rather special motor cars.

Had a night sharing the van with loads of flies, and became quite blood thirsty in thier destruction.  At least they didn't bite.

Then to Darmstadt, to meet and stay with Anya and Noel.  We had a great couple of days trying to take things easy in 37 degrees and no breeze.  Took a stroll around a dog sanctuary and walked a couple of the inmates.  And managed to catch both finals of the football - Anya and Noel don't have a telly, so we had to go and watch both matches in Anya's mum's house, 5km away, which they're trying to sell.  All told, being the avid footie fan I am, I think the best team won.  If Netherlands had got it hanging on with however many yellow cards and only losing 1 player, then it would have been rough justice.  Well done Spain.

Anyway, with our hosts off to work in the morning, we left Darmstadt and headed back towards France.  The idea was originally to head for Paris, but we may have binned that since the heat is unbearable and actually we can get to Paris very easily from Watford any time.  So we sort of found ourselves back in France having driven further than we thought, and stayed in Pont-a-Mousson on the river bank last night for €7.

I took a run at 7.30 this morning to miss the heat and now we have pottered the short distance up to Verdun.  Checked in to a campsite for a couple of days, mainly because we're not sure how mad / quiet things get tomorrow (Bastille Day), and this site is quite near the town centre so we can go and join in the fun?  It's got a good pool too, so if the weather holds then we'll enjoy that too.  Forecast is for heavy rain tomorrow though, which will be a right shame, given the last few days.

SatNav kaput!

Today was a day of seeing places we'd never heard of and having to resort to paper cartography.

Yesterday we flew through Liechtenstein, buying lunch in a very upmarket Co-op.  Then ate lunch half way up a hill with a beautiful view of Switzerland / Germany / Liechtenstein.  Then found a campsite on Lake Constance, again with a fantastic view.  And went for a swim, in the pool, not the lake - my first swim in probably 5+ years ago!

Enjoyed the footie (Netherlands vs Uruaguay) in the sort of campsite bar, with the germans.  Quite surreal, since it was almost exam conditions - very quiet and lots of analysis.  Most were supporting the dutch, which was nice to see, but a couple really wanted Uruaguay to go through, since I guess they think it might make an easier final for them?  They've still got to get there themselves.

Today, the things we've never heard of.  Stein-am-Rhein, which is a really nice little medieval town on the Rhine with little cobbled streets and frescos on the buildings.

Then we went to the Rhinefalls, which is where the Rhine goes over a waterfall.  Call me stupid, but I didn't know it did that!  Anyway, had a good couple of hours wandering around the river and viewpoints - a bit like Niagara, but on a much smaller scale.  Good fun.

Tried the Nordic walking poles around the waterfalls and I think they went down well - I had a go too and I reckon they're pretty useful.

Then the satnav died, or rather got itself in a loop where it just kept rebooting...  So some use of the GPS on my phone coupled with the really high scale europe map and we managed to navigate into the Schwartzwald (Black Forest).  And found some maps in a supermarket after a few attempts.  Used the maps to get to the campsite, and then the internet to diagnose the satnav.  A full factory reset later and fingers crossed (not tested yet) it's good to go.  Fran really didn't like the hobsons choice of driving the van, or navigating!  So happy families should be resumed.

Tonight we're making a point of watching the football in company of the germans, since we sort of missed it a bit in Berlin, and the stakes weren't so high.  Looking forward to trying to understand the slightly odd mentality they seem to have over the football.  Will update if we work it out.

Sightseeing frenzy? Certainly Churchtastic

We're still going but, phew, it's been a bit warm the last few days!  What have we been up to?  Having conciously sort of slowed down...,  for some reason it seems that the last few days have been the most intensive sightseeing days so far.  Munich and Salzburg in quick succession kind of knocked it out of us so we had a nice day off yesterday in the busiest campsite of the trip (so far).  We're beginning to hit high season.   I say "day off", which was the plan, but I certainly feel the effects of touch rugby and other games with odd shaped balls, plus a run that somehow took in a 350m climb!  The aching bones of my old body noticed the abuse as we strolled around Innsbruck this morning.

Salzburg is pretty, with a river.  And we went up to the castle on the funicular and did the tour and museum bits - Fran felt spoiled because she implies I don't let her do the touristy things very often, especially if we have to pay!  More churches than you can shake a stick at.

We camped under the Bayern Munich Stadium (Allianz Arena) on Friday night and watched it change colour every 1/2 hour from 10pm, until 1130 when it went back to white and blue and repeated the sequence.  It's pretty impressive when you're up close.

White with blue text, red with white text, blue with white text, then repeat...  all night.  With the corresponding glow in the van.

Park and Ride into Munich, which has a pretty Central area - to be fair most places we've been have pretty bits and they started to blur a while back!  Munich has a very impressive Rathaus in the square, and I climbed up St Peters tower and took some panorama shots of all the spires and sticky uppy bits in the city.  Lunch was beer and a slab of pork roast from the market...  Also had a look at some churches.

We popped in to what is touted as Germany's biggest Camper and Caravan Centre.  It certainly isn't small.  Had a look at a few options, but decided Rufus is all we could want for now :-)  And we couldn't afford the prices they were selling at!  Bought some plastic glasses for all the prickled water we seem to have acquired a taste for.

Then we sort of headed for Innsbruck and found ourselves at the busy campsite with yappy dog and kids and all sorts of distractions that we love so much.  So we thought we'd stay an extra day, as you do.  Made friends with an Irish couple and wiled away a few hours recounting travel tales and passing on suggested places to go.


Innsbruck this morning was pleasant, although the central bit is really quite small and we'd done with it in just over an hour.  We parked really close to the centre, just over the river and on returning were slightly perterbed to find the bridge closed to traffic, police everywhere and our bit of road shut too.  It turned out to be less than sinister, and in fact it was for a bike race (I didn't see Dad in the peleton).  First time I've caught a full on bike race and it's quite impressive, although I don't think the standard was fully out of the top drawer.
Update:  Just been surfing and it was Stage 2 of the Tour of Austria (173.9km).  Dad only did 48miles today, so he wasn't part of the pack. 

We had some rain last night which was refreshing, and nearly broke our awning ;-o but back to 30+ degrees again now.  Came up over the mountains through St Anton this afternoon and broke back into sunshine and are now camped up happily reading, sunbathing, shaving and blogging!

Where next?  We were going to do a couple of mountain passes and go to Italy, but we feel we've seen enough mountains and 12% gradients for a while.  So we're heading into Lichtenstein (you have to if you're as close as we are) and then Switzerland to spend some left over CHF.  Then the black forest for gateau.  Talk soon.

And here's a rockin' sheep for all those who liked the idea of a rockin' moose.  Which, by the way, you can get in most IKEA's - we should know, we've been in a few round europe now!

 

Back to reality?

Last time I wrote, we were in Budapest.  We're now back in Germany, albeit only just, having spent the last few days in Austria.  I have actually paid €10 for a motorway pass that lasts 10 days so we can gad about a bit quicker here, which so far seems to be worthwhile since we've covered a few miles.  Real problems getting LPG here though, so ran out on our long drive yesterday and had to resort to real petrol - did find some today at the extortionate price of €0,92 per litre (we have been paying half that!).

We spent a couple of really good days in and around Vienna enjoying the sights and sounds and trams.  We did share the campsite with something like 100 18-30 holidayers, mostly aussie's - thankfully they weren't too bad, and we are definitely feeling old because they were soooo young!

Vienna is lovely, although we kept finding ourselves back in Stephansplatz, the central square!  It seems to be a well defined mix of modern and old, quite well merged with business and tourism blending happily.  Oh, and I bumped into (almost literally) a naked, male, rollerblader while out jogging - quite shocking and certainly not pleasing.  All the girly ones were wearing clothes!

We also tried to go and see Hallstatt, which is a pretty little lakeside town, but we argued with the parking man over €7, so didn't bother looking too closely - we did see it across the lake and from the van in a drive-by.

Today we've done a big loop and gone over the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse, which you pay a hefty fee to drive, but it's a beautiful road up over the Eastern Alps and there's a big glacier to see, plus Marmots and Ibex.  I saw both, but fran missed the Ibex because her little legs didn't want to climb the hill, fair enough.

Salzburg tomorrow, then on to Munich, before returning to Austria for Innsbruck in a few days time.

Blogger's Block

Well it's been a long time....... I've been suffereing from blogger's block! I guess some of you will find this hard to believe but it is true. Mark has done such a good job of keeping you up to date with what has been going, on it hasn't seemed like there has been much left for me to say. This afternoon coming back on the tram I got thinking and here is the result of my musing.

Since I wrote last we have visited some amazing places. The parts that stick out the most are the different ways for remembering those who died in the holocaust, especially the Jews. In Berlin we walked through the memorial which is made up of nearly 3000 huge stones in straight lines. The stones vary in height. As you walk through them there are places where you can see your surroundings and there are places where you can see nothing but the stones on either side and the path before and behind you. The stones are all dark grey and the effect is very interesting. There was also a very thought provoking exhibition below the square.

Next we went to Auschwitz Birkenau. Probably the one most memorable place of all on our travels. We were there on a wet afternoon which somehow seemed right. We decided to take part in an English tour, where our guide was a young lady from the Czech Republic. She took us to some of the many bulildings that are open on the ex-military camp. Some of the buildilngs are full of huge piles of the possessions of those who perished at Birkenau. Quite overwhelming. In one of the buildings there is one single gravestone to honour all those who died and whose bodies lie in unmarked graves. We then took the bus to Birkenau where the size is what really strikes you. It took us 15 minutes to walk through the camp to get to where the remains of the gas chambers are. There is now a memorial with an inscription written in 20 different languages - FOR EVER LET THIS PLACE BE A CRY OF DESPAIR AND A WARNING TO HUMANITY, WHERE THE NAZIS MURDERED ABOUT ONE AND A HALF MILLION MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN, MAINLY JEWS FROM VARIOUS COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU 1940-1945.I would say that the whole camp is now being used as a memorial to what happened there.
The most beautiful monument from our trip so far was tucked away behind the synagogue in Budapest. It is called the Tree of life and it is made of granite and steel in the shape of a weeping willow. Many of the leaves are inscribed with the names of individuals and families who died or disappeared in the war. On a sunny day, it was a really beautiful and fitting way to help others, like me, to remember. So a very thoughtful trip so far with many interesting places visited and enjoyed and some great people met along the way!

Buda or Pest?

Fran thinks I'm a pest, so we're staying on the Pest side of the city.  Had a fun few hours trolling round beautiful sunshine on the underground, and now back to more free wifi, so blog ahoy!

We think we've got it good with this little tour and lack of work commitment, but today we've met a couple from NZ who are doing the same thing for 6 months.  And, it's the second year they're doing it!  How about 6 months a year cruising Europe and six months at home on the North Island?  Fair play though, they're retired so have earned it - we can aspire.  They've  bought thier swiss registered (monster) camper van and just lay it up when they go "home".

Our day 1 jaunt in Budapest...  There's a tourist attraction called the "Memento Park", which is reputedly a collection of gathered communist statuary, put together in a sort of park.  OK we thought, we'll give that a go.  Metro, tram and loooonnngggg bus ride later we get to this place (outside the city limits!), took one look, decided to give it a miss, and returned to the real tourist bits of the city.  Can't win em all ;-(

Arrived back in civilisation, and happened to pass by the EDS office that I came to a couple or three years ago - now rebranded HP sauce or something, but still spotted it.

Crossed the chain bridge, remembering that the lions on one side have tongues while the other side don't.  Watched a boat crane very gingerly navigating the highest point under the bridge and looking at the crew faces it was a tight thing (all except the guy on deck who could hardly have been more amused!).

Had a wander to St Stevens Basilica, and then a metro to the Heroes Square, then have come back for dinner at the "Bondi Bar".  Wish us health.  Castle and other attractions to follow on the morrow.

Update - food, pudding, beer and coke all good.  And for less than £10 all in.

Brain freeze!

Q: How do you cross a swollen river?

A:  With difficulty.  We've just taken a 60km detour to cross a bridge, because the Blue Danube is flowing very brown and a bit higher than the norm.

And we're now camped within about 50 feet of it!  On it's way back down now, but apparently the townwe're in was cut off for 5 days within the last fortnight!  Surprisingly, loads of mossies again tonight, so expect tales of woe and anti-hystamine next time...  Free internet though, so ups and downs!

All of which means, for you geographers out there, that yes we are now in the land of the Magyar (Hungary), having crossed Slovakia from Poland today.  We had some great weather and passed through / around the High Tatras mountains.  Sad to leave Poland behind actually, but I'm sure we'll come back for a better look at the middle and top bits - we have only touched the edge really.

We've had some nasty weather, which I think has plagued this region for a couple of months, so todays blue skies and 25+ degrees was very welcome.  It made the drive through the mainly green forests and hills of Slovakia very pleasant indeed - Fran didn't even fall asleep today.  The central bit we drove through is very pretty, a bit like Wales I decided, but bigger!

Back to Krakow briefly and a couple of snaps for you:

a) The Cathedral in the Wawel.

b) The Dragon on a break from the grotto, breathing fire - which he seems to do about every 1/2 hour for 5 seconds, so catching it was pretty impressive, I think!

c) Some art thing.


Budapest tomorrow and the plan is to camp right in the centre, so looking forward to that.