July 23rd Rodenkirchen to Sinzig/ Bad Bodendorf.
We left our campsite on the Rhine and headed south up the Rhine, we had planned on stopping in Bonn to have a look around however the thought of negotiating another big city didn’t appeal so we bypassed it on the motorway. From here we tried to find a smaller road which would have nicer scenery, which we managed to a degree. We drove through small villages, each with their ornate town clock and rathaus, churches with large steeples, and pretty buildings. Another common sight in the country-side forest regions are the wild apple trees, also on this route were many apple orchards and people selling cherries. Golden hayfields, some tightly clipped, some with the hay still out drying and others still to be cut. We stopped at one smallish Rhine-side town called Remegan which had a promenade along the Rhine which we walked, as well as narrow streets and interesting little shops. Some lovely buildings with ornate paintwork or plasterwork to decorate them too. From here we drove, after lunch, to a bigger town, slightly away from the Rhine because there was a campsite in our Camper-stop book which looked good. It said it was in Sinzig, but after we had looked around a little with no hope of finding it I stopped at a petrol station and asked the lady if she knew where it was. She was very friendly and warm, unlike many of the German people we have encountered so far. Many are very austere, when walking we try to make eye-contact and say gueten morgen or gueten tag as would suit the time of day. Only one in ten would reply, or make any sign that they had heard or seen us. The other thing which is so different is if you wait for someone approaching in a vehicle because the road is too narrow for both to get through at the same time, it is normal practise in most countries to give a wee hand gesture/wave/ some form of acknowledgement or thanks, not here, again 0ne in ten, if that. Anyway this lady at the petrol station was quite the opposite, very pained because she knew where we wanted to go and knew how to direct us there, but didn’t speak English. She kept looking out the window hoping I think that a workmate who was away at afternoon tea or something, would re-appear. In the end she phoned someone, her son I think, who spoke beautiful English and started to explain to me how to get there. After quite a few directions the woman waved to me and gestured to stop listening. A customer had over heard our conversation and very kindly, and I’m sure out of his way, drove there with us following him. It was wonderful because it was quite a long and complicated journey, which I may or may not have been able to do from memory. So we parked up at this spot, with power, and down the road a hundred metres or so, water, and toilet disposal area. There was a bakery right there selling nice German bread and sweet things, a heated swimming pool (it was 22 degrees, the water, and as it wasn’t a hot day we didn’t feel brave enough to use it), there was a park with forest which had a “Nordic fitness circuit” in it. We didn’t do the whole Nordic fitness thing, but we did go for a stroll around a shortish circuit, Hilary eating a huge bowl of ice-cream and Diana a large cone of “Danish” style ice-cream with waffle cone, cream, ice-cream and sauce. Hilary’s was a thing called spaghetti, which is three scoops of vanilla ice-cream and then another couple which are put through a press which has holes in it so the ice-cream comes out looking like spaghetti, then topped with lashings of strawberry (erdbeer) sauce, and sprinkled with grated white chocolate and chopped nuts (to look like parmesan cheese). It usually has a wafer or something sticking out of it just to finish it off. They are very delicious and popular all over the parts of Germany we have visited.
Hilary and I went for walk into the local village before dinner, Bad Bodendorf. Didn’t look like much from the main road, but once we wandered in to the back of the village it was quite beautiful. Virtually no shops, but lovely houses with grape-vines dripping over archways and verandahs and flowers especially red ones decorating window sills. After our walk we headed back to the truck and cooked a barbecue in the parking lot being watched by many inquisitive fellow camper vanners of mainly German origin.
It started to rain as we finished the last of our cooking, and continued to rain through-out the night.
25th July , Neuwied Eastern side of the Rhine, Germany.
We travelled south up the Rhine today towards Austria. We woke to a blue blue sky and bright sun, it lifts the spirits. Hilary and I went to the bakerie, where we bought milk, strussel, pretzels and bread rolls and a pain au chocolate (German equivalent, I haven’t worked out the name yet). Back to the truck for breakfast, the usual yoghurt and cereal for Di and me, pastry for Hilary. We left our camping spot and headed to Bad Briesag where there was a place Hilary and Di were interested in, a fairty-tale telling place with puppets and statues, amongst the forest. I opted out of going and relaxed in the truck beside the road instead. They were less than an hour, I think they quite enjoyed it, but unfortunately the commentary and labels were all in German.
We detoured off to find a steam-train that does a trip up a volcanic valley to a National Park beside a lake. The train had already left for the day, but we went for a drive along part of the route through pretty forest, and past reddish formations. We had lunch in the truck and then a small stroll through the forest.
Photo – Hilary with Magnum
It is 21 hectares this national park, Eiffel I think it is, one of a very few in Germany over 10 hectares in size!! I wonder what they think of our vast wildernesses. That is one of the interesting things I have noted here, particularly in Belgium and the Netherlands, the use of land with full on rural areas right up to the towns and cities, sheep next to houses, crops amongst suburbs.
Once back in the truck we headed a bit further south to Andernach where we found a park beside the Rhine and went on a visit to a fresh water geyser. The was a very in depth display before hand, interactive, which explained all about CO2 and how it built up pressure down in the magma before leaking out, capturing water on its way up from 4000 metres below the earth’s surface,and erupting in a 60 metre high geyser every 100 minutes. Unfortunately however we didn’t have enough time to see the display in full, before we had to catch our boat down the river to the place where we disembarked for a brief walk to the geyser. It was impressive, slowly building to a crescendo from nothing.
Photo of boat x1
Photo of geyser x2
Photo of Andernach x2
We went and retrieved the truck, I was worried we would have a ticket as we just parked without getting a voucher, in a campervan stopping place. We could have stayed there the night but it was quite packed, and though on the banks of the Rhine with a pretty outlook, the sites didn’t have electricity which is a necessity for us at the moment, otherwise there would be no cups of tea, heaven forbid. Instead we drove on to here, also beside the Rhine, on the other side, and more remote from civilisation. It is a yacht club area with a huge gravel car-park. There is electricity, fresh water, and about 4 others camper-vanning here. I use campervan in its most diverse form, the two next to us are more like 5 bedroom double storied houses than what you visualise when someone says campervan. They each have a little car (Smart cars are big here well, not big but popular amongst the camper van fraternity, they have them attached at the back and use them to go into town or zip around sight-seeing), as I said to Hilary I think they could actually drive the cars into the back of the “buses” the storage area seems adequate to accommodate a Smart car. I will have to check it out if they leave before us. The one drawback of this area is the huge cooling tower from the power plant across the river, we are hoping we don’t start glowing in the night from radiation exposure, but we have parked behind trees so it isn’t visible at the moment, we may be OK.
Yesterday we had a late start to the day as it was raining. Late morning we packed up the truck and drove slightly north of Bad Bodendorf where we were staying to Remagen (so it was called even though it wasn’t like the Remagen we had visited the preceding day!). We parked in a large vacant lot which had wild blackberries fruiting over at the back. We had lunch in the van, and then I picked about a kilo of fat juicy blackberries in about 20 minutes. They are in the freezer now, we might make some into jam later, or the other thing is there are lots of wild apple trees covered in fruit along the roads so we may make something appley and blackberryish, though as we don’t have an oven we are limited in our baking ability.
Anyway, we caught the ferry across the river to a little village called Linz,
it had a write-up in our brochure saying it was often referred to as “the prettiest town on the Rhine”. It certainly was pretty with buildings from the 1600s, some looking as though they had been through a Christchurch quake, certainly, if their corners were ever square they are far from it now, the walls are bowed and the rooflines snake along the top of the tiles. Make a good sight though. We wandered up and down the little streets, dodging raindrops and Germans. We mostly window shopped, or went in and looked at displays but didn’t buy. Lots of colours and bustle, some interesting and tempting wares, but we didn’t purchase anything. We had cake and coffee at a café and people watched. We visited the information centre and didn’t get much joy, we looked in a lovely sweet shop, salivated on bakery windows and just enjoyed looking. We did go to one place in the brochure, which had been a castle, complete with torture chamber and weapons, however it was now predominantly a tourist directed retail area selling along with some cute and beautiful pieces of blown glass-ware, sold many really tacky and particularly ugly bits and pieces. We weren’t impressed at all.
We caught the ferry ( 5 minute walk on, walk off, smooth operation.. 2.40 euro for all of us, an extra 2.20 if we had taken the truck, but we would have been silly too as everything is so small and close, a truck would have been an encumbrance rather than a help.
We drove back to our camp-site, organised dinner, played cards late into the night, and then went to bed.
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