… I embarked upon a school cycling trip through Germany beginning at Dinkelsbühl. I can remember nothing about the town but its cute name and the fact that we were staying in Jugendherberge [youth hostels]. Our holiday turned out to…

We’re at a pleasantly quiet, rural site at Hohenstadt whose main purpose was to hide us from the swell of weekend campers. It’s just to the east of Nürnberg. We were a little concerned that the site was billed as…

I really have no recollections of how camping in Germany was when we last tried it about 30 years ago. Our first experience on this occasion with the genial Herr Wolf was a delight: hedged marked pitches of about 10m2,…

Our fiends H&G were keen to know what we’d like to do during our visit. One thing that sprang to my mind, that I thought may feature j=high in the German psyche, was a visit to a Biergarten. I think…

… or Colditz castle, in the English-speaking world. We are camped in our large, crowded, unappealing campsite about 30kms away from the notorious Colditz castle, which I’m sure was equally crowded and unappealing to its former inmates. It was used…

It has been interesting listening to H talk about “in the DDR times”, when this eastern part of Germany was the GDR as we called it. We’d be driving with them along a road and he’d say, “in the DDR…

Visiting our friends H&G for almost a week just south of Leipzig, we have eaten out in a Biergarten or two which is rather more than we would normally have done. That’s because our friends’ habit is to eat more…

This morning we bad farewell to Herr Wolf, the wonderfully genial host at our campingplatz near Montabaur for the last two nights. Heading to Erfurt, we had a 300kms drive ahead of us at the  good ol’ German towing speed…

We’re staying two nights in our delightful little rural campsite near Montabaur. Early morning brought a small sigh of relief when we saw father Sparrow back once again feeding his youngsters. Francine wanted to see a town so we zoomed…

Our dismal so-called campsite, L’Hirondelle/Capfun, in Belgium turned even more dismal overnight as rain started. We awoke to continuing rain. We’d be getting into Germany today and I was hoping things would get more civilized. I used to regard Belgium…