15th September 2016. Wipfeld, Germany.

We decided that as lovely as the Harz area is we really needed to move further afield now.  Last night we made lots of different plans then changed all of them!  Finally we decided to leave the area today and do a 4.5 hour journey South so we can start to explore a different part of Germany.  However before we left we had something VERY important to do, we needed to revisit the ice cream shop we’d been to last night.

The ice cream was just still gorgeous.  This time we both had the lime and lemon ice cream but I also had rosehip ice cream (we think that’s what it was because the ice cream man pointed to the hips on the roses opposite when I asked what it was) and Darren had holunder (elderberry).  They were really tasty but the lime flavour was my all time favourite, it was SOOOO good.

This shop was doing a roaring trade from school children, which was strange because it was only 11.30 a.m. we couldn’t work out where they were all appearing from but as we cycled back towards the bridge we realised that the beautiful building we’d been passing was actually a school and the children were swarming around the playground.  What a perfect position for his shop.

We cycled back across the bridge but didn’t get to see any steam trains this time, unfortunately .

We left the site and started on our journey to Wipfeld.  Not long after we started we discovered the slip road on to the road we needed was closed and the SAT NAV decided to have a nervous breakdown so we had to get the map out to find out where we were.  It turned out we were driving North East, not good!  Once we’d got ourselves back on track (by following a stream of cars going in the rough direction we needed to go in) the SAT NAV decided to take part in the journey again.

It was a long journey and quite uneventful except when our SAT NAV decided to have another fit.  Intermittently it would suddenly decide it just couldn’t be bothered to put the map up on the screen and the little motorhome would be careering across an empty screen.  Then the map would start to sneak up behind the little motorhome before suddenly disappearing again, most strange.

 

We stopped for a break at a service station and had a bagel which was made to order, they were lovely. Darren somehow managed to leave his sunglasses behind, although that was no great loss, they were so battered and scratched I’m sure that whoever found them dumped them straight in the bin!

We travelled through some beautiful countryside with a little excitement on the way.

Our first exciting moment (only exciting to us) was when we saw an M.G being towed, it looked similar to an M.G that Darren had owned when we were dating.

The later on in our journey a family of ducks decided to cross the busy road, it reminded Darren of another memory from our youth.   On that day I was driving my tiny yellow Fiat 216 along a new duel carriageway and he was travelling in another car a distance behind me.  Apparently he joined the back of a queue of cars which had stopped on the duel carriageway and then noticed it was my car causing the queue.  He wondered what on earth I was doing, then he noticed a mother duck being followed closely behind by her family of cute fluffy yellow chicks as they crossed the busy road in front of me.  No one could be cold hearted enough to plough through that sweet little family, it appears they feel the same in Germany!

We arrived at the stellplätze at Wipfeld, it was a field beside the river.  There was a volleyball net at one end of the field. It was a very hot day and a group of teenagers were having great fun in the water by a tiny jetty.  We parked beside the other two motorhomes that were already there and Darren went for a wander to see where we had to pay.  Eventually he went over and asked someone in one of the vans where he’d bought his ticket and he pointed along the cycle path so we walked off in that direction.

We walked for quite a way until we came to a tiny ferry and after a lot of dithering Darren walked on to the ferry and asked the ferryman whether we had to pay him.  ‘Who Pays The Ferryman?’ was a BBC TV series in the 1970’s so the answer to that question, all these years later, is Darren pays the ferryman!

We had a lovely view from the van, we were facing out over the river and every so often a little boat or a huge barge would go past.  A bit further along the path there was a gaggle of geese waddling around and somewhere in the village there was a church donging its bells. I’d like to say they were ringing the church bells but the bells were just donging randomly.

We decided to go and explore.

We had a walk up a pretty cobbled street to the tiny market place and saw people sitting outside a restaurant eating, so we decided to stop for a meal.

It was entertaining and a little nerve wracking watching vehicles racing up and down the narrow windy cobbled streets, I’m amazed that they didn’t hit each other, it had been very quiet when we’d first sat down so it was quite surprising to find that this was actually a little ‘rat run’.  I was very pleased that we hadn’t sat at the table on the side by the traffic although rush hour didn’t last very long then the streets were very quiet.

We had no idea what we were ordering and the ‘surprise’ meals that turned up were gorgeous, so was the ice cream afterwards.

It was rather dark when we finally made our way back to our van.