26th September 2016. Sulzemoos and Eichstätt, Germany.
Our plan today was to get to a large stëllplatz just outside of Munich. Darren programmed the SAT NAV so that we wouldn’t go down any autobahns and the journey was lovely, we passed through such beautiful landscape along the way.
Halfway to the stëllplatz we drove down a steep hill and saw a pretty town so we drove in for a coffee. We parked on the outskirts in a huge car park.
As we cycled into the town, we went past a campsite for motorhomes and tents, beside the river, we also passed the university and pretty buildings at the entrance to a park. There was a sculpture park in front of the buildings. We were surprised to see a picture of Baden-Powell next to something written in German, Google Translate came in very handy at that point and the mystery was solved. Apparently it was a quote by Robert Baden-Powell “Try to leave the world a little better than you found it.” We left the sculpture park and walked down an alleyway that led from the park into town, the walls had been decorated with pretty artwork, what a nice introduction to the town.
It seems that the students in this university town must be very wealthy. I’m making this assumption because when I popped into a chemist to buy some toothpaste, there were no prices on ANYTHING in the shop. I took a tube over to the counter and handed the assistant a 5 Euro note and she looked at me and pointed to the price on the register 5.24 Euros! I apologised and said I couldn’t see any prices, her reply was that there weren’t any! Consequently I had to ask her whether she had anything cheaper. I finally exited the shop feeling very puzzled but with a tube of toothpaste and a 1 cent coin, what a bargain!
We had to go and sit down to recover from the shock so we found a café that sold ice cream and sat outside listening to a busker singing.
We cycled round the town, stopping off at a cycle shop to buy something to stop Darren’s brakes from squeaking (I suggested I could help by oiling them but funnily enough he wasn’t keen to take me up on my offer).
From there we decided to cycle back along the path beside the river and learned another German word when we got told off by a lady for cycling along a path meant only for pedestrians, whoops! She did smile at us though when we walked past and I thanked her for telling us.
We cycled back past the park and the campsite beside the river.
We saw more beautiful countryside on our onward journey.
We arrived at the stëllplatz at 3.30 p.m. Just in time, it would appear, because not long after we’d parked there was a sudden influx of motorhomes.
We had a stroke of luck coming here, as a result of staying here we’ve just met two very nice people. Not long after we arrived Darren was checking our gas connection and he heard an English accent next door so he introduced himself. He had a brief chat but our neighbours were in the middle of doing something and said they’d chat to us later and true to their word they did pop over.
They told us their names were Jo and Stuart. They were lovely and we thoroughly enjoyed chatting to them, they’ve visited some beautiful places and we’re REALLY confused now, we thought we’d decided to go to Spain for the Winter because there are some beautiful places there, but over the last few days we’ve heard great things about Portugal and thought we’d go there but now we’re feeling very excited about the prospect of visiting Italy at some point during this trip. Oooh! We want to go everywhere, so many places, not enough time! On top of that, as an extra teaser, as she was about to walk out of the door Jo mentioned how good the cake is at Lake Bled in Croatia!
We had another change of plan last night. We received an email from our trailblazers Mark and Lucy and their journey into Munich and Oktoberfest sounded horrendous so we’re no longer going to either now. We hope we’re going to be able to meet up with them somewhere not quite so busy.