Still St Gilgen: Sat 20th to Tue 23rd

Saturday was Kaiservilla time. Franz-Joseph, the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a summer villa (=palace really) at a nearby town, Bad Ischal. He rose every morning at 3.30am, and was in his office at 4.15 to start conducting affairs of state. He had a house built down the road for his mistress for affairs of a different kind. The villa and contents are immaculately preserved and are still owned by the same Hapsburg family, of whom Franz-Joseph was a member. Their immense political power (but not wealth) came to an end with the First World War.

On Sunday we visited a local farmers festival, something like our harvest festival. Many traditional farming activities were on show , in particular beer drinking, and the picture shows the local choir performing. Disappointment: no yodelling. Note the choir’s traditional dress, but numerous people don these sorts of clothes as everyday wear. Knobbly knees at the ready!

Yesterday’s little trip was to the arboretum. With so many wonderful, stately trees in the forests here, we thought the arboretum would be the crème de la crème. But what a miserable set of specimens we found, tiny trees and bushes, some having died and disappeared leaving just the descriptive plaque. Jane said it ought to be renamed the twigoretum!

St Gilgen (near Salzburg): Tue 16th to Fri 19th

It’s only 3 hours to St Gilgen from Lake Starnberg. We’re in a sparsely occupied farm site with apple trees. e lake, Wolfgangsee, is 200 metres away and is surrounded by mountains. It’s very beautiful, and although the weather’s been mixed, we’ve sat outside in short sleeves on several days.


Visit to Salzburg on Friday: can be summarised as quality tourist tat. We’re deep in Sound of Music country here, so must expect Maria buses and the like, and lots of camera snappers. However, many impressive buildings and a wonderful setting for the town as a whole (hole?) retrieved the situation somewhat. In keeping with the international attraction of the town, we dined at McDonald’s.

Munich: Sept 10th to 15th

We’re now at Lake Starnberg, 20 miles south of Munich. The site is right by the lake, with the mountains of the Germany-Austria border somewhere in the misty background, through the slanting rain. It’s still very pleasant!

On arrival, we were shown to our pitch by a helpful German (BUT, he no English & we no German) who indicated the direction of water & chemical toilet points. The water was right next to the pitch- but where was the loo emptying station? After much searching, I found a sign bearing the legend “CHEMICAL KLOSET”.

However, to get to it, one had to walk through the middle of the restaurant’s outside dining area. Picture this: tucking into your bratwurst with a procession of campers squeezing past your table, each one clutching a full, sloshing caravan toilet! But all's well that ends well – they had relocated the bog emptying facility to another, but obscure, location. You people on main drains don’t know you’re born!

We visited Ruth in Munich both days at the weekend, most enjoyably. The weather was cold, only 7 degrees, but we saw the city centre and the Deutsches Museum. The photo is of one fascinating exhibit – a homemade aeroplane from the 80’s, intended to be flown from East to West Germany. It never flew since they were arrested the day before the planned fight, but it was later judged airworthy. We’ll stick with Ryanair!

France, Germany, Austria, Autumn 2008

Sept 5th to Sept 10th

The Blog awakens. Left home on Friday 5th in torrential rain & arrived at Obernai, near Strasbourg, in torrential rain. It’s perked up a lot since then & today was a sunny 26 degrees. Beautiful walks in Vosges mountains a few miles from site and many picturesque villages & towns, as per the photo.

This area of France is called Alsace, the home of Alsatian dogs, but very few are to be seen because they don’t actually come from Alsace. The locals speak a German type dialect because Alsace has yo-yoed between France & Germany, but the Germans themselves don’t understand it.

Strasbourg airport is not far, and, as the planes go overhead, we’ve waved to our travelling Euro-MP’s, the dutiful guardians of our euro billions, and I could have sworn I saw the Kinnocks waving back.

May 19th to May 28th

The maps are back in favour! We used them to plan a walk along a mountain footpath which gave us spectacular views over the dried river bed (rambla) below. The path was originally a single track dirt road but has fallen into disrepair from rain damage and undergrowth. There are several ruined dwellings dotted around the mountains which the road was evidently built to serve. It was totally quiet, apart from the birds, of which we saw crested lark, tawny owl, red-legged partridge, serrin, Sardinian warbler and a stonechat shrike, the latter being a first sighting for us.


Back on the site, Bob & Mavis, the tandem cyclists, are coming up with more amazing facts. Bob was explaining, as he knows about these things, about a chap who built a world-class racing bike out of a washing machine! I asked whether he was planning to similarly construct a tandem, for which he would, of course, need a twin-tub!

May 8th to May 18th

We visited the abandoned army artillery base again, 8 miles away. The batteries used to protect Cartagena harbour 10 miles distant, but in 1993 the base was abandoned intact. It’s sited on a beautiful headland and you can look at all the military buildings, guns, underground bunkers and shell storage areas etc. It’s got to be a health & safety free zone – but most interesting!


Although the walking locally is excellent, you need UK style Ordnance Survey maps to really explore. But the shops here don’t sell them. However, I did find a supplier on the net. A few days ago, the maps arrived, having taken 2+weeks (the service isn’t likely to challenge Amazon). They’re not bad, not quite up to OS standard, but my real gripe is that 3 out of the 7 maps are 90% sea! You can’t do without them because the campsite is actually on the join of 4 maps, 3 of which contain these vital strips of land.

April 27th to May 7th

Since the last entry we’ve been on a boat trip around Cartagena harbour. Cartagena is a large deep-water port that, as you can see, can berth the biggest ships. It is also the main base of the Spanish Mediterranean fleet so there were many warships around. Naval manoeuvres appeared to consist of a several vessels leaving the harbour mid-morning and returning by 6.00pm in time for pink gins. Any war would obviously be fought mañana.

The site here is very well run – but it comes at a price. That price is Crispello, one of the brothers that own the site. He’s the hatchet man and has been known to throw people off instantly (that’s actually not quite true, you get 10 minutes!) for misdemeanours such as feeding the feral cats, making any kind of noise during siesta time, or disagreeing with his son.