22. The last leg

Day 119, August 12th.  Bratislava, Slovakia – Bad Aibling, Germany, 28 - 39C, sunny, humid

Vienna is wasted on us, at this stage in the trip.  Entering the centre, we drive along its grand boulevards, past countless Baroque palaces, Gothic churches, Renaissance apartment buildings – just trying to find an underground car park we can fit in.  It appears that parking anywhere on Vienna’s immaculate, orderly street network requires a residence permit.

Eventually we give up, park outside a Chinese restaurant, and learn from the appropriately sophisticated waiter that we can buy a two-hour parking permit from a tobacconist, and leave the car just where it is.  Showing our gratitude, we buy a couple of espressos and juices which set us back the equivalent of a day and a half’s accommodation in Kosovo.

We can’t stay long in Vienna.  Even if there was a remaining atom of unsated cultural appetite between us, it’s just too expensive a city, as part of a large trip like this.  We stop at the Bitzinger Würstelstand – one of Vienna’s popular Würstel (sausage) kiosks – and buy two outstanding Bratwurst and a Burenwurst.

The boys admire the orderly efficiency of the Würstel serving process: baguette gets skewered on hot metal pole, toasted on the inside, then injected with a precisely measured squeeze of ketchup, followed, finally, by insertion of the Würstel.  No sliced baguettes to leak ketchup onto everyone’s already stained clothes, no soggy bread, no dropped sausages.  At six euros apiece, it’s without doubt the best value lunch we could have in Vienna.

We wander with our Würstel, admiring the vast, newly cleaned Gothic façade of St Stephen’s Cathedral, and respectfully finish our sausages before going inside.  There’s a bell-tower to be climbed so we dutifully fork out seven euros each for tickets, only to discover, much to Laurie’s chagrin, that it’s obligatory to take the lift to the top.

Vienna’s hot today, but we manage to amble through enough of the mighty architectures of the Hofburg Palace, with its 18 buildings and 2,600 rooms, to realise that we’ll need to come back and visit this another time, when everyone’s regained at least a soupcon of interest in culture.

We’re back in the car by early afternoon, heading west.  Driving through Austria’s flatlands, north of the Alps, the temperature reaches 39C, a level of heat we thought we’d said goodbye to.  It puts paid to any ideas of an early camping stop so we barrel on, managing the engine temperature on the long uphill stretches, straight through Austria, past Salzberg and into Germany. 

Nina finds us a camping spot an hour over the border.  It’s effectively a grass verge on the side of a country lane, next to a dairy farm whose owner augments the income from her Milkenherd by letting a few campers park on her grass, and use the loo in the dairy.  As we tiptoe carefully round the expensive milking apparatus to use the loo, we marvel at this apparent breach in Germany’s health and safety rules… you’d never be allowed to do this in the UK.

Everyone’s knackered this evening.  It’s been a huge day’s drive – at over 300 miles, one of the biggest mileages of our trip – and we’ve driven from extreme heat in Austria into interminable heat and humidity in Germany.  The air is thick and clingy, weighing us down; it feels like a storm is going to break somewhere round us any minute.

To add icing to the cake, our stove decides that tonight’s the night to pack up and quit.  After much cursing and bad-tempered fiddling with the valve, the burners and anything else that can be fiddled with, we admit defeat and go and ask Andrea, our host, if she has anything we can cook with.  In her late 30’s and surprisingly smartly dressed for a dairy farmer, she mercifully reappears a few minutes later with a portable induction stove – and the all-important saucepan to go with it – for us to plug in in the dairy.

Our emergency carbonara is saved, and everyone relaxes a little.  The sun sets as we eat, casting deep orange hues across the heavily clouded sky.  As darkness falls, we’re treated to a spectacular lightning storm, thankfully far away in the rural valley below us. 

We sit on the bonnet, admiring the sky as it’s lit up by sheet lightning, as regular as a strobe machine, with extra excitement added via intermittent vertical and even horizontal forks, like flaming claws, tearing across the sky. 

Pleasingly for everyone, the storm passes through the valley before us, and steadily travels into the distance, leaving us to sleep in peace.  Tonight really would have been the wrong night to have everyone taking refuge in the car.  

Day 120, August 13th.  Bad Aibling – Enzklösterle, Germany, 24 - 33C, sunny, rain showers

Everyone is remarkably refreshed this morning, and the air is clearer.  Helpfully, further sleep-aided fiddling on the stove gets it working again, albeit with a very slight petrol leak. 

Before breakfast, I scout around the farm looking for Ralph; I find him happily chatting to Andrea, who this morning is more appropriately dressed, in a boiler suit and gloves, as she mucks out the cows in her barn.

We’re re-packed and on the road by mid-morning, re-tracing our steps through the rolling, heavily wooded German countryside, to the autobahn that will take us north-west, ever closer to home.  We bypass Munich and Stuttgart, making straight for the Black Forest and the little village of Enzklösterle.

On the way, we wonder why the Black Forest is named as such, when it’s quite evidently green.  It appears the Romans gave it the name.  Seemingly back then, the forest was bear-infested, thicker, darker and more foreboding than it is now, dotted with pretty, orderly little villages, and criss-crossed with immaculate tarmacked roads and logging tracks.

Our intended campsite tonight has a large “FULL/COMPLET” sign on the outside, which doesn’t bode well. But the friendly German owners seem able to rustle up a space for us for a couple of nights, meaning we’ll be able to enjoy a last e-biking adventure with the boys: this is one activity they’re definitely not bored of yet.

In the afternoon we meet James, a British motorbiker who’s travelling solo whilst on a couple of weeks’ leave from the army.  British sightings have been rare on this trip, so we invite him to join us for drinks in the village’s only open bar. 

A couple of großes Biers later, it’s evident we need some food – it’s getting late and no-one can be bothered to cook.  The Germans take a polar opposite approach to evening eating to their southern European neighbours.  At 7pm in Italy or Spain, no-one’s even thought of opening yet.  In Germany, it’s basically closing time. Perhaps this is why they get more work done?

At 7pm I scout out the hotel up the street, one of the very few potential eating options available.  I attempt to ask in German if they’re still serving, but I can’t even work out how to pronounce the jumble of random letters and umlauts that Google Translate presents me with.  I should have left this to Nina: she’s the only one with a grasp of this language.

The waitress dismisses my horrendous attempts at German with Teutonic disdain.  Her English is sufficiently good to shout at me.  “Well, if you’re all here, like, now, and you order the same thing, I can maybe help you.  But otherwise, no!” 

I explain that it’ll take me five minutes to fetch the others.  “Then I’m afraid you must go somewhere else!” comes the barked reply. 

She directs me another five minutes up the main street, to another hotel.  I’m actually relieved: her dining room appears to be full of the human contents of a SAGA cruise, toothlessly gumming their way through something that smells like school dinners and looks very much like gruel.

The restaurant up the street – the only other place that’s open – can help us, if we’re quick.  I dash back down to our little bar, summon everyone and within ten minutes, we’ve ordered turkey and pork schnitzels with chips off the menu.  They’ve sold out of sausages.  Our food arrives, unfettered by frivolous niceties such as flavour, but at least we haven’t had to cook it, and it’s not gruel.

Day 121, August 14th.  Enzklösterle - Bad Wildbad - Enzklösterle, Germany, 24 - 30C, sunny, cloudy

Irritatingly we have to pack up the roof tent to drive to the bike hire shop, in Bad Wildbad, twenty minutes’ away.  But it’s a ‘light’ pack-up; we leave all our tables, chairs and cooking equipment out, safe in the knowledge that German campsites must be the most crime-free places on earth.

Having hired our bikes – and for once, finding one which actually fits Laurie – we set out on a long, circular route, into the mountains above Bad Wildbad, where we hope to be able to see the forest above the trees.  We climb steadily out of the town, following an immaculately tarmacked road up a series of bends, rapidly climbing 500 metres up from the valley. 

As we reach our first stop, the Waldgaststätte Grünhütte mountain restaurant, I realise that I’ve lost my sunglasses somewhere on the final stretch up the hill.  Annoyed, I carefully re-trace my steps to the last point I remember having them, but to no avail. 

Back with the others who are waiting outside the restaurant, I go inside – more in hope than expectation – to see if they’ve been handed in.  They have.  The Germans are so efficient and honest that it appears someone managed to find my sunglasses and hand them in, before I’d even realised I’d lost them.

Re-united and happy again, we cycle on, along manicured gravel paths, searching for a couple of viewpoints.  Inexplicably, it appears the Germans are not very good at signposts.  Or maybe we’re not very good at reading German maps.  We suspect the former. Either way, we find two of a possible four viewpoints, as we struggle to marry up the inexplicable differences between the map in our hands and the tracks beneath our wheels.

Nonetheless, the viewpoints are worth it.  Climbing the Hohloh Tower (also known as the Kaiser Wilhelm Tower) and standing at a little over 1,000 metres at the top, we gaze, in silence, at the deeply forested mountains which stretch away into the distance, in all directions, with only a smattering of villages in the distance to disturb the view.

We’ve done about 25km by now and getting hungry, so we turn our navigational attention to finding a mountain restaurant.  Once again, this appears to be an area of shortcoming for the Germans.  The only restaurant we find within a 5km radius is closed except at weekends (really?  In the peak season?), so we make our way back towards Grünhütte, working through our snacks.

Unfortunately, providing a safe haven for lost sunglasses ranks is the Grünhütte restaurant’s best talent.  Food doesn’t even make it onto the list.  Nina, in her finest German and aided by a helpful, English-speaking German tourist, orders a plate of pancakes, a plate of meatballs and a mixed platter of meats, for everyone to share.

Shortly, we’re confronted with the worst meal of our entire trip, by some margin.  The pancakes are basically deep-fried batter with blackcurrant jam (few complaints here from the boys), the meatballs have the texture of ground-up bones and the plate of meat – very much not the Italian-style antipasti we were expecting – comprises two vast, boiled sausages, one grey, one blood red, and a grey pork chop that appears to have been boiled since before our children were born. 

When cut open, the sausages secrete an unidentifiable ooze.  Why on earth they can’t just grill or fry their sausages like everyone else, we have no idea.  The same goes for the pork chop.  I’m the only one brave enough to try this gruesome platter, swiftly confirming to everyone else that it’s as filthy as it looks.

Our final stop after our disappointing lunch is the ‘Wildline’, a brand-new suspension footbridge that crosses a deep valley, high above Bad Wildbad.  It’s deliberately sleek and light on materials, and wobbles when you walk on it.  At its mid-point, it’s over 60 metres above the tips of the trees in the forest below.  Ralph and Laurie are respectively taken with its structural design, and potential for adventure, naturally.  Whilst the view is exciting, I’m not quite so in love with it.  I walk gingerly along, chiding the boys for running or wobbling it unnecessarily, whilst hanging carefully onto the sides.

Back at base in the late afternoon, Nina and I refresh ourselves and soothe our exceptionally sore backsides in the chilly mountain stream that runs through our campsite.  We’re both pretty stiff.  The boys are tired, but otherwise – save for Ralph dropping a stone from the river on his big toe – undimmed.

Suffice to say, we cook our own food tonight – and appreciate it.

Day 122, August 15th.  Enzklösterle - Triberg, Germany, 24 - 33C, sunny, cloudy

Laurie’s appetite for cycling is just as voracious this morning. After packing up, whilst Nina and Ralph sensibly find a civilised café in Bad Wildbad, in which they can enjoy hot chocolates and write up their diaries in peace and quiet, Laurie and I return to the bike shop for another go. 

This time, we head out of town on the eastern side, with the aim of climbing a very steep hill and crossing a forested plateau to Kleinenzhof, before gently descending to Calmbach, then returning along the river to Bad Wildbad.  Laurie leads the way, with me following, wishing I had padded shorts.

During the entire morning’s cycling, the map we’ve been given by the tourist office bears literally zero resemblance to the paths and trails in front of us.  We may as well have drawn our own maps in the campsite before we left, and used those.  How can the Germans be so good at difficult things like building cars and cuckoo clocks and heavy machinery, yet completely useless at cooking food and making maps?  It’s incomprehensible to us.

Laurie and I spend a happy but ultimately fruitless morning, attempting to reach our destination via a variety of different, extraordinarily steep logging trails.  None are successful.  On several occasions, when consulting the map next to some recognised reference point, it directs us onto tiny, little-used footpaths that peter out into nothing in the forest.

Eventually, we give up and follow our noses – taking a track that hugs the contours downhill and north, into Calmbach.  Finally reaching Bad Wildbad, Nina flags us down as we pass the café they’ve been hanging out in, and orders us iced chocolates with ice cream whilst we – rather fatigued now – hand back our bikes.

We stop for a quick picnic lunch in the Black Forest, before heading south to Triberg.  Laurie and I sleep in the back of the car, exhausted from the morning’s exertions.

Triberg is the world capital of cuckoo clocks and cuckoo clock makers, and is one of the most highly anticipated stops of the entire trip – especially for Ralph.  Before we even arrive in the town, we stop at the ‘House of 1,000 Clocks’, a huge shop dedicated to cuckoo clocks and little else. 

Ralph squeaks with excitement as we enter.  Laurie, once he’s woken up, is equally excited.  For Nina and I, the sight of so many swinging pendulums and so much cuckoo-ing in one place is enough to bring on motion sickness. 

We persuade the boys to not buy anything here: there are many more shops in the town.  But the suspension of purchasing activities is short-lived.  Having checked into our apartment for the night and wandered into the third clock shop on Triberg’s pretty high street, Laurie finds the clock of his dreams and assertively insists it will be his. 

He’s thrilled – despite the knowledge that it’ll cost him about four months’ worth of mucking out the chickens when we get home.  Ralph, a little more prudent, makes a provisional selection but decides to sleep on it.  How sensible.

We eat next door, at a restaurant that sells pizza.  Laurie steers well clear of anything resembling a sausage and sticks to his trusty Italian favourite, Ralph and Nina focus on their protein intake with more schnitzel, and I risk another sausage – having first confirmed it’s not boiled.  It’s a far better meal, but the bar is low here.

Day 123, August 16th.  Triberg, Germany – Hesperange, Luxembourg, 23 - 35C, sunny, cloudy

Ralph buys his clock this morning, amid much elation and excitement. The acquisition of two, immaculately carved, authentic German cuckoo clocks does however present a new – and in hindsight foreseeable – issue. 

We’re now within a single day’s drive of home – both boys’ geography knowledge is good enough to know this – and all they want to do now is get home, and assemble their clocks.  Laurie, as ever, calls it how he sees it: “Why can’t we just go home now and not keeping stopping at loads of other places?”  Psychologically, we get it – from our last trip we know that when you can sense home is just around the corner, you just want to click your fingers and be there.

Typically, Nina and I have been more prudent than usual and have already booked our Eurotunnel for the 20th, and our last two nights’ accommodation in Ghent.  In the car this morning, Nina starts to make some discrete enquiries about whether we can pull these forward, without waving goodbye to a load of non-refundable cash.

Leaving Triberg we head north-west, crossing into France at Strasbourg.  The sight of the French border – and the knowledge that we’re leaving Germany and its filthy food behind us – causes a wave of elation that temporarily distracts everyone from the need to get home now at all costs.  Being back in a country where we (a) can communicate properly and (b) eat lovely food is a great fillip.

We stop for lunch in Strasbourg and eat in a restaurant in the Grande Île, overlooking the river Ill.  Despite our now excellent French, our reassuringly rude waiter replies steadfastly in English, and, when we ask for Ralph’s onglet to be ‘bien cuit’ he looks theatrically perplexed, as if he’s never heard these words uttered before. 

He softens, however.  When Ralph’s steak turns up, it is indeed on the well-done side of medium, and our waiter explains proudly how he had a special word with the chef to procure something that has hitherto never been asked for before in any restaurant in France, ever.

Strasbourg is another delightful city that is a little wasted on us at this stage.  It’s too pretty not to spend an hour after lunch walking through, though, admiring its Rhineland timber framed houses, cobbled streets and its awe-inspiring Gothic cathedral.  But, like Vienna, we add it to the ‘do another time’ list, and head back to the car before we lose the already impatient crowd.

It’s a long, fast drive north, through France and another chunk of Germany, before we reach Luxembourg – possibly the most orderly country in Europe.  We stop for camping supplies at a ‘Delhaize’ supermarket on the outskirts of Luxembourg city and find ourselves confronted with the most organised, well-appointed, well-stocked little supermarket we’ve ever seen.  You could buy the ingredients for your lunch here and eat it off its immaculate black-tiled floor.  Six aisles are entirely devoted to expensive wines. 

This luxury comes at a price though: our humble ingredients list costs us more here than at any other supermarket on the trip: lucky indeed, that we’re nearly home.

Our campsite is full, despite us making a reservation.  “You see you have booked a tent space but you have a vehicle which is attached to your tent and that is not allowed in these spaces.”  Luckily, being Luxembourg, they have a few overflow spaces for people like us who are too stupid to understand their rules, and minutes’ later we’re setting up camp on a delightful patch of grass, nicely hedged off and away from anyone else.

Also, being Luxembourg, the loo and shower facilities are immaculate.  We challenge the boys on when their last shower was; turns out it was in Slovakia.  That is just too many countries away to be acceptable, even in our current, semi-feral state.  We pack them off with a towel each, and plenty of shampoo.

Nina’s confirmed we can pull our Eurotunnel forward by a day, and cancel our second night’s accommodation in Ghent.  After supper I chat to Penny and Aengus, our wonderful friends who are currently looking after our house and everything in it, about us coming home a day early.  Of course, it’s fine. 

We raise the matter with the boys; they’re delighted.  It means we have one final night’s camping tomorrow, then one night in an apartment, and then home.  No more than a long weekend now.  Despite the excellent live music concert going on in the park next to the campsite (being Luxembourgish, we can simply wander in for free, plus it stops at a deeply civilised 10:30pm), the boys sleep happily and soundly.

Day 124, August 17th.  Hesperange – nr. Reuler, Luxembourg, 18 - 25C, sunny, torrential rain

After breakfast we pay a quick visit to Luxembourg city: Nina and I remembered this as a final hidden gem from our last trip, perched atop the Pétrusse Gorge.  The cliffs, city walls, pastel colours and pointy spires are plenty appealing enough for Ralph, but Laurie is sticking to his guns.  “I am bored of boring pointy things” has become his semi-joking, semi-serious refrain.

Everyone’s placated with eye-wateringly expensive hot chocolates and espressos – equivalent to nearly two night’s accommodation in Kosovo this time.  We enjoy Luxembourg’s absolute calm and serenity for a while – it must be Europe’s most peaceful city – before simple economics dictate that it’s time to move on.

Our final night’s camping is at another fishing lake, in the far north of Luxembourg.  Whilst Nina and I are setting up the tent for the final time, the boys run off to check out the form with the fishing.  On their return, it sounds promising: a large ‘take what you catch’ trout lake and a ‘no-kill’ carp lake.  Plus, they sell licences and local lures in the campsite shop.

We all head down to the shop and discover it’s kitted out with things you’d expect to see if going coarse fishing: live bait, weights, floaters, all sorts of things that don’t go with trout fishing as we know it…

We chat to the assistant in the shop, who evidently knows very little about fishing.  He tells us the trout are very greedy and will eat anything; in the end we choose to believe him, hire a local rod, buy a pot of maggots and some local lures, and set to. 

Despite earlier assurances that he would be in charge of the live bait, Laurie subsequently insists that I put the maggots on the fishing hook.  And despite the assurances of the chap in the shop, these trout are manifestly not interested in our live bait.

It starts to rain, then pour.  The chap next to us catches a few nice fish; we ask what he’s using, he generously gives us one of his spinner lures as a present.  By this time, it’s bucketing down and the trout are simply not interested in anything.  Despite our umbrella and my new rainproof jacket from Ljubljana, we’re both as wet as the fish we’re trying to catch.

Eventually, we give up, and join Nina and Ralph, who have sensibly taken refuge in the campsite café.

The ingredients in our fridge for one final carbonara go untouched.  The rain continues, unrelenting, all afternoon and evening, rendering it impossible to cook.  Luckily, the campsite bar sells pizzas (nothing else), so we make do with stratospherically expensive, low-quality pizzas for our last night’s camping.

The highlight of the evening arrives as we’re finishing our pizzas. 

Outside the café, a large tractor pulls up, towing a trailer with a marquee affixed to it, inside of which sits an entire brass band, with some of their children, by the looks of it.  The tractor stops for a while, the band starts up, plays a jolly (we presume) Luxembourgish song, then another.  Everyone claps, then the tractor drives the band away.  Few individual things have brightened our day more than this little, random, smile-spreading event.  Today, in the pouring rain, it’s especially welcome.

After eating, we dash back to the truck, which is now parked in one massive puddle.  The rain kindly eases to a drizzle whilst we brush our teeth and scramble upstairs into bed.  As we explain to the boys, last nights are usually anticlimactic, and this one is no exception.

We eventually drift off to sleep, huddled up, listening to the rain hammering on the tent.

Day 125, August 18th.  nr. Reuler, Luxembourg – Ghent, Belgium, 18 - 25C, sunny, cloudy

There’s a high degree of excitement about this being our last full day.  The rain has stopped and the sun pokes out from the clouds occasionally, enough to warm our backs a little as we have a final camping breakfast of yoghurt and granola, and put the tent away for the last time.

The border crossing to Belgium is possibly the lowest-key of all: a small, upside down ‘Belgium’ sign, on the side of a country road, near nothing or nowhere in particular.

We reach Ghent at lunchtime, and fill the car up with fuel on the outskirts, ready for an early start tomorrow morning.

The recalcitrant staff in the forecourt won’t let us fill the car up until we prepay with a specific amount of money, despite us wanting the car full (and hence not knowing how much it will cost).  Additionally, their loos are out of action and they won’t let Laurie use their staff loo.  At this stage in the trip, and short on sleep, it’s worthy of an argument with them.  Nina and I feel much better afterwards.

Our apartment for our last night is immaculate; possibly the cleanest and most well-appointed of the trip. Ghent – chilled out, light on tourists, bedecked with amazing architecture and chocolate shops – serves us well for a last afternoon and evening.  Climbing the Belfry of Ghent and finding the dragon’s egg – our last such tower-based adventure for a while – even engenders real enthusiasm and excitement.

It’s Sunday today and come evening, most of Ghent’s restaurants are closed.  It reminds Nina and I of the last night of our previous trip, eating a plate of cold meats out of the fridge because it was Bastille Day and literally everything in France was closed.

We try a tapas restaurant, they’re full.  Luckily, across the square there’s a Persian restaurant.  We settle in for a feast of grilled chicken and kebabs, fragrant rice and an array of delicious Persian side-dishes.  We’d hoped for something a little snazzier and upmarket – but in many ways, it’s a perfectly appropriate meal for the last night of our trip.

We walk back to our apartment through Ghent’s serene, cobbled streets, passing only the occasional cyclist and a handful of cars, shivering slightly in the cool evening breeze.

Day 126, August 19th.  Ghent, Belgium – Little Bedwyn, UK, 14 - 21C, overcast

Everyone’s wide awake at 6pm.  Laurie, usually a slow riser, is up, packed and dressed in about 40 seconds.  Ralph, not usually that fazed by washing, jumps in the shower and washes his hair.

We’re in the car and leaving sleeping, peaceful Ghent by 6.30am.  There’s literally no traffic or anything else to slow us down in reaching Calais; we’re at the Eurotunnel terminal by just after 8am.  Luckily our ‘Flexi-plus’ ticket (should be renamed ‘Smug-plus’ ticket) enables us to drive straight to the front of a not-very-long queue and, having done a quick smash and grab raid on the freebie Flexi-plus takeaway terminal, we board the 8.38am train to Folkestone.

The UK greets us with cold weather, crowds of humungous people at a service station and an hour-long traffic jam on the M20.  It’s enough to make us consider turning around and heading straight back to Italy.

But we persevere, finally reaching the M4.  With every passing minute, the whoops of excitement from the back get louder.  We play Ed Sheeran’s ‘Castle on the Hill’ and other suitable homecoming tracks as we get closer.  Finally turning driving over our bridge to get home, the boys are bouncing around in the back.

True to form, Tangle is waiting for us at the front door, wiggling frenetically and wagging her tail furiously, greeting us like we’ve been away for months.