France and Germany August 2010

In August 2010 we had both secured employment despite our age and shabby appearances and we were ready to take the Blue Bus back to Europe; unfortunately only for 18 nights as we were now restricted by annual leave requirements.

We made our way through France, stopping at

Chalons en Champagne and Vilsberg, near Phalsbourg, near the German border.

We journeyed happily into Germany, camping at an old favourite site in Stockach and on to Oberstdorf in the Oberallgau.

Oberstdorf provided excellent walking (see photograph on the right) and is a bustling holiday destination, but we had mixed weather and after a few nights, we set off back towards France.

We stayed one night near Rastatt and the Rhine, then continued to Verdun.

Verdun was a good choice and we had an excellent couple of days cycling around and learning about the history of the area.

Our last campsite was at Charleville-Mezieres, near the Belgian border; an excellent campsite, a lovely town within walking distance and a Voie Verte cycle route along the river (photograph on the left) made this a fantastic holiday place for us and we may well return.

A separate post shows the campsites we used.

Campsites in France and Germany August 2010

List of campsites August 2010

ID	Camp site name	Country	Arrival date	Number of nights	Cost per night	Description
170	Municipal Camping, Chalons de Champagne	France	07/08/2010	1	£22.00	Pleasant, flat site by a lake with ducks, facilities fine for summer, showers hot and clean
171	Camping les Bouleaux, Vilsberg, nr Phalsbourg	France	08/08/2010	2	£17.80	Dutch run site with bar, facilities adequate, pleasant site, nicely laid out, water only warm
172	Papier Muhle, Stockach	Germany	10/08/2010	2	£20.00	Excellent toilets and good hot showers, all very clean, good cycling nearby and pleasant town
173	Campingplatz Oberstdorf	Germany	12/08/2010	5	£25.00	Wifi 3 euro per night, excellent facilities, hot showers with push button, warm rooms, nice views, 20 mins walk from village, bar and bread to order
174	Rastatter Freizeitparadies, Rastatt	Germany	17/08/2010	1	£19.00	Large site with a small lake and lots of activities, flat grassy pitches, facilities OK, rubbish bins only open 9.30-10 and 6.30-7pm!
175	Camping Les Breuils, Verdun	France	18/08/2010	2	£22.00	Pleasantly laid out site, in small areas, lots of trees for shade and a brook, pleasant bar, facilities clean, water not very hot, 6 amps
176	Municipal du Mont Olympe, Charleville Mezieres	France	20/08/2010	3	£18.00	Free wifi and free washing machines, hot water, facilities dated and not the cleanest, but good, toilet paper. Large pitches with hedges, 10 mins pleasant walk to town.

Holiday spending August 2010

The photograph shows the pretty town of Verdun.

Spending for the 18 nights holiday in Euros:

Campsites 364
Diesel 232
Food 290
Cafes and restaurants 211
Everything else 222
TOTAL 1319 Euros

The return ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge was £582, including breakfast and evening meals.

The exchange rate was around Euro 1.2 to the £1.

From nine 'til five I have to spend my time at work

We thought we would add a postscript to our blog, updating our readers (nearly 10,000 and rising) on how we have coped with returning to life in Manchester.

The good news is we have both managed to find work, even in the currently shrinking Public Sector. Carol is back in the NHS and Anthony has a job in a school, so doesn't return to the nine to five grind until September. We miss the freedom of travelling and spending our days walking and cycling in beautiful places; our window boxes are full of lavender, rosemary and thyme to remind us of southern Europe. We miss the warmth of the sun and that sense of total relaxation. Carol in particular will often think wistfully about where we were this time last year.

However, it is lovely to spend time with our friends and family; the photos show us out and about in the Peak District. The saving up for next time starts here!

There's so many places I want to see

This is the last post on our blog and so we would like to take this opportunity to thank a few people.

We have enjoyed keeping the blog and we are sure we will refer to it in the future. We are very grateful to everyone who has visited the blog over the past 12 months, almost 6,000 hits in four months is impressive and helps us feel in contact with other people. As well as old friends, we have made new contacts via our blog and now have a list of other travellers blog’s to follow from Salford with envy.

We really appreciate the time taken by everyone who has emailed us over the past 12 months or got in touch via the blog. We have always enjoyed hearing your news and have tried to reply to all of you.

Although the ideas on the blog come from both of us, it is Carol who puts the words together. Anthony took on the duty of finding song lyrics for the post; not always an easy task when faced with a post about an obscure topic such as dinosaur footprints or the umpteenth post about walking or cycling; he rose to the challenge and has enjoyed being creative. We hope you have managed to guess some of the lyrics and enjoyed looking up the ones you don’t know on the list of answers.

Last, but by no means least, we want to thank Matthew and Rachel. Without their help and support the trip would have been much more problematic; they gave a home to our elderly and blind cat, posted us books and essential equipment, used up most of their holidays coming to visit us, looked after the flat and opened our small paper mountain of mail and purchased various concert tickets for us to help make our return something we can look forward to.

You may be wondering, how we are feeling as the trip comes to an end. The post title says it all really; the trip has given us a sense of what Europe is, how we fit in to it and how much more of it there is to explore. Most importantly, the trip has made us realise how much fun we get from living together in the van, hitting the road and exploring new places; we will certainly miss being as free as a bird (no apologies for using this lyric twice)

Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way

Our longest day travelling was also reduced to a 22 hours day; On Sunday we lost two hours, one due to the change to summertime and the other because we moved from Portugal back in to Spain. We prefer not to use motorways and will often meander on minor roads for 100kms or so between campsites. However, due to a lack of open campsites we decided to travel the 400kms from Chaves in north-east Portugal to Candas, near Gijon in Asturia on the north Spanish coast in one day, along excellent, quiet motorways.

Somewhat disorientated about the time of day, we drove through a wild and empty Spain; big mountains with snow, kites flying overhead, huge plains of cereal fields and few signs of habitations. It was palm Sunday and at occasional small churches by the road we saw congregations with bunches of greenery in their hands.

We arrived in Candas, near Gijon, a prosperous part of Spain, with a campsite pleasingly set on a rocky promontory. Inland from the coast are small farms and out walking we saw people tending their small-holdings in the sunshine and photographed many of the wooden granaries on stilts, characteristic of the area. Almost back at the campsite a motorhome stopped to offer us a lift; it was Theresa and Mike, our occasional travelling companions from Australia. We spent the evening drinking Portuguese wine and liqueurs and reminiscing about our favourite places in Portugal.

We sail from Spain on Easter Sunday and the chocolate goodies in the shops tell us the Easter weekend is getting closer. Our plans are to head east from Candas, along the coast, taking in the cave paintings at Cuevas del Castillo, near Puente Viesgo and some Rioja wine tasting before catching the boat in Bilbao.

Your custard pie, I declare, it's sweet and nice

We feel a little gloomy to be leaving Portugal; we have enjoyed our six weeks exploring this country on the edge of Europe. We bought our last Pastel de Nata, the extremely tasty Portuguese custard tarts, got lost in the last Portuguese town devoid of signs and stayed at our last cheap Portuguese campsite.

At home it is fairly easy to be vegan-ish, but travelling in Europe we have indulged in dairy products on a number of occasions. Our blog readers may have noticed; (and comments have been made) we are food-obsessed vegetarians and so we often feel we miss out on getting a real taste for a country; in Portugal we have missed out on the delights of Salt Cod and the many smoked meats, so to also not get a chance to at least try the many different cheeses and the fantastic Portuguese cakes, including Pastel de Nata, is more than we can manage. We will revert to our old regime when we return.

Our last sight-seeing trip in Portugal was to Citania de Briteiros, south of Braga; a Celtic hill town settled between 1,000 BC and 1,000 AD. This sizeable archaeological site is an early prototype of the walled hill town and walking around its cobbled streets you get a clear sense of how the place was lived in. As well as many houses and a series of enclosing walls, Citania de Briteiros has a pre-Roman bath house and a large building which experts think is where the men of the village gathered to chat and make decisions; just as we see them gathered today putting the world to rights in the village cafes.