Around the year 2000, Wendy's sister Marian and her husband Ian moved from UK to Grijzegrubben, a hamlet in the Municipality of Nuth, in the province of Limburg and a few kilometers north east of Maastricht. We spent some time with them there over a couple of Christmas' and one summer. Many happy memories.
Grijzegrubben, in the Netherlands, is just 25km from Aachen in Germany and we came to know and like the town.
Click on map to see our route.
The plan is to spend a couple of nights in Aachen then on to our next stop which is Wurzburg, city of knowledge. Not somewhere we know but looks interesting so we'll stop a couple of nights again and do a little sight seeing.
We've one more planned stop and that's at Passau, a city that deserves a little time exploring.
Our destination is Vienna and there are a couple of sites we've looked at but haven't booked yet and may leave it until we're there. Love the flexibility. Years ago we took the caravan to Salzburg and it rained and rained and the forecast was for more and so we upped sticks and drove west until the rain stopped. We had a great holiday that year in Luxembourg.
Sunday 14th June 2015
Our last day at home for a while and plenty to do. It's just the last minute things now like filling up the car with diesel, inflating the tyres for towing, making sure we've got all the clothes we need. We almost always take more than we need. Hopefully we'll end up living in shorts and sandals. A trip to Tesco for our final supplies then that's us done.
Sunday evening and we're happy with what we've got done today, we even managed a brief sit out in the sun.
Monday 15th June 2015
Set off from home at 10.15 in fine weather and little wind. Made exceedingly good progress and didn't stop until the services at Clacket Lane, arriving there around 1.15pm
Arrived at Eurotunnel by 2.45 and our crossing wasn't until 5.06 but they allowed us to go earlier, and with no extra charge, taking the 3.40pm. With just 34 miles to our first nights stop in Dunkerque, we arrived there, earlier than expected, at 6pm local time. Tea and a walk round the site then an early night and looking forward to being in Aachen tomorrow.
Tuesday 16th June 2015
Woke to a cloudy sky, a light wind and 16˚C. We'd slept well and were looking forward to seeing Aachen again.
The journey was, fortunately, uneventful with no real holdups. We kept to the autoroutes, often finding ourselves in a line of up to 20 lorries. With no speed restrictions outside of towns, we were startled more than once by a Mercedes or similar hurtling past us at what must have been well over 100 mph.
Arrived Aachen 3.30pm, after some 220 miles, still cloudy but slight improvement in temperature. No one at reception but a note advising new arrivals to find a pitch and set up, someone will probably be round in the morning to take payment.
We were staying two nights so expected to meet the collector of fees at some stage. We did of course, later that evening. It was a Municipal site and the guy calls round twice a day, 8am and 5pm, to collect the fees otherwise the site is unattended.
Wednesday 17th June 2015
Blue skies, no wind and feeling warm already, we decided we would walk into Aachen, the site was that close. Following a cooked breakfast and a cold shower we set off for the city centre.
About that cold shower! We both rolled up to the ablutions oblivious to the fact that a € 1 coin was required if you preferred the water warm.
It remained hot and sunny for the length of the day and we walked our legs off visiting places we knew and places new.
Picture below is of a bar restaurant we visited, with Marian and Ian, one bitterly cold Boxing Day many years ago, and enjoyed French Onion Soup.
Today we had pasta, sat in the sun.
Thursday 18th June 2015
Today we make our way to Wurtzburg.
Not the best of journeys as it turned out, with, it seemed, roadworks every 20 miles. In fact it was the longest travelling day so far. At 236 miles it wasn't the longest distance, that was yet to come.
Arrived 4pm and set up alongside the river Main (pronounced Mine) We hadn't been there 10 minutes when the boat pictured below passed by.
Friday 19th June 2015
Tired from out journey yesterday we decided to have a day of rest. It rained on and off throughout the day and so we read, dozed, read some more then dozed again, waking only to eat. Good day.
Saw many boats as above plus several commercial barges.
Saturday 20th June 2015
The weekend's here and we're off to Passau, city of culture it's billed as.
We have been fortunate in our travels so far, experiencing delays through roadworks and general volume of traffic. Today was another game altogether. Almost as soon as we pulled away from the site in Wurtzburg the sat-nav told us the A3 was closed, I'm going to divert you she said. Usually that goes ok. On this occasion unfortunately, one of the roads on the diversion was closed and she got herself in a bit of a tizzy, trying to send us back through a closed road. We had to revert to that old fashioned means of navigation, we got out the map. In truth we always have a map out but rarely need to use it in anger. Between us we managed to get round the closed section of the A3 which had been around Nuremburg. It took us an extra 28 miles but were quite pleased with ourselves. At 258 miles that was our longest day.
Arrived 4pm Passau to a darkening sky. Funny little site, it was on three levels. Knowing our place, we took to the lower level. By now we were getting pretty snappy at setting up. Wendy has her jobs and I have mine and we say little, just get on with setting up. So now we are sitting down enjoying a post setup cup of tea when the heavens opened. In a caravan, when it rains, you can surely hear it. When it rains like it did this day it all but deafened us. Five minutes of downpour was followed by two to three minutes of hail stones. We congratulated ourselves on the timing.
Sunday 21st June 2015
Father's Day and, for us, a day of rest. Drove into Passau for diesel which I've bought over here for as little as € 1.140 per litre which equates to about 82pence per litre, well down on the 118.9ppl I pay at home. A quick tour, by car, of the city centre then back for lunch and quiet for the rest of the day.
Monday 22nd June 2015
We left Passau at 10.30am with a heavy sky but a light breeze. The final leg of our journey had begun. Little to say about the travelling, except for the fact we spotted several Kites flying above us as we made our way along the A8.
By 3pm we had arrived at Camping Wien Sud, situated in the middle of a former Palace Park, on the southwestern edge of Vienna. The sun had come out and the temperature, as we pulled up, was 30˚C.
It turned out to be pretty humid too and by the time we had set everything up, and, being here for a couple of weeks, this included the awning, we were hot and tired. When we had eaten we took a stroll around the site and immediately came upon two green woodpeckers. We saw more as the evening went on plus a family of hooded crows which we'd not seen before. We do like it here and will almost certainly stay for the two week
Tuesday 23rd June 2015
Woke to steady rain and a dark sky so, uninspired, we got up late and had a leisurely cooked breakfast. Wendy changed the bed and did two laundry loads of washing. Made our first excursion to the local supermarket which we can walk to from the site. It's brilliant. The fresh veg department is typical of most continental supermarkets, so many different types of vegetable, many of which we had never heard of or seen before.
I plan to go to an AA meeting tomorrow and it's right in the heart of the city so we decided to check out the venue and make our first journey into the centre of Vienna. I enjoy driving at all times and never more than when we're in a foreign city so it's no problem for me finding my way around. Of course sat-nav is an essential and we recalled the day we drove into Paris, many years ago and couldn't find our way back to the site in Creteil. We eventually arrived back around 1am, hot, tired and incredibly hungry. So, we found the meeting place and sussed out where to park then keyed in home on the sat-nav and was back in time to sit in the sun for an hour or so.
Wednesday 24th June 2015
Blue sky and bright sunshine greeted us when we woke. Incidentally, we sleep very well when away in fact I often sleep through the night whereas at home I'm often up twice and sometimes three times a night. Also, this is a city site so inevitably there is traffic with its rubber on tarmac whine. It doesn't disturb us though nor does the noddy car ee or ee or of the local police cars and the ambulances.
Clouded over quite quickly so we pottered about and caught up with a little care and maintenance.
My meeting was 12.30 to 1.30. Gave myself plenty of time and left here at 11am. Meeting is in the centre of Vienna and a little over 5 miles from here. Found the market easily and the car park so set off for a walk as I now had just under an hour to kill. The Naschmarkt in an amazing place where you can treat yourself to a meal from almost any country.
Great meeting, fair mix of nationalities. There about 30 of us, Americans making up the majority of the visitors followed by the Japanese, some German, French and an Indian. I was the only Brit.
In the afternoon we decided we would try out the local Eurospar. We did and weren't impressed so set off for a nearby shopping mall. Aiming for the Mall's multi-story car park I took the wrong turning and ended up in a private, commercial car park. I smart young chap took us immediately under his wing and arranged for us to exit the park.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
Thank goodness I don't do this for a living. I'm sorry the blog dried up folks but it suddenly got very hot both day and night and I completely lost the urge, and probably the ability, to put finger to keyboard. It remained hot and humid right up until we left Vienna to began our journey home.
We've had one or two little mishaps, or unexpected consequences, which I would like to share with you and managed to make some notes, so will finish this off when we are home.
I have managed, where we've had good wi-fi, to upload some pictures along the way so if you haven't looked lately, take another peek: Click here
That's it for now folks, we are currently in Metz, enjoying being back in France. This afternoon we sat in the dappled shade, alongside the Moselle in a balmy 24 degrees C.
