Snowchains in mud and then last night in Germany

Its Christmas in Big Ted!

Well I hope we don’t have many drives like the one from Neustadt to the Mosel/Moselle river. In the little half formed plan, we were having a stop midway, but he woke up and said “let’s just go”. It was still only going to be just over 2 hours, so fine by me.

I spent most of the ‘pretty’ part of the journey trying to persuade Doris to go the ‘pretty’ route and not go the long way via the motorway. She really is getting a bit touchy. You select her 2nd choice of route, and all seems fine, only to turn her off overnight and back on, she knows where she’s going, but has defaulted to her preferred route! Very irritating. She also seems to be possessed. There are two of her in there, just as

Finally reached an open campsite on the Mosel River!

one is saying “at the end of the road turn right” another is saying over the top of her “roadworks have been reported in 5 kilometres, you are on the fastest route.” Could they not just take it in turns? Getting closer and “such and such a Road is closed”, where ‘such and such’ is completely indecipherable, her German pronunciation is no better than her Spanish or French.... today for example how does Luxembourg suddenly become Luxembrag? Anyway not having a clue what road

Views down the Mosel River the next day - all is forgiven!

it was that was shut, but looking at her route, it all seems to make sense, perhaps it’s this road in the atlas that’s being built that she’s realised isn’t built yet. Stop for a wee and she forgets this useful traffic information she gets magically through the ether, so you have to wait for it to reappear, only this time it didn’t, but hey, if the road isn’t built, we can’t go on it. In the meantime time I can tell he’s getting to the stage of having had enough, but in the meantime

The walk up to the castle ruins was very pretty

I’ve been looking at both our preferred stopping options and have bad vibes about both of them being shut.... Get to the first, and yes, it’s shut, as is the second. Get the App up on the phone, ok, next one, just 5minutes further on. About to cross a bridge over the river and can see lots of flashing lights, and then an ambulance comes past us.....hmmmm. Fortunately the parking is before the flashing lights, ambulances and the air ambulance, as we certainly didn’t want to get involved in that, but it’s shut.

And as we got higher the views got better and better

At the Kriegerdenkmal, the castle ruins are higher up!

OK, we’ll have some lunch and hunt a bit more, 10 minutes to the next one (it’s obviously very popular here in the summer) but we are heading the wrong way along the river, but we won’t worry about that. Lovely spot, right by the river, no closed signs, but the water has been turned off and the electric points removed. He’s really had enough so “we are stopping anyway”. With that he pulls onto the grass and grinds to a halt! Oops, back and forth, churn it up a bit, no, we are going

But first, Jackie enjoys the views

nowhere. We never did buy the big rubber mats for just this occasion, well they are just big, and heavy, and expensive..... but, we do have snow chains!

We’ve practiced once, on the drive where you don’t mind kneeling down, but that wasn’t an option! Struggled with the first, then read the instructions and the second one went on much better. Start again with the first. Right, can’t drive hands completely smegged up, as were shoes. Squeezed the keys out of my pocket to the locker where we have the little shower head to make an outside shower. Handy that. Clean hands, shoes off, fingers

At the ruined castle and what a view!

crossed, no that’s just me, you drive..... hurrah we are off the grass and back on the track. You can barely see the snow chains, so full of mud are they, and the grass? It’s got a long time to grow back before next season... Snow chains off, both smegged up, again. There’s another one, another 10 minutes further on.... hit a diversion sign, can’t work out where it’s taking us, end up down a narrow street with the beer lorry unloading, blocking the road. Fortunately white van man, coming the other way, has remonstrated. Finally he moves, and we can both get through.

We actually got higher than this photo but the views were obscured by trees, so this was the best view, a bit higher than the ruins. Apparently it used to be a huge palace and was finally blown up by the French in 1734. It has an interesting history and the photo below details it:

Doris takes us to the campsite which we know is shut, but the signs point us to the Aire which seems to be through a lorry yard, but we follow them, only to find a man with a tractor and trailer trying to fix the entrance barrier. He makes a call and sends us to the exit barrier which goes up and we are in! We have a conversation with our no German and her no English, she has no idea why I’m looking so relieved and hugging her, but hey, I’m probably harmless. I suspect she got some idea of the day we’d had when she brought us a scrubbing brush to aid the cleaning of shoes and snow chains of ridiculous quantities of mud! Campsite location: 49°57'29.8"N 7°06'09.8"E

We did have a cup up tea before we started on the wine, but then we drank a lot of wine!

I know, first world problems, nobody died, there was no damage (except for a bit of grass), it was just all a little stressful!

The gate at the bridge in Trarbach leading to Traban

We decided to stay two nights, well we were already a day ahead, and there was no way we were going through all that again looking for a second spot along the river, so when we left it would be straight to Trier!

Wednesday was lovely, cold, 2degrees the maximum forecast, but clear and sunny. We walked along the river to Traben-Trarbach, actually two towns, one either side of the river. Tourist information shut (Wednesday) and Christmas market, in the wine cellars of half a dozen vineyards only on on the weekend. Bad vibes again! We do find a street map and make our way up to the ruined castle, for the best view. Only to find we can go up, quite a lot further up. Fab views. Couldn’t see the castle from the campsite in daylight, but once it was lit up in the dark it was obvious!

Christmas market in Trier and the Dom (Cathedral) St Peters

Today Trier, slow route along the river? Fast along the motorway? Foggy, cold and very frosty, so what’s the point of a scenic drive? Except that due to a road closure we ended way up high, in the fog, steep roads, no visibility, fortunately no black ice either, not enjoying it very much! Not a problem however, got to Trier, half an hour walk along the river, interesting old town, where old is Roman. We didn’t get very involved in that, but it was interesting, then lovely medieval buildings and Christmas market. Sausage in a bun, waffle with Nutella, still foggy, still only 2degrees, back for a blog then! Parking location: 49°44'27.6"N 6°37'29.4"E

Impressive interior to the Dom

Normally I know what we are eating, today I had options, but nothing grabbed me, Brian kept offering to ‘do’ potatoes....? Not much help if my decision was risotto. Went to the ‘tins box’ to get some sweet corn and found an 800g tin of something German. Best guess, lentil soup with pork. Has onions, potatoes , carrots etc in, so looks like I’m let off cooking, hurrah, well, we need to eat it in case we want to buy some more..... tomorrow, before we leave Germany for Luxembourg....perhaps it’s too late already!

5m high statue of Karl Marx in Trier. Why? Because he was born in Trier

Here's what the information board said about him

The 'Porta Nigra' in Trier. It is, apparently, the worlds best preserved Roman city gate, built in 170 AD and is a UNESCO site. In fact Trier is jammed full of Roman ruins, it is Germany's oldest city and the only Roman Imperial residence north of the Alps. Seven Roman UNESCO World Heritage sites are in the city centre. Its also very close to the border and, tomorrow, we cross into tiny Luxembourg