The end of it all

The last week of our five and a half month holiday was spent preparing ourselves to return to amore normal way of life.
Neels and I borrowed Pieter’s car and drove down to Maastricht to leave all the odds and ends that Carol had lent us, with Steve’s family. After having spent so long trundling along at a maximum speed of 90 kilometres per hour, it was almost frightening to be able to do 120, to say nothing of actually overtaking other vehicles! And where we would have considered Oss to Maastricht a pretty good day’s drive in the van, we went there and back in a little over a morning.
We also returned the van to the company who sold it to us, and sold it back to them for the prearranged sum. This is quite definitely the most economical way to do any long-term touring. According to the research that we did prior to the holiday, rental for the same period, in the size of van that we had, would have been almost double the cost.
The weather that had played such a big part in our daily lives, for so long, had deteriorated and there were strong signs that Autumn was approaching. We did have a couple of really brilliant days though, which we thoroughly enjoyed.
All too soon it was time to be taken to Dusseldorf to catch our return flight, this time a night-time flight via Munich. Our fears of being flung into jail for outstaying our visa in Europe were not realised although we did spend an anxious three-quarters of an hour in the Gendarmerie while they decided what to do about that. In the end we got a tap on the wrist and were sent on our way.
Before boarding the plane, we bought an English newspaper. I took out the puzzle pages and handed the rest over to Neels to read. My section also had the star signs in it and according to my particular forecast, this week was one in which a decision had to be made – a creative project with which I was involved, should either be shelved or should have far more effort applied to it. I took this to mean that this was the right moment to end this blog. The holiday was a fun adventure, not without its scary moments, but mostly fun, and writing the blog has helped me to remember where we have been and what we have done, but now we are home again the time has come to get back to normal, which is mainly very boring, so the story will end here.
To all of you who have been reading our saga, thank you for your interest. Now it is someone else’s turn to entertain us. Goodbye, and God bless you all.

Closing the circle

From our last stopover at Phalsbourg, we set ‘Jane’ to take us to Metz, some way north. As she kept trying to put us on to the motorway, which we didn’t want, we had to keep resetting ‘her’ from village to village until we reached a very quiet and scenic road along the side of the Moselle River. The weather was unbelievably hot, and we wondered how much longer it could last as we had already had reports that the weather in Holland was grey and cold. When we finally reached our campsite it seemed as if the whole of Holland and Belgium was there too! In fact over the past two weeks we have had so many Dutch camping companions that I am really beginning to wonder if there was anyone left to keep the businesses going! However, they all started pulling out very early the next morning and by evening both countries would have been re-populated again.

Our route to Oss in Holland was always going to be pretty much due north, and by now we were quite keen to get on and arrive there. However, we made a few detours along the way. The first was to Rodemack, which advertises itself as the ‘Carcassonne of Lorraine’, but it turned out to be a poor imitation. Quite quaint though, as most walled mediaeval towns are, and we had to give the citizens at least a nine out of ten for effort. This little place is way off the tourist route, but they still had lovely flowerboxes, and little plaques to tell visitors about the town. For me, probably the most fascinating part was the old ‘medicinal garden’ just outside the town walls which has been re-established; the herbs identified and their uses listed. The plaques there made very interesting reading.

After a night spent near Luxembourg, we had to set off, putting all our faith in ‘Jane’ as we discovered that we had no maps of either Belgium or Holland. Her first choice of route took us straight on to the motorway so at the first opportunity, we turned off and she willingly re-calculated our route. We were actually aiming for a campsite near Spa in Belgium, and stopped along the way to visit Stavelot. Having found parking near the centre of town we made a bee-line for the Tourist Information Centre to find out what we should see and where everything was. By now the weather had changed from a few days earlier and it was darkly overcast with the occasional spot of rain. Having collected a fistful of leaflets, we were about to leave when I asked one of the ladies why there were so many cars parked along the side of the road leading to the town. She looked at me a bit pityingly and said ‘Oh, don’t you know? It is the Belgian Grand Prix this weekend and people are already starting to arrive’. She also assured us that there was simply no chance of us being able to just arrive at a local campsite and expect to get space in it, and offered to phone around for us. However, we decided not to even try. We gave Stavelot a miss (it was raining by now, anyway) and drove on for another 50 kms and found ourselves a pleasant overnight spot near Maastricht.

The next day’s drive was going to be the last real day ’on the road’, so we decided that it would definitely be a ‘no motorway’ day. However, we were still without maps, and ‘Janes’ first choice of route looked alarmingly direct and was certainly a motorway, so we asked for an alternative route. That looked more interesting, so off we went. Oh dear! Within minutes she had directed us on to a road not much wider than the van, which had a really low bridge over it. The van is three metres high and this bridge was 2.8 metres, so there was no chance. As luck would have it, as soon as we stopped, three cars arrived behind us, but waited patiently while Neels executed a 99-point turn! To make things even more interesting, there was an electric cattle fence right on the edge of the road which he didn’t dare touch, but eventually he got us turned around. Back we went to the road we had turned out of and at the very next intersection ‘Jane’ instructed us to turn right again and once again found ourselves in an impossible road – very narrow and with cars parked on the side. As soon as we could, we turned back to the road we had been on previously and thought that if we just kept going north, she would eventually find a way to get us to Oss. So that is what we did, but in the end she won. She put us on a road that did a massive detour through part of Germany and then on to a motorway, but we didn’t dare to object any more. As our route started to turn westwards into the Dutch lowlands, we could see the countryside flattening out and canals started appearing and by mid-afternoon we were pulling up outside Pieter’s house in Oss.

The next two days were spent clearing out the van and getting it as spick and span as possible. It is difficult to believe that most of what came out of the van arrived in two suitcases five months ago and I really doubt if I will manage to get it all back into two suitcases to return home.

On Sunday Pieter had a surprise for Neels in the form of tickets for the Belgian Grand Prix, but he had only managed to get two of them so I did not go. Instead, I had a lovely day chatting to my cousin from Thailand, who had made time, during his precious annual leave, to come and see us on the way to visiting someone else in Holland. I think I got a good deal. My day was relaxing and quiet, spent indoors out of the cold grey weather while Pieter and Neels’ day was anything but that!

During this next week, we will take the van back to the company we bought it from and sell it back to them and then probably spend the last few days trying to work out how to squash everything back into the suitcases. We arrive back in South Africa in the early hours of Monday 15th September, and can’t wait to see all our friends again. To those of you who have read each week’s episode of our travels, I hope you have enjoyed ‘traveling’ with us as much as I have enjoyed telling you about it all.
Love to you all and looking forward to being able to speak to you all again soon.

Approaching the last lap

Leaving Masevaux, we traveled along a stupendous mountain road called the Route de Cretes (the Road of the Crests). This route was built as a strategic road during World War 1 to prevent the Germans from observing French troop movements. The entire route is 83 kms long and hugs the western side of the Vosges range, much of it through dense woodland. Every now and again, though, there are spectacular views out over Lorraine, especially from the tops of the mountain crests. Although it was a little hazy, we were lucky as this road is often shrouded in mist from end to end. The highest points of the mountains, in this area, are known as ‘ballons’, perhaps because their rounded tops resemble balloons, and the highest of them, The Grand Ballon, was on our route. When we stopped to admire the view and take a picture of the sign giving the height (1424 m), we were delighted to find a herd of chocolatey brown cattle sporting cow bells of different sizes. What a lovely sound as they moved around, grazing or shaking their heads.

Eventually we had to come down from the mountain tops and spent a night in a place with the extraordinary name of Xonrupt-Longemer beside a lake which was so still that it looked as if one could walk across it. It also had that ice-green tinge to it, so we didn’t try!

The town with the strange name is very close to Gerardmer, which suffered very badly in 1944. It was almost totally destroyed by the Germans and their ‘scorched earth’ policy, so we went along to see what had been saved and how they had recovered. All we found was a completely modern town and not even an attractive one at that, so we moved quickly on and picked up the Alsace Wine Route just south of Riquewihr. Now this is more like it!! I know we had said ‘No more mediaeval villages’, but if you could see them, you would know why we can’t resist them. This village is mostly 1500’s and is beautifully preserved. People actually live there and must surely curse the tourists who clog up the roads with their cars, and the pavements with their slow ambling, but perhaps they just accept it.

We couldn’t be on a wine route and not taste some wine, which in Alsace would have to be white, although they do produce some red too. And having tasted, we just had to buy some, of course. We also went into a Christmas Shop, which was quite magical. Every item on display had something to do with Christmas and the shop was a mass of winking, twinkling lights, silvery decorations twisting slowly in the air currents and sparkling tinsel. There were tree decorations by the hundred, made out of paper, plastic, wood, glass and crystal; Santa Claus’ in a dozen different shapes, sizes and materials; tinsel in every imaginable colour (and a few you wouldn’t dream of), and every thickness from pencil thin to as thick as a feather boa. And I haven’t even started on the table decorations – mats, serviettes, table cloths, crockery and cutlery and glasses! I have never seen anything like it and could have spent hours in there. In fact I couldn’t even come away with a photograph as it wasn’t allowed.
Dragging ourselves away at last, we drove on a little way and stopped for the night at the next village, Ribeauville. To our delight, the caravan park has a resident European Stork, which (dare I say this) stalks around the camp each evening inspecting some of the campers’ supper tables, hoping for a hand-out.

Ribeauville is yet another pretty village with masses of flowers. If that is beginning to sound blasé, it isn’t meant to, it just means that we are running out of superlatives. We have come to the conclusion that the wonderful displays of flowers are a massive team effort, with every house owner religiously picking off dead heads and leaves as soon as they appear, in their own flower-boxes and those around town. How else could they possibly keep everything looking so perfect. While in Ribeauville we had lunch at a small restaurant and what better item to choose off the menu that Quiche Lorraine and a French Salad!

Continuing along the wine route, we passed Otschwiller, Schenwiller, Blienschwiller, Goxwiller, Bernardswiller and Rosenwiller, but the only one we would have liked to stop in was Itterswiller. France has a system of grading participating villages according to their floral displays, Known as the Ville Fleuri grading, inspectors award stars which are then displayed at the entrance to the village with great pride. Most of the villages we have visited so far have been three-star, but Itterswiller is the only five-star village we have come across and we were totally unprepared for the sight that greeted us as we entered the town. It’s hard to make this little place sound so much better than what we have already seen, but it definitely was. The abundance of flower-boxes; the brilliance of the colours, the variety of blooms all contributed to the overall effect, and the finishing touch was creepers which had been trained along wires strung high above the road. If we were impressed, so were several hundred other people and there was no space to squeeze a large van into until we were well out of town again, and even then we couldn’t stop as the road had no ‘shoulders’. We considered looking for a place in which to turn and go back through the town again, but decided against it, and added it to the list for next time. And I didn’t even get a picture of it all from the van, I was just too amazed to think of picking up my camera!

We arrived at our selected campsite in Saverne, and for only the third time on this trip, took one look at it and drove away again. It was very crowded, but more than that, it just didn’t ‘feel’ right or nice. Instead we made for another site close by at Phalsbourg, where we found a beautiful site with only one other van there. We should have come to realize by now that if a campsite is ‘within easy walking distance’ of the nearest town, it is often very crowded and often has permanent campers i.e. itinerant workers which is unpleasant.

Our holiday is now rapidly coming to an end. We want to be back in Oss by the 3rd September, and ‘Jane’ tells us that we are about 470 kms away by the fastest route. ‘She’ has been a real boon and I doubt whether our travels would have been as pleasant without her. There would certainly have been far more tension about navigating through some of the bigger places we have been to. The down side is that she makes us terribly lazy about knowing where we are. Neels drives, watches the road and looks at the scenery while I gaze around at everything until we suddenly realize that we have no idea where we are on the map! But what a way to travel! Hassle-free and tension-free.