Day 16 - Hiking in the heat

Today we explored the trails and hills behind the campsite. From looking at different maps we could tell there were a lot of official footpaths and even some ruins of a castle to explore, so once breakfast had gone down, we set off. Up, up and up was how I would describe the first couple kms of the route. All the trails are very obvious within the forest and well signposted. There was no one else around so we let Marla off lead for a good chunk of the walk. It’s the first time since being away she’s had a proper off lead walk and she needed it! She did ruin it for herself when she found a stinky mud puddle to roll in, thankfully the camp has a warm dog shower and we bought doggy shampoo. We were trying to follow the trails to the ruins, unfortunately we came up against a blocked off path and lots of warning signs confirming the trail was closed. So we followed some other signs for a circular route to explore the woods a bit more before retracing our steps. All in all, a good couple of hours in the woods where it was lovely and cool! Back to camp for lunch and the sun was really starting to warm up, so the afternoon was spent hopping around the pitch trying to find some shade.
Marla made a friend in the enclosed doggy fields a chocolate Labrador. I’ve no idea what his name was, the owner was very lovely but she didn’t speak English and I don’t speak German so we just smiled and watched the dogs chase each other around the field. With some sign language we managed to say how old the dogs were, they were both three - but the chocolate boy seemed a bit more playful than Marla, so I called time on them after 10 mins. The heat didn’t really ease off, so I treated Marla to a doggy ice cream from the camp shop. They also have a great selection of dog treats that I’m sure we’ll stock up on before leaving. Our dinner tonight was red cabbage, spätzle and frikadellen (vegan). That was super tasty, although we are having some issues with lighting the oven, so it all had to be cooked on the hob. Thank goodness we had enough pans! Our new LPG adapters arrived today, we have double checked and they will definitely work so we will try again and refill our tanks tomorrow while we are out and about or Sunday when we are moving camp.Read more