Eschenbach

This morning we were up at 6:30am to the sound of the barking dog in the background. I’d already been laying there for an hour listening to it trying to cover my ears up and ignore it before I gave in and got up.
We had a couple of coffees and then put the bed stuff away and finally at 8am the dog was either let in, shut up if it’s own accord or shot.
Either way it stopped barking and we could have breakfast in peace.
It was a chilly start to the day of just 7°c outside and 11°c inside but the sun was coming up and we already had blue skies and a long day of driving ahead of us and at 9am we left our park up. I still wanted to leave Germany asap and had decided not to stop at any more towns on the Romantic Road but stick to the route as best we could. Ellie had mentioned a couple of days ago that we’d need to do more washing soon so my plan of attack was to stick to the romantic road down as far as Augsburg. There we would take an 18 mile diversion west along the autobahn to some services that had a laundrette.
The road to Augsburg was pretty, with rolling hills and lots of green fields and we passed hundreds of motorhomes heading northbound and we were following 2 more southbound. For the off season this road is still hectic I wouldn’t want to do it in the summer.
Leaving the Romantic Road at Augsburg we got straight onto the autobahn. I had always thought the autobahn was one major motorway in Germany because if you mention Germany to any driver they always say did you go on the autobahn.
It turns out the autobahn is German for motorway so there’s lots and Germany doesn’t actually have any speed limits unless stated. Even on single track roads you can drive as fast as you like. Unless your a lorry and then your restricted to 40mph in single track highway and 60 mph on motorways and duel carriageways.
Once on the autobahn I set the cruise control to 62mph and just sat in the right hand (slow) lane moving to the middle to pass Lorry’s if I needed. We quickly realised that the far left (fast) lane was mainly for BMW, Mercedes and Audi drivers who were in a mega hurry going to put a fire out. The speed of some of them was unbelievable. Occasionally we’d see a different make of car in the fast lane closely followed by a BMW almost pushing it out of the way. For a Sunday the roads were crazy busy.
18 miles later we exited the autobahn at some crazy services were there was a huge truck stop, a McDonalds and a massive shell garage. I say crazy because there was hundreds of parking bays but to get to them we had to pay which we weren’t willing to do.
At the back of the petrol station we found the self service laundrette, put in our dirty washing and then drove to a small piece of gravelled wasteland and parked up. Then we had Wanda toasties for lunch and after that we then put the washing in the dryer for 40 mins and located a tap and topped our fresh water up free of charge.
With the washing done we set back off down the autobahn for the 18 mile journey back to Augsburg where we left, and then we rejoined the romantic road heading south towards Fussen.
Fussen is the last stop on the romantic Road but unfortunately there are no free park ups so we wouldn’t be going there today, but in a small village on route called Peiting just before Fussen, I found a lovely little place that was free for 5 motorhomes next to a park that has walking and bike trails and that was our stop for the night.
We arrived in Peiting just after 3pm and we’d had a productive day getting the washing done. There was nowhere else on the route I felt like I wanted to stop and Ellie said the same. All in all the romantic road is pretty uninspiring and well overhyped. So far we’ve been lucky and not paid for a single camp on route but if we had paid the going rate of €15 over the past 21 days we would be significantly poorer and free park ups were hard to find.
We got the last Motorhome space in Peiting and parked inbetween 2 sliding door camper vans. It is a lovely spot with cows in a field behind us all with bells on, a footpath leading off into the distance and a gravel cycle path leading off in another direction.
We set Wanda up, flicked the switch over to the leisure battery, put the fridge on gas and then put the kettle on. While Ellie made tea and coffee I checked my app for a decent biking route and I found one.
I quickly drank my coffee, got changed and then took my bike off the back. Once the GPS was loaded with the route I set off. This was my first ride since Abdullah in the bike shop had repaired my gears and straight away I noticed the difference. I would even say they are the best they have ever been, just a tap on the lever and the gear change is as smooth as a hot knife through butter.
I had a lovely ride, all of it on cyclepaths running around a huge reservoir, mainly on gravel tracks and sometimes running in and out of woods and passing small picturesque villages. I had 3 big climbs on route one taking me up a 14% gradient and I even had a race with 2 mountain bikers. They never stood a chance even with my cracked ribs, and I left them struggling to match my speed as I pulled away up an 8% gradient which lasted 800 meters and I never saw them again.
The ride was predicted to take me 2.5 hours and I did it in 1.5 and except for the odd twinge when I was heavy breathing I felt pretty good.
I arrived back at Wanda just after 5pm, put my bike back on the back, covered it up and went in beaming. I’d finally had one decent ride in Germany.
Ellie was making dinner of some meatball and chopped tomato concoction that even she didn’t know what it was and once I got changed and then we sat down and had dinner. It was weird.
Once dinner and the washing up was done we both got our pyjamas on and then we settled in for night ready for our last day in Germany tomorrow.Read more