Three weeks tomorrow we will be driving back from the Tyrol, heading for Zeebrugge.
The plan is to overnight somewhere in Germany, and we have no return route defined yet.
Any recommendations for unknown gems en-route gratefully considered - some idyllic . characterful village with river or lake, whilst still being 'just of the motorway' will be welcome. Failing that, any suggestions for reliable budget chains would be interesting.
Now for a weekend with the atlas and sat nav
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I have assumed you're starting in Innsbruck and plugged the route into Google map directions.
I assume Alsace/Champagne are not allowed, being France.
Ulm is a very pretty and historic town (heavily reconstructed post war, but none the less attractive).
The Black Forest is very pretty (but you may feel it's too close to where you're staying).
Bit further North, stay on the Mosel. Cochem another pretty town, with a river. Lots of pretty villages in the wine producing areas, cannot suggest any, though.
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Innsbruck is about 3/4 of an hour down the road, and the Black Forest is a bit close. Prior to silicon chip gremlins affecting everything I touch this afternoon (five minutes and still IE hasn't crashed again) I had a quick look at Google maps and the Mosel region was somewhere that looked good - not been there since I was about 14, but I remember it being pretty, and it can't be that far off the route, as we haven't decided the route yet :-)
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Trier is quite an interesting place if you like history. Splits the journey about 60/40.
University town but a lot of Roman history.
Or, you could go a little further up the road and stay at Breidscheid in the Eifel region of Germany and be woken on Sunday morning to the sound of the Nürburgring. Access point half way round the circuit where the traffic sweeps down the hill, over the bridge and disappears up the otherside into the trees.
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I can't quite visualise if it is on your route but in the Mosel Valley, from Trier to Koblenz, one in 5 houses (roughly!) doen B&B. Pay a little extra for a Mosel Blick (river view) and and pick on that is not on the main road up the valley! One side is the main road and the other is a quieter service road.
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At the risk of giving the game away, we always stay at a small Landgasthof between Karlsruhe & Pirmasens when we make the journey (which we have done many times in the last few years!). For the first time in 10 years, we're off there for a short break of 4 nights tomorrow morning, having done just single nights for 10 years. Good food, lovely owners, very quiet, in a sleepy village. And the good thing is that it's almost exactly half way. €59 for two people in ensuite room including buffet Frühstück.
The route we always use is Munich-Augsburg-Stuttgart-Karlsruhe (all motorway A8), then cut across using road 10 from Karlsruhe to Pirmasens. From Pirmasens, pick up the motorway again and go via Zweibrücken to Luxembourg (follow the A8/Zweibrücken Pirmasens), then via Luxembourg (cheap petrol) to Brussels & Zeebrugge.
If you want more details I can let you have them, no point in boring everyone else!
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Frühstück you idle so-and-sos...
∋:o}
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All these umlouts are confusing.:)
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Mike - that would be very useful
Mods - could you pass Mike my email address ?
ta
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message received - thanks all round.
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Please update this borasport.
That would make a nice short weekend break for us and I would appreciate any suggestions.
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GMAC - I'm not sure I'd try what we did for a weekend !
Overnight ferry, Hull-Zeebrugge, then 560 miles to the far end of lake Geneva is more than enough for one day, and our experience suggests we had a clear run that day (sunday)
Switzerland to the Tyrol was not pleasant - heavy traffic and lots of roadworks, and Tyrol to Heidelberg was just as bad - pretty dire weather in the south, and heavy traffic. Both of these trips were saturdays, so I don't know if that is a factor.
Heidelberg to Zeebrugge was fine except for the motorway being closed for re-surfacing round Karlsruhe (preciouse little in the way of diversion signs) and roadworks on the Brussels ring road, but otherwise traffic was fairly light and we made good progress - somewhere on the A62 we saw only 4 cars in 15 miles, and we overtook them all !
Diesel prices weren't all that different, except in Luxembourg, where it was 1.18 euro / litre. There are two motorway service stations in Luxembourg, and on a sunday lunctime they were utterly, utterly, utterly rammed full of Dutch and Belgian caravanners tanking up, to the extent that the one we did pull in to had marshalls direction people to the pumps and it was a struggle to actually get to the car park. The second actually had people queuing on the carriageway on the approach. With a tank half full of Asda's cheapest, we decided it wasn't worth the hassle for the £4 it would have saved us, but then it appears that it is something like 50km to the next service station in France !
Mike H did come back to me with a B&B recommendation (for that, many thanks, Mike - I'll not give your secrets away) but we were to late to act on it, having booked somewhere in order to put SWMBO's mind at rest - the Ibis in Heidelberg. Bad decision. Heidelberg, Student Prince, Mario Lanza, foaming steins and joyful song. Well, the Student Prince is playing at the local theatre, and the drunks in the park outside the hotel had consumed the contents of many a foaming stein (this at 5pm). The hotel room felt smaller than the cabin on the ferry (no place for Iffy, then) and backed on to the station - I can tell you that services start at 6:30 on sunday morning.Getting to the hotel/station carpark involved driving through an underpass that was home to half a dozen people sleeping on pallets and mattresses. The old town was picturesque, but with more than its fair share of beggars, and when we got back to the hotel, the drunks in the park had been replaced by a pair of elderly bearded cyclists of the sort who appear to have all there wordly possesions hanging off their
And finally.....
Sat Navs are wonderful, until your in the tunnels under Basel and all you have is 'lost satellite signal'. And I think mine had an 'Easter Egg' - belting some part of Switzerland named after cheese, with not a junction in site, not even a side road or farm track, it suddenly announced 'In 50 yards, turn right on the Rue Des Morts', well by the time it's finished the announcement, I'd done a hundred yards, there wasn't a right turn to take, and even my limited french can work out 'the road of the dead' - no thank you !
Last edited by: borasport on Fri 12 Aug 11 at 17:24
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well it was an experience at least!
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much if it was very good indeed.
p.s. - remember to carry change.
paying a visist in the civilised parts of europe costs 70 cents- 1 euro, mainly to cover the costs of complex electronic turnstiles which dispense change and receipts that you can then use to get a discount against purchases
paying a visit in belgium, in a brand new, modern, curved glass and wood construction, costs 30 cents, which you still have to fling in a saucer in front of the traditional raddled old crone who will then dispense a limited amount of toilet paper from the rolls at her side
paying a visit in switzerland, well, its free, but I struggled to hold my bladder long enough to read the list on the door of things that are 'verboten' in the canton of Bern - this includes washing your hair, washing your feet and washing textiles. There were others, but if washing hair is forbidden, what do they think about 'peeing on the floor because you cant wait any longer'
Actually the other swiss service station we stopped at had a sex shop. to get to the restaurant, you have to walk past a display of vibrators and mannequins in nurses outfits with swiss flag nipple tags - what a strange country
Last edited by: borasport on Fri 12 Aug 11 at 18:39
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p.p.s. We arrived the weekend of the end of the Montreux Jazz Festival, and that weekend, the swiss had two days of (little reported, we saw this in the local paper) rioting in Montreux, Zurich and elsewhere.
Still it's hard to feel sympathy when you look at the tourist office history of the village we stayed in, and it says 'the tourist industry, in common with the rest of Switzerland, experienced a downturn in the years 1939-45'
My heart bleeds.
Last edited by: borasport on Fri 12 Aug 11 at 18:44
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The Swiss did very well out of WW2...they played both sides.
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And kept most of the spoils
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Doesn't sound a good trip, but at least you survived it :-) Never had a problem with the filling stations in Luxembourg. One of them (can't remember which) has a Credit Cards Only section which is often less busy as people are scared away, but they do work fine with UK cards.
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Mike
it wasn't torture all the way, so don't lose any sleep.
the service station we drove through was the one near Capellen, and i think that one has credit card only payment.
I wasn't counting at the time, but a quick look on google earth shows a six lane lorry fuel station and a 15 lane 'car' fuel station - suggests they are milking the situation a bit, what with Luxembourg being so rich in hydrocarbon resources.......
Last edited by: borasport on Fri 12 Aug 11 at 22:40
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Zimmer mit Fruhstuck - Mapmaker
