We looked at today’s route over breakfast this morning and again decided to change slightly and go for the shorter route.
Initially this morning the route took us through Black Forrest country. Eyes peeled for wildlife!! 🦌 🦡 🦝
Speaking of wildlife, it’s just occurred to me that I forgot to mention something (wildlife or wild used to be life) in the 2nd leg blog. We were driving towards Luxembourg and we’d seen many items of roadkill (mainly deer). I noticed yet another carcass lying at the roadside and had to have a double take. It wasn’t a deer this time. Initially I thought badger but as we got closer I noticed a striped bushy tail. My wildlife knowledge isn’t great but the only animal I could think of that size with a tail like that was a Racoon. I thought I was seeing things and took a minute to mention this to Mrs because I didn’t want to make a complete fool of myself because, Racoons are as far as I knew were not from this neck of the woods. When I did though Mrs being Mrs goes onto google and to both our amazement Luxembourg and Northeastern France/Belgium actually does have a Racoon population. Apparently they were accidentally introduced in the 1930’s as part of the fur trade. 🦝 🤷🏻♂️
So far, Mrs has been more than accommodating in going along with me living my Tangerine Dream, so when we noticed there was a German version of a designer outlet at the far end of the other route, I thought she should be rewarded for her patience and enthusiasm with a wee bit of retail therapy. 😂
To be fair this turned out to be a welcome break from driving. I was quite happy to chill out with my coffee ☕️ sitting outside in the sun.
Motorway driving is a necessary evil to get here, certainly not my idea of fun though. Sure we could have avoided motorways but the trip would have taken much much longer. Like I say though, small price to pay to be able to drive the roads we’ve driven in and around the Alps🗻.
We arrived at Campinplatz Lohmar (Cologne) at about 17:30, pretty decent timing really.
We are becoming dab hands setting up camp now so it didn’t take long till we we all sorted and set up. We were parked up in a nice pitch by the river. Just wish I’d had my fly rod with me. 🎣😂
Mrs set about sorting tea as I did some plane spotting. 😂🙈🛬 Cooked on the Cob again delicious btw. 😋🍗
Tomorrow will see us take a shorter journey, 190 miles through northern Germany, past Düsseldorf, into Netherlands, past Utrecht and onto Amsterdam where we catch the overnight ferry ⛴️ to Newcastle.
Definitely on the homeward bound legs now. Won’t be long till we’re back home and seeing these nutters. Have to admit I’ve missed the dogs. Spoken to the kids plenty times but whilst out dogs are amazing, they can’t talk. 😂
Auf Wiedersehen 👋👋👋👋👋
Ps, we are still in Germany. I’ve not mentioned the war to anyone yet. 😂🤣😂