BootsnAll Travel Network



on every corner

by Rach
Bacharach, Germany

A castle on every corner, we’d read. Well *that* was surely a spot of for-the-tourist’s-benefit exaggeration. But we figured there would be a degree of truth in the statement. We rounded our first corner, and lo and behold, there was a castle perched on the hill. Round the second corner was a castle on the other side of the river. And the next one and the next. There really was a castle on every corner! We snapped some poor through-the-windscreen shots of them as proof, but as photographic pieces, they won’t be getting any awards.

We zipped past four or five castles without managing to get in to the carparks (German Road Authorities take note: it would be a great idea to advertise castle parking at least 100m before the entrance….a sign as you go past is a tad too late!). Eventually we saw one with some very cute houses alongside the road too. Of course we overshot the main carparks, and then happened upon a great one with plenty of space.  Just the spot to pull in and go photo-hunting in the town. Lo and behold again….the town turned out to be another UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one of the better ones at that. It was simply delightful. In the space of an hour we managed to walk past vineyards, around some of the city wall, past six-hundred-plus-year-old houses, through tower gates, past churches and the ruins of a once-magnificent intricate Gothic structure. The painted eaves, Tudor timber framing, window boxes overflowing with flowers, carved wooden doors, painted captions on walls could have kept us captivated for days! It was all just so beautiful. Pretty. Delightful.

Decision-time. Do we press on or would this carpark make a not-at-all-bad sleeping spot for the night? There are, after all, no signs verboten-ing it! A playground right next door and big green park mean the children beg for this to be the end of the day’s driving. Problem is, we’ve only come 10km up the river!!!
Who cares? It’s a lovely spot and we don’t know what we’ll find further on. We’ll stay.

We might have got a bit further if we’d got away a bit earlier this morning. Or even if we’d left earlier this afternoon! As it was, we didn’t leave town until after 3pm. In usual old Womo fashion, something had broken (the tap for turning the pump on, so not exactly a luxury item that could be dispensed with for a few days), and the nearest likely source of parts for repair was in the opposite direction to that in which we wished to travel. Having spent enough time already sitting outside repair shops, I suggested the men go off on a part-finding mission and leave the rest of us to take a walk by the Rhein. What a lovely time we had too. Along two parallel stony tracks through stinging nettle taller than the tallest of us, big trees towering overhead, we whistled (literally – do you remember whistling with pieces of grass?) This opened into a large grassy field and a small-scale farm/orchard/vineyard/garden complete with horse. Around a bend and there ahead, up on a tall pylon-like structure was a stork’s nest. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen one. I didn’t realise they are so big – it must have been at least 1.5m across, possibly even more. And I didn’t know they make them, not with twigs, but with massive sticks, branches even. It was an impressive home. To make the picture perfect, there was a stork standing on the edge of the nest on one leg, beak and body in stunning silhouette. And we hadn’t taken the camera. We stopped and looked and looked and looked in awe.
It didn’t matter what happened on the rest of the walk – this had made it totally worthwhile. But it was not to be the end. We would stand under the Hindenburger Bridge ruins and play with echoes – owl calls, foot stomping, whistling – it all echoed.
The men, on the other hand, were not having such a wonderful time. They were encountering the usual closed autobahn exits and detouring around the countryside – not that they were complaining; they returned eventually, mission accomplished.

All that took us through to almost lunchtime and we still needed to hit the supermarket as we may not be able to get supplies for a few days. While I shopped, a couple of kids made lunch and Rob miraculously fixed the tap. The good thing about stopping in a supermarket carpark for lunch is that you can run in and buy icecreams!
We thought we were ready to hit the road, but straight across the other side was a higgeldy-piggeldy closed-looking bicycle shop. As we had been on the lookout for a new chain and brake lever (due to the fact that we bought falling-apart dirt cheap bikes at the market!), it seemed the ideal place to pull in. While it was to be another successful encounter, it was not to be a quick one. The old man was most helpful, but not quick. He rummaged around out the back in the dark for a few minutes, then turned the light on so he could see….he put each piece away as we looked at it, requiring us to ask for them again so that we could compare (he then thought he didn’t have any others – but we had already seen them!!!!!) He took an age to find out the price of the reconditioned bikes – and had himself a jolly good chuckle when we asked to see his cheapest bike. Yes, it was a charming wee encounter.
Finally we were ready to leave. A wriggle through town to autobahn and we would be on our way northwards, closely following the river. Rob saw the autobahn sign too late to make the turn. Dad, who was driving The Other Van, caught sight just in time and made the fraction-of-a-second-call to go the right way rather than stay with Rob.
There was nowhere easy for us to wait and we ended up back in a town, the  very same one we had left hours before! And we would yet wait there another half hour, inspecting local Spargel (asparagus, which is currently all the rage in its blanched white glory), viewing a hilltop monument from another vantage point, spotting another Rathaus, taking a closer look at a castle over the river…and waiting, debating whether or not to move on). Finally The Bear Cave would come in to view and we would leave Bingen at the time we would normally be thinking about finding somewhere to pull over for a cuppa and pretzels.
So we did well to get 10km AND find a good parking spot AND a nice town to wander AND a children’s playground AND waste-dumping-and-fresh-water-facilities today!
Tonight as the sun sets over the hills bowing down to the river’s edge, we are aware of the sounds of the night. On either side of the river are tracks, along which trains thunder at amazingly regular intervals. Almost as frequently, barges huff their way up or chug their way down the river – and this river is a mere 3 metres from where we sit (every time I look up there’s another boat sliding past and soon their wake laps onto the shore in great breaking waves). In an awesome display of power, a slender white swan pumped her wings and whooshed across the water, sounding more like a herd of horses than a graceful bird. Then there’s the “Hallo hallo” close enough to our door for us to realise it’s directed at us. With sinking heart that we are about to be moved on (just when the children have settled to slumber), we open up. But it’s just fellow tourists wanting to know if we are ALLOWED to park here overnight. I explain about the signs we’ve found, our belief and hope that we are legal, and enquire of they are travelling. They are, and I suspect it’s them that pulls up next to us in a few minutes time.
Meanwhile, out our back window I watch another boat loaded with containers go past, a long goods train overtakes it, and another goes in the opposite direction in front of us and the birds continue to sing as the last light disappears. At precisely this moment we hear the sound of voices. We were right! We had watched a group of four old men suit up in wetsuits as we ate dinner. When they didn’t slip into the river, but climbed into a car, we revised our “they’re going freshwater crayfish diving” theory to “they’re going to drive up river, float down and then use the car they’ve left here to go back and get the other one.” It would seem that‘s exactly what they did. And now, dum-dum-dumming the Pink Panther tune, they are wading ashore, causing Rob to surmise, they have just done their dry run (or, rather wet run) for robbing a bank upriver and having a novel getaway plan! When you read about it in the newspaper, remember us <wink>

Time on the road: 2 hours
Distance covered: 40km (10km up river, and a 30km detour for The Bear Cave)



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