Tuesday August 30, Forst

Tonight's view looking over the vines.

It’s been one of those up and down days. A great start, after doing the van ablutions we left camp and headed to a large shoe store I had found in town. Have always managed to get shoes for my difficult feet in Germany, and at a good price. Last time we were here I bought some Skechers that I have worn to death and wanted to get some more. Not only did I find a pair but they had a 50% sale, only €32 or NZ$50, a real bargain.

Needed to do the laundry and found a place mentioned in P4N that had outdoor machines, similar to what we have used previously in France. After 30 minutes we finally found it, tucked in beside a restaurant. We parked under shade and I ended up using the big machine at €10 as the small machine was in use. Set it going and had time to drive to Lidl and do a shop. Arrived back and found that the machine had stopped after 35 minutes, it needed repairing!!! The washing still needed rinsing so had no option but to put it in the other machine which was now empty and rewash!!! Had our lunch while it washed and then transferred to the drier, although surprised that it really hadn’t spun it out that well. Then the drier took 1 hour! All in all, a very expensive exercise, but have emailed the company and they apologised and are offering me a refund of €10.

Set Jilly for a winery with a camping area, about 25 minutes away, and all going well and just about there when we hit a road closure! Needed a huge detour through lots of small villages, with me putting the brakes on and the driver doing and admirable job. We realise that these old villages were built before cars and large vehicles and now you see buses and trucks passing through them. It’s really a case of ducking and diving around parked cars and pulling over when other vehicles are coming.

With cars on our tail, we found the winery on a very busy road and couldn’t see where to enter and it looked to be in a pretty noisy place, so we flagged it and kept driving. In this grape growing area, which is the Pfalz region, many wineries offer motorhomes parking places so finally Ian pulled over in a bus stop and we found another off the main road about 10 minutes drive away. And it is just perfect, with a grass site, in amongst the vines and some shade which we are appreciating with close to 30C today. The winery is closed today, evidently a rest day in the area, don’t know why but the other campers, a Dutch couple could tell us that was the reason. We parked up and will check in tomorrow.

We had a great chat with our neighbours, Inneke and Johann, who speak excellent English and we ended up spending some time with them after dinner, talking over a coffee and a whiskey. A very enjoyable evening. 

Bridge over the Rhine

The washing machine set up.

 

Love these old towns, but not so easy for the driver!

Hear that the harvest in this
vineyard starts on Friday.