Club Motorhome Bloggers

News No 5 

The Danube Delta is a very special place.  We hired a boat and guide to take us out on the Delta; we opted for a 2 ½ hr trip which took us just a little way into it.  This is such a remote and peaceful place; we have never seen the like.  And of course, it is a haven for wildlife - especially birdlife.  We were lucky to choose to go late in the afternoon, as by then most of the other boats were returning, so when we got out into the open areas we were alone.  Our boatman was kind enough to shut down the outboard motor a few times so we could experience the quiet – and it was absolutely quiet save for the birdsong and the frogs sitting on the lilypads. 

Dracula’s Castle – so called; the castle at Bran with a tenuous connection to Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes.

As castles go it’s actually a rather cosy palace which you could imagine living in quite comfortably – providing you could keep it warm in the cold winters!

It’s a week now since I last updated, and a lot has happened.  We arrived in Timisoara after a quick pass through the border.  Timisoara was the scene of the events which led up to the overthrow of Causcescuae in 1989.    A pleasant surprise was that we were charged only 7 euro when we expected to pay 52!  The rate for >3.5 tonnes was clearly shown as 52, but presumably as we are not a commercial vehicle we were charged as a car – a good welcome to Romania. 

The next good thing was considerable surprise at how good the road was – something which has continued, but not without exception!  We talk about letting the potholes do the job of traffic calming – we have seen this a couple of times, once in a serious way.  The road up to the town was excellent – yes truly excellent – and the same when we left town.  But the town itself was truly terrible and required a slalom course to avoid the many potholes and not inconsiderable number of craters!  Apparently the EU has funded the main roads but the town itself is the responsibility of local government.  Secondary roads, seem to be funded by national govern and aren’t bad certainly no worse than equivalent roads at home.

 Timisoara reminded us of Ghent in Belgium

 because that’s how Ghent was when we visited some years ago

News No 2 

We spent 4 nights/3days in Prague.  It is, as those that know know, and as we had been told, a beautiful city.  All very walkable, and we did walk it – about 9 miles each day (measured, not guessed). 

These are some of the sights [apologies to those who have seen it for themselves] 

Wenceslas Square

One week into our travels and today we have arrived in the Czech Republic.  We stopped in Belgium (just!) the first night, then on to Antwerp, where we spent a full day visiting the city.  We have been round the bypass – a worthy rival to the M25 as a car park - many times, so it was good to stop and see more.  We had obviously never looked at the maps properly before, as we didn’t appreciate just what an important port it is and always has been.  We approached it along the coast this time and it was strange to see large ships across a flat landscape with no port or coastal infrastructure to obscure the view or set the scene; unfortunately we were too slow with the camera to get a picture, but it will stay in our memories nonetheless.

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  This place - ‘Deutches Eck’ [German Corner, we wonder how they thought the name up??!!] should be well known to river cruisers; it is the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine.

 We visited a church which was interesting enough [we’ve been spoilt – it takes quite some church/cathedral to impress us now as we’ve seen a few!], but it did have an excellent example of something we saw a lot of while we were in Germany

All went quiet and we got our peaceful night. By next morning the snow had cleared on the roads a little making progress much more enjoyable. Other than TomTom taking us into a residential area via a single track, meaning a reverse out of maybe a kilometre!

Once on the way the main roads were easy. The A15 towards San Sebastian is newish and free and stays far enough south of the mountains to keep fairly clear.

On entering France we headed to our old favourite stopover at Hendaye Plage only to find it had been redeveloped into a new barrier entry parking at a whopping 10€ a night for what amounts to a station carpark, services also no longer free and now require 4€. We pressed on to Biarritz. Also a new barrier entry to the Aire and now 12€ but that does include electricity and services and it IS Biarritz! 

Our next night was at a campsite we often use in the heart of Huesca. It's cheap in the winter due to a seasonal discount and we usually treat ourselves to a meal in their bar restaurant. The steaks are cooked over wood embers and are usually very good, sadly not this time though but never mind.

Our plan from here was to look at some Aires along our route towards the western end of the Pyrenees where we planned to cross into France.

This is where our comfort zone finished! As we left Huesca in freezing weather the skies soon changed from bright and sunny blue to heavy grey and all the roadside warnings were telling us the obvious - snow!

Well it wasn't long before the white stuff appeared and increased in strength. Our target was Jaca to some official parking by the fort. We got to Jaca, which was lovely in the snow, but there was no way we would have been able to access the parking with maybe a foot of snow on the side roads leading to it. So finding somewhere to turn around, no mean feat, we headed off towards Pamplona. This meant missing out on a couple or three Aires further into the Pyrenees - what had I been thinking of?