I've filled myself up with breakfast, said hello to many of the hotel staff (they all seem to remember my name) and passed the security guards stationed outside the hotel room next to mine (????) so have a few minutes to document another day of the journey before I have to pack and leave for the office.
Day 16 (Friday)Today is to be a relaxed day. However, as I previously mentioned this is one of those campgrounds with static trailer homes - i.e. touring trailers you can park there all year and use each weekend (not for living in 365 days a year though). The occupants are really noisy. Music blaring, TVs left on all day, people shouting across the camp ground to other groups, it all echos around. These occupants are clearly not 'natures friends' whatever the name of the campground suggests.
Sally wonders whether the problem is the people who OWN the static trailers, or whether it is the members of their family they allow to use their trailer at weekends for parties. The campground host clearly doesn't care, but he is a scruffy figure who wanders around smoking continuously.
The two older German guys in the new motorhome next to ours curse the noisy neighbors and retreat to the quiet of their camper.
We've spent some time chatting to them. They have been allowed out because their wives wanted a trip to Amsterdam, so they have left the girls to it and taken their motorhome to this campground in the forest for a relaxing weekend.
The more talkative of the two is an ex-teacher. He apologizes for is absolutely perfect English explaining that he hasn't really used it since he learned it 40 years ago. I have a look around his small class A motorhome. It is based on a Fiat van chassis with a coach built body on it and is carefully designed so the weights and dimensions are just within certain boundaries outside of which it travel would become more expensive - specifically under 3500kg gross and under 7m long - the latter figure affects the cost of ferries considerably and he is a huge whiskey lover and plans to use this RV to tour Scotland (again) and Ireland (also again). The RV was a gift from his daughter who as a captain with Lufthansa is hansomly paid. His daughter told him this was a thank-you for all the camping trips he took her on, but he had to promise to take the grand-children camping in it when they were old enough - suddenly the investment in a $110,000 RV as a gift starts to make more sense.
After a relaxing start to the day we set off on a hike through the forests and up to an old fortification built out of one of the sand stone pillars common in this area. Just below that was a very nice bierkeller with a garden in the sun. I fancied trying a pint or several, but Sally pointed out (correctly) that if we did we wouldn't feel like doing anything for the rest of the day (that suited me though).
Instead we took a more varied route back to the campground along some forestry tracks:
