AWOL247

The Kalte Quelle is a small, friendly place on the banks of the Main. Guests are more than welcome to take a plunge (‘at own risk’) in the river. This narrow, unassuming sliver of water looked inoccuous enough until a huge tanker came rumbling down it, sending waves crashing to the banks then back out into the river. Narrow but deep, then.

But very beautiful, with vineyards rising on the hills behind it, tucked away, quiet and, when we were there at least, bathed in sunshine. As journey ends go, not bad at all.

All that remained in the morning was to check out and head back. Remagen. Rain. Reality.

We said our goodbyes to Péa, Adam and Bavaria. For our pit stop on the way back to Remagen, we would have happily stayed at the Albtal again but we decided to head due north up the A7 to Würzburg. We’d found a campingplatz on the Main called the Kalte Quelle that looked good, so why retrace steps?

The journey wasn’t ideal (congestion, roadworks, terrible road surface) but enlivened by a stop at the Memmingen Kunst-Raststätte (transl. ‘art service station’) – part service station, part Gaudi pastiche, with Mr Whippy cones (serving the purpose of which, we know not what), ‘mood rooms’, extensive mosaic work, and bird song played in the toilets. We sipped coffee in the outside area, front left of the door, as Wolfgang Petry serenaded us with ‘Verlieben, verloren…’ And why not? It was great.

Art service stations aside, we exhaled as we were guided by the campingplatz signage and attendant into a field full of Wohnmobilen on the bank of the River Main. Didn’t look much like the pictures. Wasn’t much like the pictures. Wasn’t on the right side of the Main, either. Wasn’t the right campingplatz.

Programming the SatNav will require some honing, going forward, but thankfully the nearest bridge across the Main wasn’t too far back, so another 30 minutes later we were pulling into the Kalte Quelle.

We’d had our Alpsee sojourn snatched away from us by a violent storm. But we weren’t giving up that easily. Our last day in Bavaria and the skies were clear. We checked out of the Gitzy and headed north east. After coffee in Immenstadt we made for the exact same spot where we’d been with Péa & Adam before the heavens had opened.

It turned out to be a pretty much perfect day (even though that melt water from the Alps is damn cold). It’s a very beautiful spot in an equally beautiful part of the world.

In failing light, we headed back to Oberstaufen for Pommes and an early night.

The Gitzy had really got under our skin. Schlager was everywhere. They even had their very own Schlager songs, professionally written and recorded, for the kids activities (equally enjoyed by the adults).

So the date for leaving this relaxed, fun-loving place and heading back home underwent various revisions. We extended once because we didn’t want to leave. We extended again because (a) we didn’t want to leave and (b) the weather forecast suggested we’d be taking down an 8-person canvas tent in the pouring rain (the forecast was right). Exit day was now Friday 7th August.

We decided we’d take down the tent on the 6th, but not before one final trip to Fischbach. Fischbach proved difficult to leave of course, so dismantling the tent became a race against the sinking sun. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the groundsheet had decided it wanted to take a sizeable chunk of the Gitzy (specifically the muddy bit) home with it.

Oberstaufen, a small town nestled in the Allgäu. Home to cows with bells, squeaky clean air, 24-hour cheese vending machines, milk so thick you can use it as pommade, beautiful scenery, Lederhosen, the Alpsee, and our dear old friends Péa & Adam, whom we hadn’t seen for 3 years since they’d become early enlistees to the UK’s Brexit brain drain.

We finally arrived Saturday lunchtime. It’s only an hour’s drive from the Gitzy, but we were taking our mornings slowly. After a long overdue catch up and the first proper meal we’d had since we’d left Remagen (it was Pfifferlinge season and the place had a trout farm – an auspicious comeback), we headed to the Alpsee, Oberstaufen’s majestic bathing lake. As the sun blazed down, we passed en route through the village of Bad Rain. Portentous much?

Nursing an Aperol Spritz and gazing down this beautiful body of water from its easternmost tip, one of Bavaria’s famed storms thundered down the valley, scattering sun seekers, capsizing paddle boarders and ripping parasols from their moorings, leaving those hoping for a sudden improvement in the situation to congregate around the toilets, their drinks diluted beyond recognition with heavenly offerings. It didn’t come, at least, not soon enough. We retreated, but vowed to be back.

This weekend was about the people, though, and a fantastic time was had, eating cheese, drinking beer, talking crap, eating cheese – the Oberstaufen way. We left on Monday morning with a heavy heart but vowing to meet up later in the week before our time in Bavaria was up.

We had new neighbours at the Gitzy, Richard & Michaela. Lovely people. For a start, they hadn’t brought a vehicle the size of a modest family home that blocked out all our light. They were also pretty new to this camping lark, so we could confide in them about our rookie errors without too much sense of shame (apart from the paddle – that was just dumb). They even did a fine line in homemade tomato sauce.

They’d been out exploring the area and had stumbled across a place called Fischbach, near Friedrichshafen on the banks of Lake Constance. While Lindenhofpark was very nice, we’d been hoping that, as well as remembering the paddle, we might find something a little less ‘established’ for our water sports. Fischbach sounded perfect.

It didn’t disappoint. It was a proper beach, accessible through an area of woodland with paths weaving along the shoreline. The water was shallower and warmer and you could walk a fair way out into the lake with your head still above water. The sand on the shore gave way to soft algae on the lake bed as zeppelins drifted silently overhead.

An afternoon jaunt across the border to Austria. No border checks. It’s called ‘freedom of movement’, something that certain members of British society had chosen, in their wisdom, to relinquish in favour of somehow clawing something abstract back from those nasty European people who have ruined their country. Or was it the immigrants? Sorry, lost track of their latest scapegoat. (UPDATE: it’s now also ‘do-gooder’ ‘lefty lawyers’ (Src: Priti Patel & Boris Johnson)).

We’d bought a paddle board which had so far seen no sign of water. Lake Constance, a 63km-long lake with the Swiss, Austrian and Bavarian Alps rising majestically behind it seemed like a decent enough baptism but we needed something a bit more ‘beachy’ than Lindau harbour to launch the thing.

The Lindenhofpark, a short drive from Lindau, had a jetty, small beach, café and lawns, teeming with like-minded people plunging into the lake to cool off. The christening of the paddle board was slightly marred by the fact that we forgot to bring the paddle.

Our brand new tent. A Life Under Canvas Touareg bell tent. Sleeps 8, so perfect for two people, particularly as it takes 2 people to lift it.

It was a breeze to set up though, and finally we could offload the mountain of interior decorations, rugs, throws, cushions and lights hoarded in the van to cosy it up.

We plugged in our hired CEE adapter like seasoned pros, a nod of shared understanding to our fellow professionals. We inflated our air bed with integral electrical pump (no-one uses foot pumps here).

As darkness fell, we noticed something else about the benefits of our CEE adapter. The van’s underfloor heating and temperature controller AND our induction hob, both of which we’d written off as broken and in need of professional attention, sprang into life. WE… ARE… SMOKIN’!

The ‘mix up’ with the Isny dates was soon eclipsed by something far more pressing. The power was out – no fridge, no nothing. One of us scrambled to notify Gitzy staff, the other hastily scoured the internet for answers.

As we waited in searing heat for the man in the golf cart (we’d heard his name was Herr Kutter – no scissors jokes, please) to come and fix our power outage, the internet search was proving enlightening, almost overly so. There appeared to be something called a 3 pin CEE adapter involved – a cable with a 3 pin plug on one end and a 2 pin socket on the other. Looking around the charging points, everyone seemed to have one. Apart from us.

Perhaps this was the solution preferred by most campers over our current method of jamming our 2 pin plug into the 3 pin socket at the charging point. Perhaps this might explain the raised eyebrows when we’d adopted this method both here and at the Albtal. Perhaps this might explain… “Shit. I think we’ve tripped the charging point. We need a 3 pin CEE adapter.”

To be precise, we needed it BEFORE the man in the golf cart came to fix our power outage and noticed we didn’t have one.

Sure enough,  you could hire 3-pin CEEs from Gitzy reception – a service presumably geared towards campers who’d forgotten to bring one, as opposed to those who had no idea they existed, let alone that they needed one.

Back at the van, still no sign of the man in the golf cart – he was run ragged showing new arrivals their pitch. With the CEE connected, the Bulli sprang into life and the fridge whirred reassuringly.

When Herr Kutter did show, he couldn’t remember why he had a note to come see us. We used the opportunity to avoid any discussion of power outages and check availability for a space where we could pitch our tent. There were 2 options, we chose the one backing onto the woods. 30 minutes later we were winding our way past the 2 Gitzy lakes to our new home.