6th Sept 2011 – Enkirch, Mosel

What an achievement! For the first time in our lives we have been thrown off a campsite! Intended to stay at Bernkastel Stellplatz yesterday. Very busy when we arrived – vehicles queuing up to enter and leave past the bottleneck which was the service point. Very tight getting in, avoiding wing mirrors and sharp dips in the ground. Stellplatz not particularly attractive, dusty, marked pitches set out in terraces, very open, little privacy, but we were only staying for one night so what the hell?  Found pitch and just trying to work out how electric worked when along came grumpy old man in beaten up old car. His attempts to be clever in English didn’t quite work as we didn’t really get his drift. Should have stuck to German. ‘Do you own this place?’ he asked. ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t know who the owners are’. ‘Can you read? - Do I come in England and drive in your house without asking?’ Finally worked out that we should have registered before finding a pitch. Old man foaming at mouth by now – probably thinking that besides being thieving ner do wells trying to enter his Stellplatz without paying, we’re also two insolent whipper snappers being deliberately obtuse in not understanding his attempts at sarcasm in English. (Warning – unless you’re very confident and sure that you fully understand the culture of another country, Do not attempt humour in that country’s language, it’ll only end in embarrassment or worse). G:‘Sorry, we didn’t see the signs, we just followed the other vans in.’ Old Man: ‘How long do you stay?’, G: ‘Just the one night’, Old Man: ‘Get out now!’. We would gladly have done so but for the queue and bottle neck. In the event, it took us quarter of an hour to get off the site.

Ended up in the very pleasant and quaint village of Enkirch, north of Traben Trabach. Lovely, large, grassy Stellplatz along river bank. Unmarked pitches, go where you like, clean toilets and showers, very cheerful and helpful attendant.

Rode bikes back into Traben Trabach, which I’d been really keen to see, but were disappointed. Has a run-down feel to it. Not like a ‘lived in’ town, just somewhere that people drive out to for a day trip. Very few young people – most tourists our age or much older. Had hoped to do some shopping before leaving Germany. Usually there’s so much I want to buy in German shops. Not this time, I’m afraid – just cut-price shops and cheap souvenirs. Some shops empty and windows boarded up. Maybe its just ‘end of season’ – all the younger people back at school and work and everything looking tired. Glad we stayed at Enkirch. It does have a lived-in feel – neat houses, proper village shops, a village school and lots of places to eat. Ate at Gasthof zur Sonne. Most of other guests were on half-board. Nice cosy décor, good service and excellent food – the best of the holiday.

Our conclusions re the Mosel: Very pleasant, somewhere we would stay again on route to somewhere else, but not somewhere that we would have as a destination. I suspect  that many of the Dutch are en route to somewhere. The couple next to us were on the way to spending six weeks in the south of France or Spain – following the sun. Many of the other tourists here seem content just sitting outside their vans, watching the river flow by and that’s just not our sort of holiday.