A great night beside the castle ruins, with a few neighbours in vans and a couple who’d actually camped in a tent in the grounds. It was a popular venue for a Sunday morning and so there was a steady flow of visitors, even a couple of decent sized motorhomes.

I was secretly hoping the flow would diminish as meeting anyone as we were trying to leave down that narrow access road would be a challenge. Anyway, as is customary in this country, everything stops between 12 and 2 for lunch and fortunately, when it was time for us to leave, two cars were also going so we teamed up behind them so that anyone arriving would be pressured into reversing and not us.

When admiring the view from the castle earlier, I could see the pleasure boats winding their way along the canal. I also sussed out a parking spot next to the water in Lutzelbourg itself, so this is where we headed, then took our cheese and bread to a canalside bench and table. For the second day running, Sophie was particularly observant and noticed a drinking fountain across the other side of the canal, so suggested I go and fill our water “bladder”. She was clearly only thinking about me getting some exercise and after three return journeys with a heavy load, we were nicely topped up. After a village and canal walk, we continued our journey down this rather attractive valley.

I’d planned a town visit to Hagenau, but Sophie wasn’t really in visit mode at that point, despite me taking her to a museum that had pottery in it. It was free that day, otherwise we wouldn’t have bothered 😉. So off we went, stopping along the way in Souffleheim for the motorhome services. We had a good chat with Horst, a 75 year old lone traveller, discussed the war, with Sophie reminding him, as she does with all Germans we meet, that the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by them in the last war.

Final stop was a Park4night on the banks of the River Rhin/Rhine, overlooking Germany on the other side. Being a pleasant Sunday afternoon, the parking area was packed with cars and motorhomes, but we squeezed in, in the knowledge that cars always go home in the end, and, as it happened, so did most of the motorhomes.

Being close up to neighbours is not our idea of fun and so we walked along the river bank, bought an ice cream, and sat for a while, watching the little ferry constantly going backwards and forwards between France and Germany. A local couple joined us on “our” bench, and despite their almost zero knowledge of the English language, we chatted with them for ages with our very limited French and actually had quite a laugh.

As darkness descended, all boded well for another good night’s sleep.

*** Just to mention that our blogs can be up to a few weeks behind reality, as we’re always in catch-up mode ***