Karen Wright: Thrilling drive towards snowcapped Bavarian peaks
The final leg on my Caravan and Motorhome Club Escorted Tour to Germany was right down at the bottom of the country, still in Bavaria but very close to the Austrian border.
It was such a thrill to drive towards those snowcapped peaks. We joined the rest of the group at the campsite and had our arrival briefing which outlined where we would be going and what we would be getting up to during the last few days of the tour.
By now the whole group are interacting with each other as if we had been friends for years. Martin and Jayne organised another boules tournament, in which almost everyone competed. Not being much of a player myself I skipped the game as I was cooking up samples to hand out at a little talk and demonstration that I had been asked if I might like to do later. I did recipes from my book Meals on the Move: A Campsite Cooking Journey and quite a few of the group asked if they could buy a copy which was a pleasant surprise.
The two trips we took on the coach were wonderful! Talk about saving the best till last! We visited the fairytale castles of Schloss Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein, the homes of the Swan King, Ludwig II of Bavaria. Our tour guide was first class and really brought the castle come to life, I so enjoyed the visit. We were taken to lunch, which was a classic Goulash with dumplings. The dumplings were, of course, not like the ones we have here in the UK but tasty, nonetheless. After lunch we went on for another tour, this time of a monastery in Füssen.
Our final excursion was up into the mountains. We travelled by coach to the AlpspiX lookout platform. This is an amazing structure that extends 24 metres out from the cliff face. We went up in a gondola to reach it and the altitude was 2050m at the top. Wow, what a view we were treated to. Afterwards we had the best monastery tour of the trip at Ettal and we also had liqueur tasting at the distillery there. On the way back we fitted in an unexpected stop at Oberammergau, the painted houses were so pretty, and the ice cream we tried there was out of this world!
Now the tour is over, and I am home, watch out for some German recipes over the next couple of weeks!