Time to go home?

Thursday 17th September 2020

After long and lengthy discussions last night we have decided to get back a day early – doesn’t sound much but the situation with the virus is changing so quickly and Hayley needs time to do a decent turn around before going back to work, work that we need, work that we can’t afford to jeopardise. It probably is time to go home?

We have breakfast, pack up, and make our move. It’s a lovely warm day, clear blue skies, perfect.

We have a place in mind and as usual, we have a back up just in case. We follow the road following the Mosel river passing the vineyards that grow steep on the banks. It really is beautiful.

We are turned away from our first place. It’s full. This whole area is busy. Along the flat banks of the Mosel, there are huge campsites that are capable of holding up to 150 plus vans or caravans. It’s busy. No matter, we set off for our second choice. That too is full. Oh, dear.

Our Eurotunnel train is at 14:20 on Friday and we need to do our run through France on a single tank of diesel to avoid stopping and breaking the transit rules, this means we need a place to stay close to the border and be able to leave the site at 07:00 in order to make good time. All of the German campsites have a barrier that is not open until 08:00 which is no good for us. They simply will not open the barrier before 08:00. We try two other sites, all have space but the opening of the barrier cannot be before 08:00. Unlike France, Germany does not have a lot of free overnight stops.

It is now late in the afternoon, we manage to fill up with gas and diesel but we still have nowhere to stay the night. Six long hours later we finally find a place in a town called Perl which is right in the corner of Germany and the border with Luxembourg and France. A rather uninteresting place but there is space, no barriers and it will only cost us 5 euros. Brilliant.

Tired and a bit fed up we get settled in and meet another English couple who have only just arrived in Germany from France doing exactly the same as us – doing the two-weeks of useless quarantine in Germany. We advise them that for some reason this area and the Mosel, in particular, is busy, very busy. Clearly the Germans are not going anywhere else for their holidays except their own country. Who can blame them, it does have some lovely bits to it.

A walk followed by dinner and an earlyish bed. Up at 06:00.