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The first thing you need is a vignette, not really any idea what it’s for but you must pay €9.50 for a 10 day pass & stick it to your windscreen or you’ll get a fine. We have one for Switzerland but somehow managed to decide we wouldn’t need an Austrian one travelling from Belgium to Croatia?

So vignette purchased (my communication skills are massively improving, can just about get by with french & Spanish but not much use when you’re in Germany & Austria). We managed to turn a 3 hour drive into a 5 hour trek by telling the sat nav to avoid motorways. Far more scenic but even beautiful mountain views and the meandering Danube get a bit dull after many many hours!

Finally arrived at our African themed Austrian campsite, yes that’s right the Masai Mara.

Despite the slightly odd statues of camels & lions with an alligator head floating in the lake the boys have had a ball, straight in the paddle boat & that’s them messing about on the lake for the rest of the day.

Thunder storms forecast so hatches batoned down but just glorious evening sun instead.

A dad & his son arrived on their bikes with a tiny 2 man tent packed in rucksacks, this Danube river trail is very appealing.

Vienna tomorrow, we’re going to attempt to navigate the Austrian public transport system…

Really lovely site in Bavaria, a welcoming bier garten with playpark in sight, perfect way to relax after a long day cycling & sight seeing & then a couple of hours on the road.

A nice relaxing morning & then the big bike ride after lunch. Out into the countryside, joining the trail from the back gate of the site, couldn’t have been better.

Ollie is definitely mastering hills!

We headed into town and spent as long covering about 1km as we had 20km as I managed to get us completely lost in a tiny town looking for the supermarket. We only needed bread & milk & managed to fill four panniers with stuff, I love a euro marche!

Relaxing evening by the van, well relaxing for us, not sure toms speed trials were very relaxing for anyone else!

Early Ish start the next day as we left Germany & headed for Austria.

German words we’ve learnt;

Danka

Bitte

Apfelsaft

Ketchup

Eingang

Milche

Ausfahrt (we thought this was a massive city as seemed to see signs for it everywhere, wow must be like Birmingham, really central and loads of roads can get there…before we realised it meant exit 😳)

We were pretty glad to get away from the grotty campsite so left early doors and were heading towards Munich. One advantage of having football crazy kids is they are very happy to do a city visit if there is a famous football team, so thank you Bayern München.

We are trying to make as much use of the bikes as we can and it’s so much easier to travel on bikes in Germany than anywhere else I’ve seen. Pretty much every road has a cycle path running alongside, in the cities, suburbs and out in the countryside. A fabulous way to get around and feels really safe as you’re not navigating busy roads.So we decided to park at the Allianz arena on the outskirts of Munich and use pedal power to get us in to the centre of the city.

We cycled through the English Garden which is a massive Urban park, really lovely & well used. Even in the park there’s clearly marked paths for cyclists. It took us about 40 minutes to cycle in, probably would have parked a bit closer with hindsight!

We dumped the bikes and had a mooch about Munich. Definitely on the list to visit again, beautiful architecture, fab shops, which we didn’t go in 🙄) and loads of street cafes and entertainment. We missed the famous Rathaus-Glockenspiel at 12 but still enjoyed the square and had an ice cream.

After a bit of tram watching with Ollie we headed back to the van and our Munich site, that was about 2 hours away (oops) but a lovely site, so much better than the previous night!

Bavaria kur-sport camping park.

Our second and third nights were at Freizeitpark Camping Schüttehof near Stuttgart. About 4 hours on the road and a bit of faffing at check in to get the extra night added meant a quick set up and straight to the onsite restaurant bar. A couple of very welcome giant German beers soon sorted us out. All European sites are set up brilliantly for kids with plenty of room to play so you can relax and enjoy the restaurant without them getting bored and restless.

The next day was a trip to the Porsche museum north of Stuttgart, Tom is going to let us know what he thought of it:

It was amazing you have to go there! You get to learn the history of Porsche and you get to see all the trophies on a screen and if you press a trophy it will tell you about the journey and how they got it.

It also displayed the modern 24 hours of Le man car keeping the trophy permanently in their garage the Porsche 919 an absolute screamer. After trailing in 56th place with around 3 hours left the Porsche came back and won to claim the hat trick for Porsche. There was also some tech and it was a wheel so you could drive a Porsche round a track. You could even sit in a real Porsche. Now we go back in time where gulf was with Porsche and Porsche were heading to the streets with them and the 917 pulled of an easy 1 2 win. Once we had got out it was quite funny that it looked like the company car was a Porsche!

We all really enjoyed that trip, loads to see & as with most museums in Germany kids under 14 are free so only €16 Euro’s for all of us to get in. Toms mention of the company car was about the car parks where 100’s of Porsche’s were parked, we’ve never seen anything like it.

Next day was on to the next destination but with a stop in Ulm for a bike ride along the Danube, amazing! I had no idea there was a cycle path running alongside the Danube for its entire length pretty much, great idea for a future adventure.

The arrival at the next site was a disappointment, nice lakeside position but to use toms description the site itself was a bit ‘sketchy’ we didn’t unpack much with the intention of sleeping and heading off sharpish for the next leg!

We sailed from Hull to Zeebrugge on The Pride of York, we’d left it pretty late to book so only club cabins available. Cost a small fortune but very impressive. Cabin with bunk beds & a double, plenty of room to swing a couple of kids, never mind the cats & two massive windows to see the sea.

All good fun leaving the boat, very exciting!

We didn’t hang around, night one was in Luxembourg so straight onto the motorway and away we go.

Belgium from the motorway isn’t much to write home about.

Luxembourg is beautiful. It seems very refined compared to other places we’ve travelled through. We stayed at camping auf kengert, pretty much in the centre of the country. We were surrounded by woodland and pretty little villages.

The campsite was ace, next to a barefoot walk, where you get close to nature and connect with the earth, fascinating how different it feels wandering through a forest without your shoes on.

Facilities for the boys were brilliant. A massive play park, lovely pool, a maze and a huge playing field.

All good stuff with the general facilities on the site, we’d gone for a comfort pitch so loads of room, electric and water and a very quiet, sheltered spot.

Definitely feeling the benefits of winding down after a busy few weeks, we all slept until late, unheard of in the kilby household/vanhold? It meant for a bit of rushing about to get packed up and on our way before the 12.00 deadline. Note to selves, book 2 nights for the first stop to give yourselves a chance to relax.

Heading off towards Germany now, plenty to see en route but Simon’s got the driving bug so no chance of stopping 🙄