There was no need to rush off this morning as we only had 260km to go to our next destination – a site on the Romantic Road at Schillingsfurst – so we got up in leisurely fashion (quite different to yesterday!) then drove into Diez, the local town, to get some diesel. It is an attractive town on the R Lahn, overlooked by a schloss and church, and with some very attractive Medieval buildings mixed in with the shops and offices.


We left around 11.00 and made our way back to the A3 so we could head south. It started to rain as we rejoined the autobahn and we had a fairly wet journey; the road was full of lorries then roadworks, so I enlivened the trip by trying to see how many nationalities were represented in the traffic. I stopped counting at 15, with cars from 5, then lorries from mostly European countries but also one from Morocco. Well, it passed the time!

The A3 winds its way round Frankfurt and I was delighted to be able to do a bit of plane-spotting as the road literally goes through the middle of the airport - I woke up to the fact when we saw a plane crossing a bridge over the autobahn right above our heads plus a plane coming in to land almost skimmed the tops of the street lights; I don’t think I have ever been quite as close to planes without actually boarding one.

Lunch was at a rastplatz near Wurzburg and our chosen site came soon afterwards – Camping Frankenhohe just outside Schillingsfurst, a small town on the Romantic Road. The owner speaks some English (better than my German anyway!) and we’ve got 16A electricity for €19 a night with our ACSI card. The site is sloping grass so levelling blocks are needed almost everywhere, but is very tidy with non-demarcated pitches. The shower/toilet block is immaculate and is heated – it was only 14°C so that was a welcome find, and there is also a bar/restaurant.

The rain started soon after we had rolled out the awning, so we hunkered down for an afternoon/evening in; to our disappointment there was no wifi – according to the Herr Owner, the “viffy ist broken und ze man comes not yet”; the Telecom engineer had yet to arrive....cue one cross husband. Things got even worse when he couldn’t get the satellite dish to beam in any programmes, and after an hour I had resigned myself to an evening of grumbles, but it suddenly decided to reward his perseverance and gave him 108 channels! We watched Andy Murray in the French Open, chatted to our Dutch neighbour (whose son lives in less than an hour from where we do!) and enjoyed Grand Designs so it wasn’t a complete wash-out.