What a beautiful day - blue skies again & 25°C. It seemed a shame not to use it for some wonderful scenery so we headed south to the mountains. Our first destination was up, via the cable car at Tegelberg near Fussen in the Allgau region, which gave us stunning views over the lakes and mountain peaks. It also gave us a great view of Neuschwanstein, the fairytale palace of “Mad King” Ludwig II, supposedly the inspiration for Cinderella's castle.

Leaving the top of the cable car we walked part of the way up to the peak of Tegelberg, but the path was very crowded and the views are equally as good from where we got to, to say nothing of heaving lungs & legs! We were surrounded by snowy peaks and watched lots of parascenders/gliders taking off, followed by lunch at the Panorama restaurant which totally lived up to its name. It was all beautiful, with tiny alpine flowers nestled amongst dark green trees, backed by rocky peaks with patches of snow with views of the Forggensee below and the gliders soaring high above.

Ludwig was famed for his excesses, and also built another palace in the town of Fussen nearby called Hohenschwangau; you can visit both his castles, but we decided not to as you can't go in many rooms of Neuschwanstein & the whole area was absolutely heaving with people so we couldn’t actually park the car to look at the very yellow Hohenschwangau. As it was hot & sunny we headed back to the van to relax, then had our first bbq - different kinds of sausage followed by fresh strawberries. Yum.