Sadly a good night's sleep was not on the cards – we had very intermittent sleep due to the tremendous noise from outside; we thought at first it was ducks & geese but it turned out to be the local frogs! We couldn't believe how loud they were, almost deafening in fact, and did not stop for the entire night. Ah well, its all part of the local culture I suppose. The good news was that my eye wasn’t discoloured, just a little swollen.
 
We left after paying the bill – the most expensive site by far of our holiday at €33 a night – and set off up the autobahn for our next stop near Coburg. We’d been warned that it would be really busy as it was the start of the German/Dutch school holidays, but fortunately we were heading north – judging by the stationary traffic on the other side, everybody else was heading south.


 We arrived at our site near Sesslach in Bayern, just south of Coburg where our friends’ son David lives with his wife, Christina. The directions in the sites book were all when approaching from the north, so we used the satnav; she is a bossy voice who we’ve christened Helga, and she’s often pretty good – but not when you’re approaching a medieval walled town whose huge wooden gates are shut! After a bit of a detour (including the industrial area, a tiny narrow village and a large loop of 15km as there was nowhere to turn round) we eventually found Camping Sonnland only 500m from where we were first diverted....


 It is a lovely site with a natural swimming pond surrounded by flowers, sunbathing decks and little bridges; all the caravan pitches are in semi-circular bays with about 6 vans in each and surrounded by tall trees. This was most welcome as the temps had reached 36°C and we were melting into little greasy blobs.


 We set up our pitch with the awning as a sunshade, got the cold drinks out and waited for our friends to pick us up – they had invited us to a bbq at their house and were collecting us so we could a) look at the countryside as we travelled and b) enjoy some drinks with them. It was great to see them, and they took us on a guided tour of Coburg.


 It is a lovely town, full of historic buildings from the 1600s, and we had the added bonus of seeing members of an organisation like the Masons marching with their bands and flags. We admired the town square with its statues of members of the Saxe Coburg Gotha family, of whom the most famous is Prince Albert. The royal palace in the Marktplatz was covered in scaffolding for renovations, but was still an impressive building.

 
 I loved the Tudor-style decorative timbers on many of the buildings, and they were so colourful and ornate I couldn’t resist taking loads of pictures. We walked down several streets with our eyes fixed on the ground, as the manhole covers were very unusual in that they bore an imprint of the symbol of the town – a profile picture of St Mauritius, a Moor’s head with earring. 


 We were all quite hot (a beautiful day her in Bavaria) so we took time out from admiring the buildings to have an ice cream - the Rolls Royce of ices as far as we were concerned, all served in tall glasses and totally delicious.


 

  The other unusual feature on the ground our friends showed us was the "Stumbling stones", small brass plaques laid in the cobbles, each commemorating the death of residents persecuted or murdered by the Nazis. Most were Jewish, and each stone gave the name, birth and manner & place of death – a very sad reminder of times gone by.

We then drove up to the castle, Veste Coburg, which dominates the skyline of the town. Unfortunately we could only view the outside as it was early evening by now, but it really is an imposing building – hopefully we will be able to visit it properly later in the week.

 


  Food was calling, so we drove to Dave & Tini's house and had a lovely bbq in their garden. Tini introduced us to "päckchen" - small packets of foil containing (in this case) courgettes & Feta cheese sprinkled with herbs & olive oil: these will now be a feature of OUR bbqs! It was so warm we could even sit out at 10pm, eating & chatting, after which they delivered us back to the caravan site. It had been a lovely evening.