After breakfast, it was time to return our rental car that had sat for almost four days in the same spot in the courtyard car park outside our apartment! (We should have cancelled it earlier, once we knew that Lynette & James would be driving over from England, but lack of internet access in Erlen made it difficult to check the terms and work out whether the contract would allow close cancellations.) At first, it seemed easy to be on the road, but when we found ourselves going the wrong way down a one-way street towards the railway station, the adrenalin levels started to rise! A quick U-turn, but then over-shooting the street we should have taken, we ended up where we’d started (Rue de Bertha Molly). I tried again, but this time ended up in a road that had been blocked off. Eventually, without the help of TomTom or the car’s GPS (which we hadn’t set, as we thought getting back to the railway station would be a simple exercise!), we managed to pull up across the road from the Avis office. It had taken us half an hour to go on a 1.3km journey — just as well we allowed plenty of time! 

The older woman who had tried to bill us for an extra day grunted, “Bonjour”, in our direction as another woman took our keys and checked that the tank was full. If it isn’t, then it would be due to the fact that we weren’t provided with a full tank in the first place, because I don’t think the few kilometres we did would have used much petrol!

We strolled back to our apartment, gathered our gear and then walked to Lynette & James’s hotel. Our destination, the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg is a medieval castle located isLocated in the Vosges mountains and is situated in a strategic area on a rocky spur overlooking the Upper Rhine Plain. It was used by successive powers from the Middle Ages until the Thirty Years' War when it was abandoned. From 1900 to 1908 it was rebuilt at the behest of the German kaiser Wilhelm II. 

The long line of traffic crawling up the hill at a snail’s pace was a little concerning, and so when the car in front pulled out and turned around, we did likewise, parking on the side of the road a little further down from where we’d been. A short walk through the forest brought us to the castle’s entrance. We purchased our tickets and one audio guide per couple and then began our tour through the castle. The castle is presented more as a museum with collections of old furniture and reconstructed fire places, etc., rather than having rooms decked out as they might once have been at different times in the castle’s long history. Lynette and I listened to most of the accompanying audio commentaries, and so the tour took quite some time. (The very modern audio guides worked by just pointing the tip of the ‘wand’ against the number on a printed sheet we’d been given, a little like the Questron wands that my girls had 20-odd years ago, only much more sophisticated, of course.)

At the end of our tour, we checked out the castle’s garden which appeared to be suffering from the long heat wave. A cafe with a wonderful panoramic view of the Alsace area provided us with a late lunch — a decaffeinated cappuccino for me which I ate with a banana I’d brought along with us. By the time we were back in the car and on our way back to Colmar, it was already quite late in the afternoon. Lynette and James dropped us off near our apartment again, and then we showered and dressed and wandered down to their hotel to join them for pre-dinner drinks. We then walked back into the town centre and found a bistro that served a range of dishes, including fish-based and Italian, and settled down at an outdoor table. The nearby smokers soon drove us inside — it didn’t have the same convivial atmosphere as sitting outside, but it was certainly much easier to breathe. Michael and I shared a chicken Caesar salad and a tartlette that resembled a pizza, but with a softer, thinner base. Lynnette went for spaghetti bolognaise and James chose a salmon salad. It was all delicious — thank you, Lynette and James! (I only had a small sip of wine, deciding that it would be worth seeing if I could get a better night’s sleep if I didn’t drink.)

With our last meal together over, we strolled down the street with Lynette and James and then bade them farewell. They planned to leave for Ypres early the next morning. We may reconnect again next year — possibly in the western region of the Lake District where James spent a number of years working. It’s apparently wilder and more beautiful than the touristy parts we have already seen.

Instead of going directly home, I convinced Michael to walk with me through the town to the Little Venice area so that I could take some night time shots. I was thrilled to see a couple of white swans swimming with their tribe of signets — I haven’t checked out the photos yet, but am hoping you can see the swans! We then headed ‘home’ to bed.