We spent a couple of nights at a campsite near Besançon, eastern France on the River Doub. The large camp site was just off a dual carriageway next to an industrial area and it wasn’t particularly attractive or well looked after but it was surprisingly busy with French, Dutch and German campers. We guessed they used the site to visit Besançon, with its 17th century fortifications and citadel.
We continued our drive north and reached Germany a couple of hours later, making a brief stop en route at the Unimog Museum in Gaggenau. I am not quite sure why we stopped – I suppose one of us was interested. . . . .
Our next campsite was in the village of Enzklösterle (pronounced something like Ens klers te le) in the Black Forest. It was a fabulous drive through the mountains, we climbed to 3,000 feet before going down to 2,000 feet into the valley. We had a warm welcome from the owner and were soon settled in his beautiful and well kept site. We walked into the village later to find something to eat. They were early diners in those parts and dinner was normally served between 5.30 and 8 pm.
This was hiking country (ski in the winter) and we were given a leaflet suggesting various walks we could make from the campsite, most of them seemed to take four hours or more and were described as uphill – you can guess how we didn’t spend our time! Tourists were valued in the Black Forest and we were given complimentary passes to the local bus and tram services.
There was a continually running water pipe near our pitch marked “No Drinking Water” but I noticed several campers filling up kettles and jugs from that tap. I was told it was spring water from the mountain, untreated but certainly drinkable. I made tea with it and it was delicious. We were so used to the taste of chemically treated tap water or, even worse, water stored in plastic bottles and it was a real treat to have the pure thing. But I did boil before we consumed it as I didn’t want to risk getting a tape worm or some other nasty disease. We seemed OK – so far.
RIP Anne Wright x
