Mile Munching to Stuttgart

Woke up in Ypres to the sound of tweety birds and thought this is a good omen. Blue skies, sunshine and birdsong seems so different to the last few months back in the UK. I checked the map and noted that I had given myself a big mile day to get to Stuttgart by evening. 500km as the crow flies and it turned out to be 450 miles by road.

A dull motorway slog through Belgium and Luxembourg for most of the way until I lost the plot when I crossed the Rhein and decided to go cross country through the Black Forest (to save time…I thought) but then the rain started and super twisty forest roads are not good in the rain. I bailed and ended up on a German Autobahn where I was the slowest thing on it at 120kph in horrible spray conditions. A couple of small aquaplaning incidents made my arse pucker so I slowed down and took my chances being rear ended by flying Fritz coming up from behind at 200kph+.


Only an hour and 40 minutes late, I rolled up at Schloss Thynne in Neckertailfingen where my hosts had prepared dinner and kept it uneaten till I arrived soggy and starving. Beer, bullshit and bed followed by a good sleep.

Pat promised to show me why he moved to germany all those years ago and stayed. We went walking in the local hills to the local hilltop castle which thankfully had a beer garden :-) The castle is on a ridge and the skies above were full of gliders soaring on the thermals. Pat entertained the beer queue with his mock machine-gun 'rat-tat-tat-tat' at the gliders to my mild embarrassment and the general raised eyebrows of everyone else.  Who says the Germans don't have a sense of humour…..