Day 3

Rochefort, Belgium to Landau, Germany.

Last night was freezing, we think the temperature dropped to -2°. Foolishly we decided not to leave the heating on overnight, so it was super chilly in the van this morning, and frosty outside.

Our parking spot was so quiet. There’s a babbling brook behind the car park which was quite loud outside but hardly audible inside. The noisiest noise were the fighter jets, taking off somewhere relatively close late in the evening. The last thing I remember before I fell asleep was a sonic boom as one of them flew into the distance.

Once I was up and the heating was back on, it didn’t take long to warm us up. Meg had a whale of a time Tigger jumping on what we think were either moles or mice in the long grass. She got a good telling off when she completely blanked our calls to come back , even threatening to leave without her didn’t work.

The chateau wasn’t open when we left so we grabbed a couple of pics before we set off.

Our journey today took us out of Belgium, down and through Luxembourg into Germany. We were so engrossed in a conversation about the Schengen visa and a town right near the border in Luxembourg of the same name, that we missed taking a pick of the ‘entering Germany’ sign. We didn’t realise that the Schengen agreement was named because it was signed in Schengen!

One thing we did spot on our trip through Belgium was the European Space Centre which we now wished we had stopped to visit….one for another day .

We’ve parked for the night on a German vineyard, we have all the services and bought a bottle of home-grown Merlot to try tonight with tea. There are vines as far as the eye can see and just as many vineyards, some, like this one, offering overnight stops for a small fee.

We chose this one as it’s near Landau, southwest Germany, just off the main road so not far to get back on our way tomorrow.

Gareth got his drone out ( we didn’t think to do it at the Chateau ) and took some views of the landscape here but we had a bit of trouble downloading the pics so will let you have those later