Day 4

Landau to Rothenburg ob Der Trauber, Germany

We had such a peaceful night on the vineyard that we slept in late today. I was up at 8am and Gareth surfaced at 9.55am,
he did need it though after all that driving yesterday.

We both had a very welcome van shower; Meg had a good walk in the vineyards and then we set off to a walled city Gareth had read about called Rothenburg on the Trauber river. It’s part of the Romantic Road we are going to follow south towards Fussen.

It was a 3-hour drive and was pretty uninspiring as we took the Autobahn. We were surprised by the amount of trucks on the road, it felt like we were back on a UK motorway for most of the journey.

One highlight was seeing signs for the Hockenheim motor racing circuit and the other was passing a Technical Museum which has tons of racing cars, motorbikes and aeroplanes, including a Concorde! Once again, we’ve put it in the diary for another day.

Arriving at our parking spot, we were pleased to see the area lived up to the reviews. It is literally right opposite the old walls and entrance to the medieval walled town.

Walking in through one of the old arched gateways on cobbled streets we immediately had the opportunity to walk the old walls. In our experience you don’t get that very often and where you do there is normally a fee.

We decided to wait and instead walked up into the town, past beautiful old buildings with pretty facades and creative window dressings. It was not as busy as Ghent and a lot of the bars and cafes were either shut or had no outside seating, so we picked up a tourist map from the info point and followed a route around the town. This took us to the back of the old walls and then up onto the covered rampart. It was so spooky walking on the old flagstones and steps worn down over hundreds of years, looking out through the ‘arrow’ holes and imagining being under attack

To be honest it was quite refreshing to see that H&S hadn’t gone mad here. The walkways had quite open railings dropping down to street level but they had not been guarded and we didn’t see signs warning of any danger. Common sense does prevail in some places still.

At present the town is celebrating spring with lovely displays outside properties and on water fountains dotted around the area.

We also spotted a bronze statue of St James outside a church with two pointers showing the way to the Camino de Santiago, he gets everywhere!

Walking back through the town we found a cafe and stopped for a drink. Sitting down next to another couple who were from Alabama they are very well travelled, love the UK and Europe and were very good company for an hour or so. We had a very good chat and lots of laughter about travelling and our home towns. What a lovely way to end our fab trip to this little beauty of a find.