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The Rhine and some mechanicals

The barges continued to and fro but somehow didn’t disturb our sleep on the little bit of dry land we were on. We looked forward to a slow wake up after the rude breakfast alert of Tuesday morning at 07:00 (that felt like 06:00).

Unfortunately the work nearby must have needed a pile driver as that was Wednesday’s wake-up call, at 07:15 (that felt like 06:15).


No matter, we need a good start and now are awake, let’s crack on. We therefore download a few essential episodes of The Archers, which takes a few mS because, yes you’ve guessed it, they have wifi backed with super fast fibre. The speed test proved it.


We spend a few minutes reviewing how to pay for our night. It seems that we will get a month-end invoice! How very business-like. It seems as though we campers are treated like the marina boat owners.


So we leave the parkplatz and they leave everything to trust and about a thousand photos they’ve taken of us and the Landy, from every angle. They know who we are.


So it’s back onto the motorway and we head into Germany and somewhere on the Rhine.

The temperature increases a little and we head for near to Koblenz, confident that we can just turn up at a chosen site. Well we do but it’s voll. 


We didn’t like the look of it anyway and continue upstream for 10mins and we go to a site where Guido welcomes us in good English.


I show him the Guido Fawkes website and before we know it, he’s gone all AFD on us and we talk politics.



We pitch on the bank of the Rhine at Braubach, south of Koblenz, with a good view up behind us of Kegelberg. On the river are countless barges, just as in Heusden. I find them mesmerising as they are massive. AI says, about that one I’ve shown it, it’s fully loaded at about 5,500T.



The river is low and AI is keen to point out how high in the water the photographed barges are sitting. Yes, we worked that out too.

The Viking River Cruises have been forced to use coaches. That must be disappointing.

What a dry summer it’s been.




When there isn’t a barge there’s a train. The main line is on the opposite bank but it sounds as though it’s next to us. There’s a mix of passenger and goods trains and they do two things. First they move quickly in spite of looking ‘normal’ and second, there’s only a few minutes separation. Maybe 5 minutes at the most. It’s a normal line running the equivalent of HS2 capacity!


I jack up the front axle and remove the right hand wheel. Something doesn’t feel right. I think I feel a slack ball joint and also, annoyingly, play in the hub bearings which I tightened, again, last week.


We have a think and Dawn usefully points out that we are going past (almost) a Land Rover specialist tomorrow who we used three years ago to find an annoying overdrive oil leak.


I make a call and we commit to a 10:00 visit. So we pay Guido now, rather than wait until he’s open at 09:00 and go for a walk around the town.








In the morning we will have a swift breakfast and drive for an hour. Hopefully we can do more Rhine sightseeing tomorrow.

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Comments

Anonymous said…
Sound great Tim. Enjoy.
12 September 2026 at 19:07
Fran said…
Wonderful. Loving the Germany tour in particular and looking forward to reading more about it . Hope there’s no early morning call tomorrow !
12 September 2026 at 20:14
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