After a gruelling two weeks finishing the van we finally left Leeds!
We had planned to get a good nights rest before setting off, but in the end late night work on the camper was needed, and we only managed a couple of hours sleep.
But on the road with a functional campervan! We hope.
Northern France
Fairly big day of driving to catch the euro tunnel. We made our new travel plans on route – given that insuring the van for our original plan of the Balkans turned out to be prohibitively expensive. We decided we will gradually make our way to Romania for remote wilderness, and apparently very good chances of seeing bears. Our route through Northern France would predominantly be a quick transit, but hopefully with some decent stops along the way. After this our plan was to head for the Black Forest in southern Germany, then into the Austrian alps, followed by a quick transit through Hungary and into Romania.
We arrived at our parking spot just outside Calais around 6pm. We quickly set up our projector screen to catch the last of the french open final. The home cinema works!
First night in the camper was surprisingly comfy thanks to Kristine’s king size sliding bed mechanism. And Elodie seems to be enjoying van life.
Day two en route. Learning French came in handy. Ten minutes into the drive we passed another van coming in the opposite direction and clipped their wing mirror. Our van was surprisingly completely fine, but the same couldn’t be said for the other vans wing mirror. My offer of “J’ai des euros” in an attempt to avoid any insurance claims didn’t go down too well. Ultimately it turned out to be a service van for the local water supply, so we had follow him to their office to fill out all their formal insurance paperwork. Pascal, the Frenchmen I hit, was incredibly friendly. He even made us espressos whilst we sat down to complete the paperwork.
After a long day of driving, with a newfound awareness of the size of our van, we made it to our free park spot in Versigny at the head of a hiking trail. Turned out to be a good spot, which we had all ourselves.
The next morning we took turns to run the hiking trail, before setting off on our way to Nancy. We stopped off at Lac Der-Chantecoq on the way for a bite to eat and a dog walk.
We decided to head for a campsite this time, given we hadn’t finished the van set up for our shower yet and were in desperate need of one. When we arrived at our camp we realised Lola was infested with ticks from her short walk at Lac Der-Chantecoq, so before our long awaited showers we extracted fifteen ticks that we could find.
Elodie had her first bath of the trip – and her first ever outdoor bath. And judging by the reaction, probably the best bath of her life.
Day 3 we set off Germany heading to Freiburg Im Bresau.
Southern Germany
We arrived in Freiburg im bresau in good time, and had most the day to spend there. We parked on a street 20 minutes walk from the centre where we could, discretely, stay overnight.
The walk to the old town in Freiburg was a challenge for Lola. She refused to go down any streets with trams. And despite us taking a tram free route needed to be carried on multiple occasions. Nevertheless, we made it to the old town where we were able to tick off most of our Germany to do list; Schniztel, German beer and pretzels.
The next morning we headed for the black forest. Since it was fairly cold and wet we took turns to trail run while the other looked after Lola and El.
We set about researching a decent spot for the night and turns out good options for campervans were fairly limited in Germany. Just over the border into Austria we found a free spot on an apple orchard farm just off the autobahn. And so our trip through Germany was short and sweet! We set off for Austria. But not before stopping for some black forest gateau – the best we’ve ever had.
Mayers on the road. 