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Published: October 2nd 2008
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Vianden
Vianden and the Our River from near the campsite From Heli’s place we drove back up towards Salzburg then turned left into Germany, unfortunately we did not fill up before crossing the border because petrol was 10c dearer here. Our route was to take us all the way along the A8 through Munich, past Stuttgart and through Karlsruhe along the southern part of Germany and into The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The traffic on the autobahn was quite heavy and the number of trucks was incredible. Dobby cruised along at a steady 110 quite happily passing the trucks, and it was impossible for anyone to do more than around 130 in bursts due to the traffic anyway. It was worse going east as the slow lane for a large part of the time was bumper to bumper trucks crawling along at no more than 30, especially between Munich and Stuttgart. We drove for two days, stopping at about the halfway point at little place called Merklingen before crossing the border into Luxembourg at around 4pm on the second day. It had been raining most of the day and it was quite wet at the camping ground which was about 5km south of Luxembourg City. That night it poured down with
lots of thunder and lightning but by the morning it had pretty much finished so when we finally left the campsite at 12 we headed into the city for a look. It may not have been raining but it was a pretty dull day and despite the fact that it was a Saturday the city was really busy. We drove around for a bit but could not find a carpark anywhere (will we never learn!) so we left the city and headed north to a little medieval town mentioned in our LP guide called Vianden. Luxembourg is only 57km wide and 82km long so it doesn’t take long to get anywhere and by mid afternoon we had found the little town of 1600 people and a nice little camping ground next to the Our River. One of the claims to fame of Vianden is that Victor Hugo lived there and they make quite a big deal of it, but according to our LP Guide he only stayed there for 3 months! We parked up next to the river and went for a walk into town which was only 5min away. It was a most picturesque town with the river running
through it, the old bridge, the ramparts and fortified towers, the narrow cobbled streets and the beautifully restored castle in the forested hills above. When we got back to the campsite we had dinner and nice hot showers before Skyping Alison in the UK thanks to the campsites WiFi, and I finally figured out the best way to take night shots with my little camera and got a really nice one of the castle before going to bed. The weather the next day wasn’t any better and drizzled on and off all day, not enough to get really wet though so it was ok. We took the chairlift to the top of the hill and walked down to the castle which originally dates back to the 11th century and is almost fully restored. (Which is no mean feat when you see what the ruins looked like in 1977 when it became government property) They had definitely made a great job of restoring it, and it looked fantastic from both inside and out but it really wasn’t old anymore, just recreated. We walked back down through the town and had a late lunch at a café by the river before going
back to the campsite and calling it a day.
Next morning the weather had cleared and we headed of to see something of a more engineering nature (for my benefit!) which was the Vianden Pumped Storage Station. It’s like an underground 1100 MW hydro-electric power station but over a 24 hour period actually produces no nett power! Instead it pumps water from a low reservoir to a higher reservoir for 7¼ hours and then produces power the opposite way for the next 4¼ hours, thereby helping to balance out the supply and demand for the European Grid. Well I thought it was interesting anyway! We didn’t spend too long there before heading off to another castle on a hill at Bourscheid. This one was not as fully restored and a lot of it was still in it’s ‘natural’ state but it commanded a fantastic view over the River Sûre, 150m below and the audio commentary gave you a good idea of what it must have been like. We spent an interesting 2 hours or so there before hitting the west road again looking for a campsite to stop at before moving on into Belgium. We found one at a little
town on a minor road about 10km from the border - can’t even remember the name but the facilities were good. Jac even thought the little bats flitting around at dusk were cute! The weather had cleared and we settled in for the night and noticed that it was getting a little cooler in the evenings now - I guess the long summer for us is slowly drawing to a close.
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