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Published: July 24th 2009
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I've just realised how much time I'm spending writing all the little bits of information we pick up on the way so from now on I'll try to be a little bit more brief. Besides, I've got some other things on my mind now.
After getting up round 10ish we leisurely gathered our belongings and made our way out of the campsite. We headed through the centre of
Bastogne and saw their pride and joy... a tank. We followed the road to
Esch-sur-Sure which was a very picturesque town in Luxembourg. We had brunch and then climbed up to the ruined castle above the town. Then we decided we needed to win the lottery and buy a house there. The town has won some accolades as one of the prettiest villages in Europe. Probably rightly deserved as it's situated in amongst tree-covered mountains next to a sparklingly clear river with lots of traditional half-timbered houses. The roads in the area are in extremely good condition, which is a very good thing as you almost need to do a three-point turn as you go around some of the bends.
We made our way towards
Chateau de Bourscheid, which was around
6 miles away as the crow flies, but turned out to be more like 18 miles as you wound your way up and down the mountainsides. We parked up then wandered up to the gates. Upon examining the list of fees for entry we decided against taking the audio tour of the expensive reconstruction of a castle.
We continued on to
Luxembourg City and went in search of an electronics shop and McDonalds. My camera had previously given up the ghost and we found we didn't pack the cable for Dave's Olympus. This particular brand of camera is particularly difficult to download pictures from without the right gear as the cable has a mini-USB-c connection to the camera and the memory card is proprietary XD. So we bought a 5-in-1 card reader to share our pictures with everyone. McDonalds was our choice of source for a WiFi connection but after getting a couple of drinks and sitting down we found that their system wasn't working. Damn. We wandered around the nearby streets then decided to stock up on bread rolls for some meals.
We headed out of Luxembourg City and realised we should probably stock up on fuel
as it was 20 cents per litre cheaper than Belgium, France and Germany. Probably something to do with their status as a tax haven. So we headed on a bit of a detour round the outskirts of the city. Conveniently, the place where found fuel had a Lidl next door so we also got some groceries. Upon getting back to the car we saw some Luxembourghers examining our car. They spoke to us in English and asked how we could drive sitting on the wrong side of the car. We explained we always drove on this side of the car the only problem getting into car parks and tollbooths but that's what I was there for. They walked away still looking a bit bemused at the crazy English people.
We made our way back to the road and entered our destination into Tom-Tom.
Epernay. Yes, we did want to avoid the toll-routes. It would take 2.5 hours. Ok. A few times we missed the turn-offs and ended up on tiny country roads in the middle of nowhere, but this made it interesting. It was only when we got near
Reims and
Epernay that we thought to search for a campsite. The nearest one was 70 miles away. Hang on, that can’t be right.... No. It really was 70 miles away. Fine, we'll just get to Epernay then head on out. But it was getting to 8pm when we finally arrived there and exhausted didn't seem to cover it. We had spotted a McDrive on the way in and decided to check out their WiFi. Eventually we found it again. We hooked onto the Internet and found that there was in fact a campsite 100 metres down the road from McDonalds. The signs for
Campsite Municipal were all around us but we hadn't really been looking. Oops. We checked into the campsite and were relieved to find that they spoke very good English but they were full. The owner, being the crafty Frenchman he was, described a "
romantic" spot he could squeeze us into just near the river. The next people would have to camp on the football fields. We followed him through the campsite to our romantic hideaway. There were only a couple of thistles but we did discover the downside to camping next to a river. Bugs. The tent was up in record time and closed against the insects. We discovered our second wind and walked into Epernay for a quick gander. We realised it was Monday night and nothing was open. We headed back, demolished a bottle of cider, the rest of our red wine from the night before and fell into bed. Day 3 lesson learnt - don't believe everything Tom-Tom tells you.
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