Germany 13 - Immenstaad and Meersburg/ Constanz and the Golf Buggy/ Apple country /an empty shop / a Zepplin museum and a Lidl /on the wonk

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I think I quite like the humour of my new friend Eleanor Oliphant. She seems like a 30 year old Adrian Mole with attitude who says what she thinks and has a very imaginative mind. I feel as you get older you tend to be a little free with your thoughts and words. Sometimes age makes you think you can say or do anything. Maturity goes out of the window and you start to say what you think and hang the consequences. Years ago I might have said something nice about Vaduz , a nice garden, a nice shop assistant , an interesting church . Sadly I found nothing to endear me to it. It was one of those places I was glad to get away from.

We planned a few days on Lake Constanz. The Bodensee as it is also known is filled by the River Rhine. There is a Zepplin museum nearby and if your pocket is bottomless you can go for a trip on a Zepplin. There is a tractor museum and a good Lidl in nearby Meersburg. The fields are full of apple orchards . Red rosy ones. The trees branches are weighed down with the weight of the fruit. The rosy apples are so prolific they are piled high in a bowl on the reception desk of the campsite we are staying at. They were tart and refreshing. I picked a couple up plus a couple of pears. It is not often campsites give you fruit .

It looked a good campsite . Very regimented in a German fashion. Sitting on the lake with a small marina. An ACSI site still open. We are staying at Schloss Helmstadt . Sounds very posh doesnt it? We were greeted by a guy on a golf buggy. This seems to be the way they do it on these campsites. Take you round, show you where you can park and then take you back to reception. We were taken to see the shop which would be open later . It had nothing in it. We saw the restaurant which looked lovely and high class . It turned out to have frites on the menu and was more down market than it looked. All the pitches were grass. We had the choice of two plots both on the wonk. Ok do you know what it is like to be on the wonk in a motorhome? Probably not so let me describe it. The pitch is not flat or level in any direction. . The van slopes one way or another. You go to bed and either side down the bed towards the drivers seat or slide backwards towards the boot. Sometimes the wonk is the other way and you find yourself heading towards the side window or to the middle where you fall out of bed. The answer to the wonk is to get out the levelling blocks . The only trouble with that is that we are on grass and we would sink even further into the wonk. It takes ages to get them out. When its raining you dont want to spend five minutes putting them down and driving up them only to have to drive off in the morning and put dirty muddy blocks back in the van . So you pick your plot, make the most of it and put up with the wonk.

Around the site were conker trees . Even the conkers here were massive. Out golf car driver drove us back to the reception . Glenn got off . I started to get off the back. With a trailing leg left behind me the driver started to drive off. Such was the push his buggy gave me I ended up in puddle , covered in dirt , wet and with a bruised and cut knee. Our driver hardly batted an eyelid . He assumed I had fallen over my own two feet . There seemed little point in trying to tell him he was clumsy and he was careless. I hobbled over to the office to pay so that we could settle in our plot.

We settled for the night . A bit of reading and a new film - Knightfall . The story of the Knights Templars . Not brilliant but it passed a few hours away. We hate the dark nights and its getting dark early. By 7 we cannot see anything so there is no desire to go out. We wait until the next morning before walking down to the marina. It is not much to write home about. The boats are all tied up. The wind is high and blowing them about and it feels more like Winter than Autumn.

Before we leave we plot in the Lidl - the cupboards are bare . I am not a lover of Lidl but most of the time they and Aldi are the only ones around. When the cupboard is bare beggars cannot be choosers. There is a reasonable selection of things we will eat so we stock up. The treat though is the bakery next door. Fresh croissants , a large and crusty baguette, a few crusty German cobs and cakes . Not as fascinating as a French pattiserie but managed to buy a few goodies as treats .

We head towards the Black Forest , Freiburg , Koblenz and then down the Moselle . We have a plan and we are sticking to it .

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