Then we set off in the car for our third visit to a third castle in three days. Today it’s Burg Eltz, which Anne spotted on the internet when researching potential day trips from our base at Bernkastel Kues.
There’s an excellent website here : http://www.burg-eltz.de/
We take the motorway today, rather than the winding road up the riverside, then make our way through the countryside and several small towns and villages on the way.
We park the car and have to walk around half a mile or so to reach the castle – when we do, it’s one of those situations where you turn a corner and all of a sudden it’s there. A quite stunning sight, as the castle sits on a rock in the middle of a small ravine with a river flowing around it.
It’s the one castle in the region which seems never to have been destroyed by anyone, thanks mainly to the craftiness and diplomacy of its owners over the years. In fact it’s still in private hands of one of the three original families who built it.
We opt for the English tour rather than the German one and are joined by a group of American school-children from North Kentucky. They are not the lookers you see on Dawson’s Creek or the OC. They are in the main, very ugly, and look to be the result of some serious in-breeding. The tour is good despite the kids standing around looking vacant and yawning for most of it. Their teachers are interested though…
We have lunch for the third day in a row on a castle esplanade and it is good. Anne opts for brastwurst and chips and I opt for potato salad and ..erm chips - washed down with a nice glass of dry white wine and a shandy respectively.
We take a longer, alternative route back to the car park, walking through the woods. The weather is roasting and the trees give some welcome shade.
On the drive back to Bernkastel we avoid the motorway and head back to the riverside route making a couple of stops on the way. A Coke at Treis-Karden and then on to Cochem, where we’d been on Saturday.
We have a look round the shops and I buy a new hat. Then we take a tour of the town and the surrounding area on a motorised train. The tour provides some excellent views of the castle and the town from the opposite bank of the river. We pass a digital clock/thermometer sign which advises a far-too-hot temperature of 38 degrees celcius!! The ticket to the tour entitles us to a free wine and we get to keep the glasses too – so we can’t complain…
We leave Cochem and take the Autobahn route back to Bernkastel and relax in the flat for a while drinking water to cool down and listen to some Vivaldi String Concertos while Anne reads and I make notes for the blog.
We head back to the Herr Dillinger’s winery for a bottle of his finest and sit out again in his courtyard enjoying the sunshine. An old lady joins us at our table. She appears to be slightly confused in an old lady kind of way, in that she makes the same repeated comments about events in her life, the wine we’re drinking, asking if I am a priest and whether or not she’s paid for her sparkling water (which she did as soon as she ordered it).
Eventually the poor old dear heads off, only to reappear a few minutes later to ask Herr Dillinger whether she paid for her drink or not….
We walk to the building owned by our previous landlord as we want to try the food in the restaurant located between the nightclub in the basement and our erstwhile flat.
Anne goes for the jaegerschnitzel with all the trimmings and I opt for the widely advertised asparagus special. The food’s okay but the best part of mine is the boiled potato side dish.
It is absolutely boiling, even though we are on the verandah, as the sun is belting right into the place where we’re sitting. My head and arms are dripping with sweat – I’m sure Anne enjoyed her meal all the more for that!!
We walk to the shore for a small ice cream to round the meal off and then back to the flat at the end of another enjoyable day…
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