Saturday 1st October

Today I broke four of my unwritten rules and you nearly didn’t get a beer photo but things improved and the beer photo is here. First mistake, move at a weekend (especially a bank holiday weekend), realised as we pulled out of the site and into a nose to tail traffic jam like nothing we’ve seen since the M25. It was full of bloody motor homes all looking to stop exactly where we want to stop. Mistake two, drive over 40 miles, it was about 70 miles in all but having checked our mileage average we are in the 36 miles per day region. Mistake three, finish driving well after lunch, our experience is that many stellplatz are getting full up by 2pm, we arrived about 4.00pm. Mistake four, let Lucy have cash!

First off, a couple of the sneaky photos from yesterday. This is the first room we went into and the painted decorations were very nicely done but this was just one of the rooms of the servants quarters. Everywhere was so richly decorated and even the servants bedrooms were covered in carved wood.

King Ludwigs Throne Room. He didn’t live long enough for the throne to be installed. To each side are the twelve apostles, Jesus is behind the throne over depictions of Wagnerian heroes.

The Minstrels room. I do have some more photos but they have fingers in them or are blurred but it is well worth a visit.

Did I tell you it snowed while we were there? You can see why Disney based their castle upon this one.

This is Saturday, we are following the Deutsches Alpenstrasse very nearly, the only problem with the road is that it is the German Alpenstrasse so it has to miss out on the obvious route because that takes you through Austria. We’ve spent half an hour in Austria today but will be back, it is just as lovely as southern Germany.

Our lunchtime destination was Oberammergau only because one of our neighbours had mentioned it a couple of days ago. Many of the buildings are painted with the tromp lieol? effect

Even the local estate agents.

In fact the more you looked the more you saw.

This is the Pilates House, it’s now an art gallery and you can watch the artists at work.

So where do you go to buy all your church related dust magnets? Oberammergau is the number one place to visit and is world famous for the Passion Plays so lots of religious artefacts are displayed for sale in the windows.

Small stuff if you’ve got a small alter or an empty alcove right unto full sized images of Christ on the cross.

And you’re very well catered for Nativity scene accoutrements.

And then I looked in this window display thinking it was just steins before realising it is a christmas shop.

1st of October and they have all the decorations up all ready.

One of the many trees, don’t they know it is unlucky to have your tree up after 12th night, I’ll set my mum after them.

Inside things didn’t improve. Lucy was like a kid in a Christmas decoration shop and she spent a fortune (my type of fortune, not a Bill Gates type of fortune but Bill would have left the shop considerably bereft of small change).

Look at all the things we have to have.

And the snowmen are so adorable.

I was going to buy this genuine Swiss clock made in Germany (€1300) but it only chimed on the half hour, if it had been every 15 minutes it would have bought back many happy memories of laying awake at night.

This could be part of the Abbey at Eltal, it was on our route and since I was concentrating on not running over cyclists, driving on the right side and within the speed limit I think it disgraceful that the assistant camera person hasn’t written down copious notes to help me out.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen ski jump, part of the Winter Olympics. We are only over the mountain from Innsbruck, home of another winter olympics.

We keep seeing lots of these small buildings throughout the landscape. We are pretty sure that the are hay barns, the hay around here is famed for it’s taste (the cows like it) and because no chemicals have been used on it.

And we have arrived at our Stellplatz by the Walchensee. It holds about 80 units but when we arrived there were only 20 or so. It’s only €6 per night and I was expecting it to be full up. As I’m writing at about 7pm it is filling up but it is far from crowded.

Here is todays beer of the day, Reutberger made by the Monks of Reutberg, about 20 miles to the north east of here.

Tonights dinner looking nothing like the picture is devilled steak. The sauce went a little bit thicker than expected and the steak may not have been bovine but it tasted good and I’ll give myself a well earned 7 out of 10. (I liked the sauce thick and there was definitely a cow on the meat pack! Lucy x)