Friday 11th October

Special bonus blog just for Giorgio.

We’ve found this lovely stellplatz in Hornbach, about a mile from the French border. It’s got about 30 places and costs €8 per night which includes free wifi and contrary to most stellplatz we’ve been to, this is empty. You could say there’s not mushroom here but we went for a walk and there were hundreds, but that’s a little bit later.

This stellplatz has a library and lots of information on local walks and places to visit. Next to our “party hut” is a wooden gazebo with fire / bbq pit and a bucket of wood. The town has a supermarket and discounted clothes shop, a bank, chemist and car dealer. Not very many opportunities to secure a good beer of the day. 

Hornbach was home to Hieronymous Bock (not to be confused with Hieronymous Bosch, the paint splasher from the Netherlands) who came up with a method for classifying animals and plants.

We’re staying here for 2 nights so decided to go for a walk in the morning. I asked one of the locals where to go for a beer and she said Gimpelwaldhutte (Bullfinch forest hut), just follow the signs. It’s less than 2km, uphill some of the way and we found it. It looked deserted, run down, closed for ages and there was a sign in the door in French. I’m just as good at French as i am at German, Italian and Spanish so my translation was, the kitchens will open at 8pm every day. Luckily I looked through the door and saw that the place was buzzing – hooray!

Beer of the day, not bad but very cheap. We noticed that everyone else was eating and being the lovely chap I am offered beloved a lunchtime treat.

Hunters schnitzel with mixed mushrooms and potatoes croquettes for her ladyship…

…and Cream schnitzel with champignons for moi. Very good value, we’ll certainly be back to this place again.

So thats two of your mushroom photos. What follows are some of the mushrooms we passed on our way to the Gimpelwaldhaus, some of them may be duplicates, some of them are edible such as the Ceps, Shaggy Inkcaps, Fairy Ring Champignons, Blewitts and Honey Fungus. I didn’t have my dummies guide to mushrooms with me and I’m not going to give them any labels just in case I’m wrong and you try to eat a bad one.

Calais is 350 miles away, we’re going to do most of it tomorrow (No lorries on Saturday or Sunday) leaving 50 miles or so for Sunday.