It was wonderful to wake up to the view of Hohenzollern castle above us on Wednesday, April 24. We were the only ones in the car park and it started snowing (just for a change)! We had booked to go on the first tour of the day at 10.00 so there were very few people with us on the shuttle bus up the steep climb to the entrance. The castle dates back to 1267 and became the seat of the Kings of Prussia. It was pretty cold at the top but with great views across the countryside.

It was still snowing when we left at midday to make our way across to the Romantic Road. The notion of the Romantic Road was created in the 1950s to bring tourism to the area by linking cute, medieval towns and villages in Bavaria and Baden-Württermburg together on a single route. The southern start of the Romantic Road is in Füssen near Neuschwanstein Castle in southern Bavaria and finishes 350km later at Würzburg in the north. We joined it at Rothenburg ob der Tauber as we had heard from several sources that the towns between Neuschwanstein and Rothenburg weren’t very interesting. Rothenburg was gorgeous despite the overcast weather and the fact that most of the shops were closed as it was after 17.00.

However, the bakery was open and we bought a couple of schneeballen which are basically flavoured pastry balls. There are apparently a local delicacy but having tried the vanilla one, we aren’t sure we can face the cinnamon version!

Our overnight stop was a vineyard called Weingut Erhmann (P4N#318808) around 30km from Rothenburg. We had contacted them earlier that day and we could stay over and have a tasting as long as we arrived before 18.30. We got there with 15 minutes to spare to a wonderful spot in the glorious evening sunshine. As you can imagine, more bottles were bought after an excellent tasting session.

We continued along the Romantic Road the next day and visited a number of towns and villages. They generally were not as interesting as Rothenburg until we got to Würzberg. It is a university city and quite lovely with an old bridge spanning the Main river that has been pedestrianised. There seemed to be a local tradition of getting a glass of wine from the local bar and drinking it on the bridge. It all seemed very civilised. We were going to join them but with the continuous showers and as we had wine in the fridge from our vineyard the night before, that cost the same for a bottle as they were charging for a glass, we decided to have a glass of beer indoors instead!

We headed back over the river to our stellplatz for the night (P4N#19559). It was a huge car park that must have had 60 plus mohos (mobile homes) and campervans in it. We had managed to snag one of the last spots by the river so we had a lovely view in the morning.

Miles driven since last post: 206

Miles driven trip: 4,708