Next

 

Germany 3

Day 5 - To Gutach and Scluchsee, 124 miles

 

 

Extracts from an e-mail from a T3 friend about the new van:

 

 

What was the most marked difference you noticed 'twixt the old and the new van, I wonder. Lack of doubt re breaking down, ergonomic seats, air con, fuel consumption etc, etc?

    All those were very significant. We felt totally confident in the van although we'd had no time at all in which to try it out before Dunkerque.

At this point I should add that any comparisons I make are made between this new van and our old T3, not T3s in general.

    The seating is comfortable certainly, but not exactly Recaro. (Are they still trendy?). Within less than an hour of leaving home Jo had said that she now understood why it is that one sees motorhomes going by with the woman in the passenger seat asleep with her gob open. This van is just so damn comfortable!

    The air conditioning is superbly effective. We used it only when close to desperation though. I'm told it knocks 5mpg off the fuel consumption. Only yesterday I was embarrassed to read in New Scientist that such systems contain HFC134a. It has a warming effect on the planet more than one thousand times that of CO".

    The van's fuel consumption appears to be very good. I'm not sure how much to trust the computer, but with cruise control set at 130 kph (81mph) on a long flattish run across Italy on the autostrade we got 38.6mpg, and similarly in France. (On a mixed conditions trip to Leeds and back I've recently got 44.6 mpg without being careful about it).

Do you miss the old van?

    No. No, no and most definitely no. (Doth he protest too much?).

    During the purchase negotiations and right up until I was collecting the new one we thought we'd miss the T3 most horribly. The T4 could never be accurately described as a motorhome, but I must admit it doesn't feel very much like what we'd come to think of as a campervan either. Apart from the slight reduction in interior space, I can think of no way in which it isn't a very much better vehicle than our T3 was.

    At times my sort-of allegiance to VW puzzles even me, because I'm quite certain that VW have at best only a very business-like allegiance to me, the consumer. For a very long time Jo and I have talked on and off about what sort of camper-type vehicle we would eventually buy and for two years at least we'd occasionally go and take a look around some of the options almost regardless of make and right up to lorry-sized stuff. In the end it had to be a VW, and it had to be small (and therefore very much more economical than the alternatives). I finally reasoned that if and when I might become so decrepit that the van's size becomes an issue, then I'll probably be too decrepit to drive it anyway.

 

 
 

 

And about Germany, etc:

 

 

 

Was Germany as clean and litter free as has often been reported?

    Yes, although I didn't particularly notice that at the time. Orderly is how it seems with no sign of poverty and very little scruffiness. The recycling facilities are very good - because I'd been so sure that they would be, we brought our French "rubbish" with us to Germany!

 
Do the locals really ponce about in their 'Lederhosen'?

    Not that we saw, but I was ready to shoot any who did (with the camera, of course?).

 
I know in the Alsace area the German influence is very easy to see. It has, after all, changed hands once or twice over the years.
   
 

Indeed, yes. We passed through some of it.

(When I was at school in Wales we lived out in the country in a sparsely populated area and the council paid for a taxi to fetch us to and from school. The very stout and elderly driver who'd been born during WWI was called Alsace-Lorraine Jones!).

 
It looks like you had great weather - did the insect population give any cause for concern?

    From the start they hammered poor Jo for several days, but later they turned their attentions to me. Amongst many other places I had a big bite on my right shoulder right under the rucsac strap when we walked up to Zermatt. We used a Boots' cream which was nearly useless, tea tree wipes which were very good, and anti-histamine (hayfever) tablets. 

 

 

 

So where next for your new van then?

    Jo has suggested we take no trips abroad next year. Then sort-of agreed to one trip. I'm almost desperate to get back to the Cevennes. I want to "do" Orkney too and we still have our British coastline trip to complete.

 
Now if I had a van like yours, I would like to go to Switzerland, or the Italian Alps.  Now that would be something.

    Ah, well, read on!

 

 

m

The Vogtsbauernhof.

 

 

This is the woody German equivalent of the Museum of Welsh Life at St Fagans.

There are six fully-furnished farmhouses where the living quarters and the working farm are housed under one roof, a labourer’s cottage and a large assortment of other buildings (mills, sawmills, chapels and storehouses), seven kitchen gardens and a herb garden. Together they represent different but interconnected aspects of life in the Black Forest: its architecture, traditions, customs and trades, and the ways in which people have lived and farmed throughout the ages.
 

 

As interesting as any other was the house which looked least interesting (most modern), but had been faced in stone to weatherproof it and "improve" its outward appearance.

 

 

 

Inside it..............

Inside was this almighty woodstove, the active part of the fire being behind the wall in a cooking area. Noticed the clothes airer / drier?

I'd never forgotten a similar, but much more ornate one, which in the '70s I'd seen in a Swiss museum.

 

 

 

 

The upper floor is a barn.  

All the nails used were wooden, the roof "tiles" also.

Wooden gutters made by drilling out huge lengths of logs then sawing those lengths in half.

 

 

Left: A damn big sledge and (what might be?) a snowplough.
   

 

Very strongly Roman Catholic, this area. And you see what is meant by "Bavarian Klutter"?

 

 

 

Still the same house. As were almost all of them, it was built into the hillside (like a ty hir), and inside was almost dark as dark can be.

 

********************************************************************************************

 

Next