St Martin, Tuesday 9th August 2011

St Martin's Stellplatz

We are at a charming little Stellplatz amongst vineyards and roses, overlooking the Pfälzerwald Forest and the village itself.

We spent 4 days in Oedheim and enjoyed several swims in the lake, good dog walks and fishing for Adon. We also had Currywurst in the site’s restaurant, where we met a couple of young Dutch students touring France and Germany on their bikes on their way to Vienna. They turned out to be very friendly and funny and good company for the evening. Their English was also very good, which helped matters.

The weather was mostly hot, but we had a couple of storms and the last day was a bit too windy for my liking. Adonis didn’t catch any fish at all, so that spoilt it slightly for him and, apparently, there is not as much fish in the lake as there used to be, according to one of the German fishermen who spoke to Adonis.

St Martin

It was nevertheless a very welcome break from the road and I had a chance to finish sewing ‘teddy mouse’ – whom I’ve christened Herr Mouse – and my German book, which is good and bad in a way, as I was enjoying all the new vocabulary and grammar practice exercises.

We left this morning at about 9.15 and headed for supermarket in nearby town of Friedichshall. We discovered that next to Lidl there was another supermarket called Handerlshof, which seemed by far the best supermarket we’ve been to so far in Germany, except there was no fresh fish counter.

We followed the TomTom on the A6 and A5 and then we took the risk of following my advice to get off at junction 64 at Speyer and follow the N9 west towards Neustadt and then the unnumbered roads to Kirrweiler, Maikammer and finally here. It all proved quite straight forward and made it here for 12 noon. We walked to the village and stopped at one of the wine cellars to try some local Gewurztraminer and Grauer Burgunder and ended up buying 3 bottles altogether.

St Martin

We had lunch and siesta, Adonis took Bramble for his walk and we’re now having a coffee. We might go out again afterwards, as the sun is shining (it was raining when we got here) and I’d like to have a look inside St Martin’s church if it’s open: it just looks different to what we are used to.

Don’t know yet what we’re doing tomorrow!