Holiday on the Rhine

View from Apartment 

Our Holiday in Boppard (on the Rhine) Germany started off miserably we left Sittingbourne at 7am and arrived 6pm, Tunnel Train was 40 minutes late and then we had a load of traffic problem in both Belgium and Germany. Since 1966 I have been attending the Annual Martial Arts Course St Mary's Bay and then at Folkestone, the course was first organized by my Father John (Nobby) till 1990 and then by myself till 2011. Sadly the camp has stopped the Army who have taken over the ACF Camp have decided not to rent the facility to outside organizations, so much for customer loyalty we have been hiring ACF Facility for 41 years. This was the first time I have had holidays in August NEVER again

  

On holiday with me were the wife Val, daughter Susan and grand children Poppy and George. I rented an apartment on a working farm and was looking forward to letting the kids experience life on a farm, what a disappointment we were to have The apartment was excellent as were the views but the rest was shocking everything was unkempt and dirty, with cats and dogs wondering around defalcating every where with no one cleaning up the mess. The same was said of the horses every other stables I have visited stable personnel would regularly clear up the horse droppings not here, it seem they clean about every month leaving the manure on a trailer to mature and gather flies. Yet the kids thoroughly enjoyed the farm

The Rhine Valley is real treasure with lots of fairy tale castle and beautiful little villages If you like windy roads you will love driving into mountains, with roads doing multiple hairpins, couple this with shear drops of hundreds of feet on narrow roads, it certainly is an experience. Our Boat trip down the Rhine was a joy and most probably the best way to see the best of the Rhine Valley and I can recommend a holiday on the Rhine to everyone. Prices here are no dearer then in any tourist attraction in the UK in fact some things are cheaper diesel is  £1.29p per litre approx. £5.80p per gallon, in England its £6.21p per gallon a saving of 0.41p per gallon, I saved £16.40p on the trip and was a lot cheaper then petrol, can not understand why in the UK diesel is so much dearer then petrol must be the only country in the World where this happens? Some things in the Supermarkets like wine, spirits, cigars etc. were a lot cheaper this is down to the fact that we do not have the Euro thank God

The holiday was far from cheap £232 fuel, Farm apartment £600, AA Euro Cover extra £90, Insurance Euro Cover £25 that came to £947 Val and Susan paid for the food, trips, lunches out and kids treat that came to £800 so an all round cost of £1747 and I expect there were things I missed compare this with a holiday in Turkey All inclusive in October £840 for two. August is certainly rip of month

A farm holiday is not for everyone, the nearest shop or pub was 3 miles away from this farm is certainty would not suit my son John but a hotel on the Rhine would be ideal. Have visited Rudesheim am Rhein and this what you expect of a Rhine land town great place to stay in fact myself and Val are thinking of coming here next September 2014 really loved the place and it has nothing to do with the fact that Asbach Brandy is made here. If you use a car in Germany you soon have to learn to drive at high speeds I was traveling at 85 mph and still got flashed by White Van Man doing 100 plus and I expect the flashy cars were doing more. The views around the Rhine as I have said are spectacular only spoilt by those ugly wind turbines, which destroy wild birds, bats, blight people houses, become a noise nuisance, are an eye sore plus in building them they cause environment harm. So why do we have them? to produce a minuscule amount of  electricity and appease the green lobby At one point I saw approx. 30 of these ugly things grouped together it looked like some thing from the War of the Worlds

One major thing I noticed in this part of Germany all workers were German yes there were foreign owned shops but all shop, restaurant and shipping workers were German so why is it that German people are prepared to work in this industry yet in the UK most restaurant in tourist areas are Eastern European? My mother came from Westphalia Germany so I was used to very good service in shops, garages etc.  but in this part of the Country it seems more laid back as every cashier seem to enter a conversation with the customer  so buying fuel can take at least 10 minutes. My German has got rusty since my mother died in 2004 but was pleased to say it soon came back but I had forgot what vinegar was. So I tried explaining first by saying in German I want this item which is wine that is not wine, then wine that had gone of and so on by this time I had 4 shop workers round me scratching their heads. Eventually I came up with Chips, Salt and? Using various hand movement and it clicked and I got my vinegar. Vinegar is Essig 

The Rhine is not just a river for tourism it is very much a working river with big barges traveling to and through. On every barge they have a car perched on the back of the boat, so I wonder if they live on the barge? Also trains are very important in moving goods, I saw more goods trains then passenger trains the most trucks I counted was 40 trucks per train. I wonder why we in the UK do not use the Railway network and waterway to transport goods? I realise that it would be an expensive project but surely it would be more efficient, economical and mustn't forget the zeitgeist it would be more environmentally friendly

 Top of Chair lift

Good Holiday and would recommend Germany to anyone and I never lost my temper once with the kids who were well behaved for kids, but have to admit as you get older you learn to switch of easily

 

We did have a bit of Drama during the Holiday as most of you know Val is addicted to the Aldi, I have tried to wean her of and then they build one next to the Club in East Street and then she found Lidl and worse was to come while in Germany we came across NORMA and another outlet simular to Aldi. Once Val realise this her eyes lit up and there was a mad rush to the store. Even young George was saying this is Aldi I had to explain that this store was an undercover agent for Aldi. Sorry No Photo restricted.



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