The Romantic Road, Wurzburg, Germany

Although the weather could be a bit kinder to us we are having a wonderful time in Germany so far.  We are travelling the romantic road through Bavaria. The road will lead us to the foothills of the German Alps in Fussen.

Germany’s Romantic road winds through walled towns and picturesque villages.  You enter a town through an arched gateway complete with guard towers.  Inside the towns and villages, you find gothic cathedrals, half-timbered fachwork houses and beautiful historic hotels.  Often, in these towns, you find a medieval festival.  Fairytale castles like Neuschwanstein and the Alps complete the charm.

The entire drive is a little over 260 miles.  You don’t even need a map or GPS to find your way, you just follow the brown signs for the Romantic Road.

Our next stop was the first town on the Romantic road called Wurzburg which is located in the heart of the Franken wine growing region.  Wurzburg is famous for its excellent wines and gourmet restaurants, colourful wine festivals, and beautiful vineyards.  The architectural gem of Wurzburg is the Residence Palace, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.  We arrived on a really grey and raining Friday morning at a Stellplatz sited by a watersports centre.  It had a toilet block with showers and was on the grass beside the river and felt more like a campsite but was only 10 euros a night with electricity.  It was really tipping down so we stayed in for the day. I caught up with my Harlow website while Ray read and cooked dinner.  We did feel a bit down with the constant rain all day and especially as we had been stuck in the van in the workshop the previous day too.

Wurzburg

Saturday morning was grey and dismal again but we were determined to get out. Wurzburg was a 6-mile cycle ride along the river cycle path.  Five minutes down the cycle track we felt the first spots of rain and before going any further we stopped to pull our rain jackets on.  Ray wanted to turn back but I was determined that we needed the exercise. Normally it would be me wanting to go back as the drizzle wasn’t doing my hair any favours. Anyone that knows me knows that I worry about going out in the rain because my hair just turns into a frizz ball but I purposely hadn’t washed it that morning so I really wasn’t so bothered.

Fortunately, it was only a brief shower, because all of a sudden the clouds scattered and let the mild sun break through and we had a pleasant ride into Wurzburg.

As we approached we saw many people standing around on the bridge drinking glasses of wine listening to the live music.  We found a cycle rack that was, unusually, undercover and we locked the bikes up and walked around the town.

There were so many people around and it wasn’t long before we realised there was some kind of festival being held that weekend.  In fact, it was the International Street Music Festival. There were more than 400 music acts going on throughout the 2-day festival.  This unique cultural event is the largest stage-free festival in Europe. Performances took place on 22  public squares and several places along the bridge. Everywhere you looked there were stands set up and people standing around drinking glasses of wine.  What was nice to see was that they were drinking from glasses, not plastic tumblers, as they would for any outside events in the UK.  The whole day we were there we didn’t witness any glasses being broken or rowdy behaviour.