Day 6 –
Weds
Wednesday
16 April marked the halfway point for our getaway and the 9 year point for our
marriage! We left Dresden and headed
southwest to the next stopover, Koenigstein, in Sachsische Schweiz (Saxon
Switzerland). Unfortunately due to Sat
Nav wobble, we missed the turn off for the stellplatz and ended up on the other
side of the river; fate had obviously intervened as we ended up at a much nicer
location, here. We couldn’t have chosen a lovelier place to celebrate
our anniversary. And after the grey day
we had yesterday, the sun came out!
The stellplatz is
on a farm on the banks of the Elbe river and right next to a railway line. Some may have struggled with the noise of the
trains but they didn’t bother us, despite it being an obvious mainline between
Eastern and Western Europe. I think
maybe the local area made up for it anyway. It cost 17 euros for 24 hours, plus 1 euro for
6 fresh eggs! Fresh water and discharge
facilities were included.
I have to add, as a complete aside, something that really annoyed me. We've already seen some really rubbish behaviour from fellow motorhomers and are starting to understand why some people don't necessarily want motorhomes around. When we were leaving this place, sitting waiting to use the disposal facilities, we watched an individual dump his grey water, but not in the grey water drain! He literally just stood there, in the middle of the field and tuned on the tap! OK, so there wasn't a great deal of grey coming out, but the fact that he did it at all and not 10 metres from the drain astonished me. He couldn't even say he hadn't seen it as I'd watched him standing over it for a good couple of minutes beforehand, probably trying to work out how to drive up to it. I can only assume he was too inexperienced / lazy to drive up to the drain. Either way, it was a blatant show of selfish idiocy as far as I'm concerned. I really wish I'd said something, but people like that won't care what I have to say and with the language barrier, it's not quite so easy. It's a real shame that there are too many people who think that just because they're just passing through, the state of that place doesn't matter and they can leave all of their rubbish wherever they want.
If there's one thing that we should all do, it's be responsible. Leave an area as you found it. If there's nowhere to dump or if you can't manoeuvre your vehicle to the right place (!) take your rubbish, including your grey and black waste, with you, until you can find somewhere appropriate to dump it.
And breathe...rant over.
After a quick
coffee and unloading the bikes, we were soon off to explore the area. A short ride into Rathen itself revealed a
very small, but lovely village split between both sides of the Elbe. No bridges in sight, just a regular passenger
boat service to take you to the other side!
€5 later and the 3 of us and our 2 bikes were safely over to the other
side of the river and heading to Stadt
Wehlen.
We stopped for a lovely lunch
in Wehlen, delicious homemade Goulash soup and bread for me and a huge bowl of macaroni
and German sausage for Pete. Of course,
we couldn’t eat every bit of it, so Powell got a tiny morsel of each! The duck
got none...
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| Not sure if this was the cafe pet or just a random stray... |
After
finishing our tasty treat, we headed back to Rathen for a look around. On discovering that the Bastei Bridge could be accessed
from there, we locked the bikes up and headed off to see if it really was as
good as the pictures make it look.
An hour and
a half, a couple of hundred meters of height and a lot of sweating later, we
weren’t disappointed. It’s just
stunning.
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| Bastei Bridge |
We stuck
around for a good while taking in the wonderful views and making the most of
the lovely weather to get some good pictures.
We took a good few on the way back down too as there seemed to be an
aussichtspunkt (viewing point) round every corner. It was most definitely not just the highlight
of the day, but of the whole getaway.
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| Rathen |
 |
| The view from the passenger boat at Rathen |
We rounded the day off with a romantic dinner for two cooked by yours truly, washed down with a couple of wines (for me) and beers for Pete. A lovely end to a beautiful day.
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