STRUPPEN

Friday 9^th

We only had a few miles to go today, 18 to Struppen, with a shopping stop on the way at Lidl. Struppen is in what they call Saxon Switzerland and the Struppen stellplatz 

is situated on the top of a hill with a marvellous view of the surrounding hills, woods and fields leading down to the Elbe. 

We wanted a couple of non-city days before heading in to the Czech Republic. We sat out in the sun for quite a while, until it became too hot and once more had salad for dinner. We shall both be oinking and have curly tails soon if the amount of pig in various forms we have eaten is anything to go by, it seems to be the staple diet here, that and fresh rolls for breakfast.  Later in the evening we had another storm and it continued to rain throughout the night.

Saturday 10^th

We thought we would go for a walk! 3 hours and a million steps later we had had enough, even in our walking boots the uneven paths and cobbles play havoc with 70 and 80 year old knees. We had been given a map of a “wander-way” to a couple of viewpoints so headed off to the nearest, which we had been looking at from our pitch. (You can see it in the distance in this photo)

Birds singing, sun shining, 3 cars, 2 bikes and 5 big & little people were all we came across, it was wonderful. The whole area is given over to hiking and cycling, but it is very uphill and down again, electric bikes would have been a godsend, but we don’t own those unfortunately. Luckily it has been cooler today so I might even cook some more pig tonight.

Sunday 11^th

Another beautiful sunny morning, we could get used to this. We had thought of trying to go to the Bastei (fortress) which is on the other side of the river and apparently really picturesque.  However, the stellplatz guy said it would be very crowded so we decided to leave it for tomorrow. I washed a few T-shirts and then we went for a walk for an hour or so around the local church and village. There had obviously been a wedding yesterday judging by the flower petals and rice strewn around.

It got up to 29’C again in the afternoon so we just sat under the shade of the awning and put the world to rights in German, Dutch and English with our various neighbours. We were gifted a plate of barbecued sausages, bits of pork and mushrooms by a South Korean foursome who appeared to have over catered with their cooking and were leaving. In the evening I cooked again…salmon this time.