Our Holiday to Germany - Taking It Up The Rhine - Part 1

And here we are yet again, this holiday blogging is becoming an annual event. Firstly a few words of why. Writing down one's musings regarding a holiday is not a self-indulgent, egotistical word-fest, it is merely a chronology of holiday events interspersed with some hopefully comedic comments. Having photographs to look back on is fine, but sometimes place names and people may slip from the memory, so having the holiday history in written form is an aide-memoire of the holiday experience.

Let us begin.

This year we took the decision not to have a holiday, other financial commitments had sequestered away the funds for frivolities, so no holiday for us. However, Mrs Dave suggested that I should take a couple of weeks off in the summer, just to do "things". "Things" translated into jobs around the house, a day trip or two, maybe a weekend away. Fortunately, these "things" soon transmogrified into a little bit more than a couple of day trips. We started looking at long weekend breaks, maybe five days in Ireland; "I've never been to Ireland", she mused.
"There's nothing available at such short notice, in the weeks that we have off" I replied.

We left it there. The next day at work, I took a look at a website offering coach holidays to Germany amongst others, and I found a nice little package deal for 8 days in the Rhine Valley. I sent a text to Mrs Dave to ask her to look at it, see what she thought and see if it was suitable and available. 10 minutes later I received the reply of; "all booked and paid for!"

So we're off to Germany.

So far so good, onto the nitty-gritty of departure day. We booked with Shearings (other coach firms are available), who provide a local pick up service, so you don't have to make your way to the barren wastelands of a far-flung motorway service station to pick up your coach. We got picked up at the local bus station, with some other local holiday makers who were also travelling, but to different locations, all fed by the same feeder coach. Which reminds me; feeder coach? I wished they had fed it some more, as it was tiny. I could only get one cheek onto the seat. Luxury travel my arse!

Enough procrastination, we are on our way! The first stop is Membury services on the M4 to swap from the tiny cattle wagon to a more luxurious coach, a proper size this one and branded with the company logo, again we find more like minded individuals, herded onto the coach to travel to the final coach interchange which is at junction 11 of the M20 in Kent at a services called Stop 24. If you're interested in watching coaches pull in and depart, this is the place to go, as a whole flotilla of Shearings coaches pull in, empty their holds of luggage, move luggage to another coach, fill up again and move off. All done with military precision and a smile, usually. It is a brilliant service and we found that after our local bus station we never touched our suitcases until we reached our hotel.

At the interchange we waited for our coach to be ready, whilst sipping a coffee and watching the clientele milling around the service station, due to the type of people that coach tours tend to attract, the place looked like God's waiting room! The average age must have been 70! Once our coach was ready we boarded saying hello to our driver Jason and those almost awkward hellos to your fellow passengers, as you bounce down the aisle with your bags. "Sorry, hello, alright, sorry, excuse me, is this our seats, sorry". Once settled we were off. Next stop the Channel Tunnel.

Duty Free Shopping "oh no!"

Unfortunately at the Channel Tunnel we had a couple of hours to kill before getting on the train, which meant the entertainment for the next 120 minutes was provided by the infernal and eternal optimism of the Duty Free shop, which stinks of expensive perfume with the lure of cheap fags and booze, for a non smoker heading for an all inclusive holiday it is no lure at all. I sat outside and played "spot the illegal immigrant".

Anyway, back on the coach, through the tunnel and off through France and Belgium heading towards Germany. Which gives me chance to look at some of our fellow passengers. Judging by the age of some of them, they may have been to Germany before, but may not have been so friendly last time, I'm sure I heard a mumble of "fix bayonets". We rumble on through France and Belgium stopping once at a Belgian service station for a leg stretch, a chance to get a bite to eat and spend a penny or 50 cents in new, foreign money.

Our hotel.

We arrived at our resort of Assmanhausen very late indeed, a swift check-in and up to the room to unpack. This is when we discovered we were at the side of the hotel, fairly close to the railway line.
Now we knew that the railway line runs close to the hotel and noise from the trains can be heard in the rooms, we had read this before leaving, but we didn't realise that it was really close and the freight trains would fly through at break-neck speeds and be about a mile long! However, that first night they didn't bother us, as we were knackered and could have slept through a bombing raid. Whoops, shouldn't say things like that!

Onto the holiday proper.

To be continued - Part 2