The delights of Spa.

At one time Spa was famous throughout Europe as somewhere that the upper crust could come and take the waters, royalty and heads of state were among its illustrious visitors. Quite clearly it has come down in the world since then, a place of faded gentility more famous now for motorsport than a anything else.

Having lived in Buxton for over quarter of a century then we are pretty good at spotting the contradictions you find in towns that have simply out-lived their original purpose. There is some truly magnificent examples of Belle Époque architecture in Spa, and much of it is in a state of dilapidation. Wandering about you soon become aware of a history of failed attempts at regeneration.

1. As a centre for the arts

Posters in the tourist information were advertising not only a summer arts festival but what looked like a fairly substantial Joan Miro exhibition which is grown-up stuff for a small provincial town like Spa. More unfortunate were the attempts at establishing a small 'art space' in the centre of town, second rate 'glass wall, style post-modern building with embarrassingly bad, slightly random modern sculpture outside. 

Rule number one of civic arts programmes, first you get the art, then you get the crusties, and as sure as night follows day around the art centre were crummy craft shops and a place selling overpriced organic wine. I bet you not one of these will be in business in two year's time.

2. Public/private finance initiatives.

On the hill above Spa there is a whopping great big new spa and thermes facility, built in the mid-noughties. This is connected to rhe town by a funicular built at the same time. The funicular is right next to a newish Radisson Blu, which rather remarkably has a funicular carriage dedicated to its clients to enable them to be whisked in private up to the new swanky Thermes without having to mix with hoy-poloi. 

The investment in the hotel, new spa and funicular must have been considerable and a bit of a coup in terms of economic regeneration. Well perhaps. Gill paid the 1.50 euro to ride in the funicular, being naturally stingy I opted to walk up a the steep paths through the woods. It could have been the end of a beautiful relationship, for the funicular deposited Gill quickly and efficiently in the foyer of the spa, but it became clear to me after huffing and puffing up the cliffs that the new spa was protected by a security fence, and I had to walk around half of its perimeter before I could reach the new building, and was relieved to find Gill waiting for me. 

The architecture of the new spa is a bit odd. There's a big space-age looking  glass drum building with a spiky crown on top - a bit Thunderbirds looking, then a grey corporate slab stuck on the side of it, which has all the charm of the kind of thing that might get built on the cheap as the new Social Science building for the University of Scunthorpe. 

It is the sociology of these new developments that is interesting. Is the private funicular for Radisson Blu clientele a new attempt to reassert the kind of elite status that Spa enjoyed in its 19th Century heyday? In a sense, the aristocrats of F1, Bernie Ecclstone and his cronies are a latter day unaccountable monied elite.

3. Terminal Decline.

And that's the rub. The super rich jet into Spa for the annual F1 bash, the more modestly wealthy drive across from Brussels to de-stress on Radisson Blu wellness weekends, before returning

refreshed to their Eurocrat jobs, gifting all of us with ever straighter carrots. For all this 'spend' looking at the state of Spa's not inconsiderable fin de siècle architectural heritage, not much of the new spa business benefits the town.

It should. Because there's some lovely stuff in Spa, and it would be a minor tragedy if it all just fell to bits.

Some lovely things -

Art Nouveau gems:

The Leopoldo II Gallery in particular is in a terrible state, it's lovely wrought ironwork peeling and rusty, and the main gallery roof, originally glazed, boxed in with wood decades ago.

As well as Art Nouveau, there are many other handsome public buildings and some nice squares currently used as car parks.

The public statuary dates from differing ages and reflects the dominant styles of the time:

The majority of these monuments are uncared for and decaying, but Spa is not alone in this malaise. In our hometown Buxton's famous Regency period Crescent has lain empty and unused for over twenty years.

We discussed this over a coffee. This too  proved a bit of a failure. Despite being in French speaking Wallonie, the waiter did not understand the term 'noisette'. His interpretation of a macchiato turned out to be a long milky concoction with a sweet vanilla after taste. My disappointment at the state of Spa's architectural heritage paled into insignificance compared to Gill's sense of quiet outrage when presented with the offending drink.

Progress so far...

Sadly our mission to embrace the delights of Belgium got off to a somewhat shaky start. What we discovered is that Belgian road repairers have a habit of simply closing-off roads without prior warning so we found ourselves following signs for our destination, Spa, but on exiting the motorway the only way open to us was in the opposite direction. After following a picturesque narrow lane for five kilometres or so, I finally found a junction big enough to do a U turn, and headed back towards where we should have been going in the first place. This route took right past Francochamps, the Belgian F1 circuit - an odd area of down-market hotels called things like 'Pitstop' and 'Chequered Flag'. The next challenge was a large sign hanging across the main road into Spa. It said 2.7m in large friendly letters in a nice big red circle. Since Maisy is 3.1 metres tall we would not be going that way. So, about turn, and we merrily trundled back to the motorway, past the road works which stymied us to begin with, up one stop to the west of Spa and reset to Satnav to the campsite coordinates.

We did arrive eventually, after wandering our way down single track roads, through villages, each one attempting to outdo the next in extreme traffic calming measures. Camping Parc de La Source is OK, like most more out of the way places, mainly statics with a fee touring pitches. The guy on reception was proud of his hard standing pitches for motorhomes. These must have been designed when a Bedford Dormabile was the apogee of luxury, as the tarmac patch was about 5 metres long. The only way Maisy could squeeze on without her rear end jutting into the road was diagonally.

The up-side to the place is its in a nice wooded area on the outskirts of Spa and the lane accessible from the rear of the site leads down into town - a mile or so - using quiet roads. So, we headed into Spa to see what Belgium's most famous watering place had to offer.

Belgium (sigh)

I am living proof that you can teach an old dog new tricks. If you scroll down the blog as far back as 2013, then you will find among the first handful of posts one called "Die Deutsche Frage", a grubby little tale outlining an array of prejudices, half-truths and urban myths that I had to confront, and overcome before I could enjoy being a tourist in Gerrnany.

My weak excuse is that boyhood in the early 1960s involved a barrage of anti-German propaganda disguised as wartime darin-do: films like 633 Squadron, The Dam-busters, The Great Escape; comics like The Eagle and Biggles books, with stirring titles - Spitfire Parade and the like, all of them portrayed the Allies as  blithely heroic, and Germans as cunning and evil. Something of that prejudice rubbed off on me, even as a liberally minded adult, I was not given to looking kindly upon things Germanic. So it was a good thing that we spent the Summer in Bavaria two years ago, and I started to see twentieth century German history more rationally; that the Nazi era was 12 insane years couched within the  more complicated, broader history of modern Europe, and that Germany today is a miracle of resilience, revealing a will to progress and rebuild, and learn from the tragedies of the past. So having realised finally that there is no 'German Question' time to move on and face other latent prejudices... What about 'la question Belgique?'

In terms of being the butt of jokes it's the French who tend to pour scorn on their northern neighbours, treating the Belgians as inferior and stupid much as the English did to the Irish, or more latterly the Welsh. But even we are not averse to a bit of Belgian bashing on the side. In our case it's the country itself which has become some kind of weird  geographical joke. 

The media reports a global explosion in golf course building, for example, then intimates they now cover more of the earth's surface than Belgium. Again, worrying reports emerge concerning the destruction of tropical rain forests, we are horrified to learn that in just three months the deforestation  amounts to an area greater than half the size of Belgium. So now we no longer see Belgium as a country with a rich and conflicted history at the centre of the 'European Project', but as a giant putting green or global woodpile. Little wonder then as we drive towards it from Deutchland Über-al-ist or La Gloire we feel a tad deflated, and think, Belgium .... sigh.

But we're here for a couple of days, time for me to set aside all  preconceptions and prejudices and discover the delights of Belgium with the same determination and commitment that enabled me to overcome 'The German Question'.

Rest assured, we'll be sending regular progress reports.

Kyllburg

We opted to take the Koblenz to Trier autobahn to reach Kyllburg. It was very quiet, an uneventful journey apart from the odd Merc and BMW that streaked past taking full advantage of the speed unlimit. I have to say we pressed the pedal to the metal too, reaching 64mph on one downhill stretch. I've become quite used to sedate travel and have to remind myself when I hop back into the car at home that I am allowed to drive faster than 48mph. Then there's all the messing about with the gear stick and clutch, and you've got to get out of the vehicle to have a pee, really car design has a long way to go...

The autobahn skirts along the eastern fringe of the Eifel area. We had no idea quite how extensive these uplands on the German/Belgian border were. It's an area of ancient volcanoes, you can see this from the conical shaped hills and circular crater lakes. It has a bit of the look of the Auvergne about it. Next time we come this way we'll have to check it out.

Kyllburg is typical of the area, a small village tumbling down a steep wooded gorge by the river Kyll.

The campsite itself is mainly static caravans. The touring pitch facilities are a bit unkempt by German standards and the whole place has that slightly odd feel that you get when residential pitches predominate. Mein host is very friendly, but quite possibly slightly bonkers. Difficult exactly to put your finger on it...  think of the Dylan Moran character in Black Books, but running a small campsite in rural Germany. The position is glorious though, we have a pitch right by the river, with a little footbridge nearby that leads to a path up through the woods to the village centre.

The weather forecast is still a bit iffy. We toyed with staying one night or two, partly because the sun seems to be shining in Northern France, but it's cloudy here. Another reason for our uncertainty about the place is that the local bike trail following the Kyll, unlike the  Moselweg, does not run alongside the river, but meanders around the valley sides. The bike signs in the village centre warn of 10% ascents in each direction. Our 60 year old knees are not up it, especially as Gill is on a non-electric bike.

In the end we decided to stay-put and find a nice riverside walk. That proved trickier than we imagined, the information boards were confusing, and the explanation of Mein Host definitely could have been scripted for Dylan Moran. At the second attempt we found the local  Tourist Information actually open, though the receptionist in the Rathaus where it was situated explained the person who ran it was missing for half an hour. She managed to give Gill a photocopied map; while they conversed I took a photo of the relief sculpture in the Rathaus foyer. What are the children doing at the rear end of the goat? It all looks a bit unsavoury to me.

Armed with a map we managed to find the riverside walk to the nearby village of Malberg, and lovely it proved to be - sparkling river, late spring flowers in abundance, sunlight slicing through the mixture of lime-trees, beech, and tall dark firs straight out of a Caspar Friedrich landscape.

We more or less had the place to ourselves apart from a couple of people tending riverside allotments, and anglers standing mid-stream fly-fishing.

Wordsworth called angling "a symbol of hope's foolishness." I'm sure that the anglers we observed were being hopeful rather than foolish, though I don't think any of them had actually caught anything. Perhaps they were planning on popping into the Kyllburg Lidl fresch fisch freezer on the way home. 

Das Rhein

Dawn in the Alf stellplatz proved to be somewhat overcast and chilly, a damp squib. Undeterred the birds put on a dawn chorus as if the the sun had arisen in a blaze of glory. Well before breakfast people were up and about tending the steep vineyards that surrounded us. It would be nice to say that in deference to a centuries old viniculture, the descendents of the Mosel peasants sallied forth with tiny brushes to dust aphids from the fragile buds of the reisling vines to ensure their health and purity. However, some decades ago, some bright spark thought, "bugger that for a game of soldiers, I know a bloke with a chopper".

Resorting to mechanical help is hardly surprising given the terrain, Just around the corner in  the nearby village of Bremms one vineyard is planted on a 68% slope - the steepest in the world, vertiginous is the norm. We speculated how they harvested them - tank-tracked quad bikes? by hand, absailing? There is only one way to find out - come back next autumn and drive through Germany on our way to the Peloponnese.

Vertiginous vines above Trabach

The bad news, the weather has not cheered-up, 12 degrees, overcast and breezy - exactly the miserable Spring weather that is so familiar to us living in Buxton. The good news, no-one has rolled up this morning to collect the 8.50 euros which was the alleged fee for the stellplatz according to the Camperstops book. Yippee! Not only a free night, but a bonus one, not quite as good news as a bogof wine deal at Auchun, but in the words of the venerable prophet Tesco..."every little helps".

We decided to drive to the Koblenz area, and stay a few kilometers south of the city in the ASCI

 campsite near Lahnstien. For some reason the satnav directed us more or less through the centre of Koblenz, which by the look of it is essentially a modern city with a few older survivals. I suspect it it was seriously damaged in WW2. Our Lonely Planet Guidebook, which usually emotes over places in a slightly hip, but gushing transatlantic style, is a bit flat about Koblenz. It includes among the four places  listed as 'good places to eat', an Irish pub and a branch of Aldi! Quite clearly, not a foodie heaven. So now we are not sure about visiting it; there is a cable car apparently that gives you a great view over the confluence of the rivers Rhein and Moselle, but Gill suffers from vertigo, so that's not really an option.

It was nice driving down das Rhein valley, castles by the side of the road in the forested hills above the huge river, which really does live up the adjective 'mighty', which so often is attached to it. Cue Wagner, soaring strings and blasting trumpets, a busty soprano giving it some welly in front of wobbly, expressionist-style backdrop - don't we all just love die heimat.... We actually saw a little more of the valley that we bargained for as we needed to find a Lidl. The eastern bank of the river is the lesser populated, so we had to drive quite a few kilometers before we found one, passing rather lovely looking places, inaccessible on the opposite bank, like Boppard.

The 'mighty' Rhine

Schloss in the forest (sod that, where's the Lidl?)

Eventually we found the campsite at Lahnsein, down a very narrow lane. The facilities are distinctly basic, though we are pitched right beside the river Lahn, which would be idyllic, but the road on the opposite bank is busy, and noisy even at night. We had planned to use the cycle path towards Bad Emms (great name!), but looking at it on google maps it seems to hug the road. We think we'll call it a day so far as the Rhine goes, especially as the weather is still overcast, and head west towards Kyllberg.

...and finally, Alf.

It is day four at Traben Trabach, we're on nodding terms with all the neighbours and in some danger of settling-in. Neither of us are too good at that. Seeking out weird and wonderful examples of German advertising may be a sign that I need  a change. As for Gill, she has just unwrapped 'The Exterminator', the electronic fly swat she bought for herself and is now prowling our pitch on the hunt for any small flying creature to test the thing out. Insects are cleverer than you think; the moment she slipped in the Duracells and pressed the red button, every fly in the vicinity scarpered. She has that determined look. If I was a nearby mallard I would be starting to feel nervous.

Definitely time to move on, the question is where? Wetter online is warning of Gewitter, which Google translate informs us are thunderstorms. Around Koblenz looks less unsettled, but we still fancy cycling a bit more along the Moselweg. So, in the end we opted to drive a few miles upstream, see how the weather pans out, and decide tomorrow on a plan for the rest of the week.

So here we are. In a simple, almost empty stellplätz in a small wine village with a diminutive name - Alf. 

The place is on the edge of the village, set among woods and hills, and overlooked by a restored castle, called the Marienburg. It's about an 800 metre walk from here to the centre of the village which stragges along the riverbank. Like most places in the valley it is very much a working wine village, and quite pretty into the bargain.

A small passenger ferry connects Alf to the slightly larger village, Bullay, on the opposite bank. It's about the most exciting thing you can do around here, so we paid our 1.50 euros each and hopped aboard.

Safely deposited in Bullay, you have equally limited options for entertainment. You might wander around the attractive village streets, stop momentarily to consider if a kaffee und küchen may be in order, or, you might resist the temptation as we did, and stand in the village square speculating as to why the statue in the middle of it is depicted stepping out of her dress.

Alternatively, there is a rather lovely riverside stroll. The delights of the Moselle are gentle and modest, but sitting for ten minutes or so simply watching the ripples on the water is a delight, As we sat on the bench we noticed the sky upstream; the clouds were looking increasingly dark and stormy. It created a rather spectacular vivid light. 

Beautiful it may have been, but it also seemed to be a prelude to the forecast 'gewitter'. Quickly we hopped back onto the ferry and hurried back to Maisy. We avoided a soaking, the first spots of rain began to fall just as we reached the shelter of the van.

Odd Germania

About a year ago I put up a post called 'The Strangeness of Albion'. This was around the time I was spending an unhealthy amount of time exploring the lesser known bits of the West Midlands as part of my research for the MA. In retrospect I think if you dwell on the the familiar long enough, then it does start to look slightly odd. Which is why if you try staring at your feet or thumbs for more than twenty seconds they take on a surreal disembodied existence that seems vaguely disturbing. That being said, Stourport on Severn, and  Droitwich Spa are by any stretch of the imagination inherently strange.

In fact, I think we like the strange and harmlessly odd, which is part of the charm of travel; it leads us to question our assumptions and see our humdrum everyday lives in a different light. 'Innocents Abroad', Mark Twain's account of his first brush with European culture, is very funny. It's not surprising that even though Gill is re-reading it for the umpteenth time, she still can't help herself breaking out into spasms of involuntary sniggering.

Bill Bryson's 'Lost Continent' takes a more recent stab at the same territory. His description of how the Dutch and German languages can seem inadvertently filthy to the English ear is so funny it should have a health warning, like a roller coaster, that it may be unsuitable for people with a heart condition or in the advanced stages of pregnancy. The beauty of Mr. Bryson's observations, like a lot of comedy I guess, is it enables us to laugh at things that otherwise we might feel were puerile or offensive. I mean, of course I am far too grown-up and enlightened to find in any way amusing the huge l'Oreal poster of a rather winsome young woman in rhe hairdresser's window we passed yesterday promoting, apparently, a half price 'Blond Shag'.

The thing that makes the odd seem amusing is the way it is surrounded by the everyday and familiar. When everything is strange - like our experience of Luxor and the Nile valley - then the experience strikes you as exotic. In Europe, where increasingly most aspects of everyday life seems little different to the UK, then the odd strange details jump out at you; it's the way they are  embedded within the apparently normal that makes them seem  funny. 

An example. A couple of days ago, We were sitting in a riverside cafe in Trabach, appreciating our morning macchiato (Gill: "Lavazza, always good"). For us, a routine, mundane pleasure.

I happened to leaf through the Eis menu. Many and varied were the ice-cream concoctions on offer. Even more impressive, however, was the menu front cover.

This is so strange, it is difficult to know where to begin. The most striking aspect of the design is the fact that it is a parody of Hipgnosis's iconic  Pink Floyd album cover for Atom Heart Mother, which on its release in 1969 was highly experimental. I am not sure whether it is sad, funny or simply inevitable that what was edgy and avante garde for one generation becomes absorbed into the mainstream to be recycled as clichéd and trite in the next. 

Even stranger is the way the design has been changed to make it more ice-cream related by having the cow lunge towards the viewer, tongue lolling out - presumably a gesture signifying some kind of apotheosis of 'licking' for German 'Eis' enthusiasts. To us though, it just looks weird. I suspect in the north of Europe dairy related matters have connotations utterly lost on we innocent Anglo Saxons, a fact celebrated a couple of years ago by Poland's infamous Eurovision entry.

Advertising and publicity materials provide a great source of inadvertently hilarious examples of cultural difference. Inspired by the discovery of Pink Floyd ice cream cover in the following couple of hours I noted a couple of slightly Wagnerian inspired posters for local concerts,

Then leafing through a brochure given to us by Camping Sonneburg I came across some pictures of their child friendly mascot. To us it looks distinctly menacing, and not surprising at all that Hansel and Gretel and the Pied Piper of Hamlin are German tales.

Maybe though, the apparent strangeness does not reflect the oddness of German culture at all, but our own anxieties, revealing, in the wake of Saville and Harris, and scandals in Doncaster and Oldham an unhealthy distrust in simple adult/child relationships. It's not 'them' who are odd, but us.