Aldbourne, Wednesday

We awoke to another fine day-it's unbelievably warm - 17 degrees today. It encouraged us to put away our scarves and get our T-shirts out again.

After an excellent breakfast, we set out, on foot, to find a rental car firm. We worked off our breakfast, and more, took local advice, and finally succumbed to buying a street map. We looked at the public transport options for visiting Aldbourne, (where my Gt-Gt-Grandfather Robert Coxhead was baptised) but there were no trains or buses that we could figure out, so we decided that a rental car was the way to go. Reading has almost no street names that we could find. We did find Budget Rent-a-car and the very helpful man sent us off happily in a very new Vauxhall Something.

We programmed 'Gertie' and set off to find Aldbourne. She sprang back into life with a map of Holland, but finally found she was in England and took us to Aldbourne. This is the town where Robert Coxhead (senior) was baptised in 1820. It is a lovely old village, with houses from 1600-1800, a village green and a most interesting church, where family members were baptised, married and buried over a number of years.



What a lovely village - it was very unspoiled apart from the traffic that passes through. I am so pleased that we found it. It is built around a village green. There are two village pumps. The people were friendly and happy to talk to us.



First of all we visited the beautiful old church. We didn't search the graveyard as others have already down that without success. Many of the gravestones are covered in moss, and impossible to read. (My great-great-grandfather was buried in NZ, so we would have needed to go back a fair way.) We met a lady in the church who took my email address and promised to keep me posted on any information that may come to light.



The church holds (for safe-keeping) a couple of horse-drawn fire engines from the early 1800s. They were bought after a number of fires in the village when up to 15 thatched cottages were destroyed inthe late 1700s and early 1800s.







The home that Robert Coxhead actually left, was a cottage in the small village of Snap (nearby). We asked some locals for directions. After lunch, we set off. This village was located about 2 miles west of Aldbourne. There was a walking track, so we parked the car and found we could walk to what was once 'Snap' by following a walking track through some fields. (Stinging nettles, blackberry, pheasants,electric fences, but no cattle beasts were encountered).The village had ceased to be used in the late 1800s and was now mostly fields. We decided to hunt for 'ruins'. We located what we are fairly confident, are the the old Coxhead house remains. We had an old map and were able to locate this windmill that is shown on the map. Only parts of a couple of walls remain. Doug found a piece of brick, for me, from the rubble.



On the way home, we visited Hungerford. This is the town where (Robert Coxhead's father) was born in 1787. It is a much bigger town, on a canal.

On returning to Reading and had decided to keep the rental car overnight (at no extra price), to save us taxi fares in the morning. We will take the train to Farnham, then the bus to Heathrow that runs each 10 minutes and takes 30 minutes. It sounds so easy compared to dragging our bags without handles onto the tube!
Note: This wasn't possible - there was however, an excellent bus service from Reading Station to Heathrow.

So we end our trip in nice warm weather, with the leaves now mostly on the ground. Ahead lies a 25 hour journey back to reality.

What a lovely time away we have had!

Travel from Germany to Heathrow, Tuesday.

A lot happened today. We don't have any photos to show, as it was full on.

We were up at 6, breakfast with Annette & Georg at 6:30 . It was sad saying goodbye to Annette and Hannas the cat. We left the house in Georg's car at 7:15am. After taking the backroads we reached the Frankfurt autobahn, where there is no speed limit. It was a bit scary how some of the locals drive!

We reached the Frankfurt Airport without major incident, and drove to the recently opened, terminal 2. Georg parked the car and kindly saw us at the right check-in counter before he headed back home.

The airport security were the most detailed that we had encountered.

Doug had forgotten to pack his Swiss Army knife in the big suitcases and surprisingly, they let him keep it.

The flight was a little over an hour to Heathrow Terminal 5. We landed at about 12:30, then encountered, yet again, the queues for the non-EU passport holders. Only half an hour this time, and we then found our bags on the carousel despite the Terminal 5 computer declaring they didn't exist.

We took the underground into the city to Waterloo station. Trying to move heavy bags through the automatic gates caused failure of the second bag's towing handle, so Doug has since then been pulling both bags with bent knees. (Not a pretty sight!)

We purchased tickets for Reading and found the 15:30 train. Our bags and ourselves took 5 seats, but no-one seemed to mind as there was no other place for them.

At Reading we decided to take a taxi instead of walking 1 km with bent knees, and we were delivered to the Donnington House Hotel in the mostly standstill evening traffic. The hotel has no lift, as seems to be usual, but the desk clerk helped with our 40 kg up two levels.

Dinner in the local pub "Up in Arms' was good value and ended our day.(We're rather tired - bed looks good!)

Tomorrow will be the final day of our holiday. We plan on visiting the town that the Coxheads came from. (My paternal great-great grandfather).

To Heidelburg, Monday

Here is a photo of Annette & Georg's lovely comfortable home in Limbach. Doug had to catch a photo this morning as we always seem to come home after dark, and we miss seeing it.

We awoke to a grey morning - at least it wasn't raining. The plan was to travel to Heidelburg . We would go to a museum if it was raining or explore the city if the drizzle cleared.



Georg parked the car in the Crowne Plaza, where their son, Frederik works. We were pleased to come across Frederik as we walked up through the hotel. Outside, we walked up the main street and looked in some of the shops.The drizzle had cleared!



We were amused by this cafe . It had blankets on the chairs for the smokers, who have to sit outside. The town was lovely. There were beautiful buildings every way we looked. Gypsies playing 'Kalinka' added to the atmosphere.

We walked on the bridge over the Maine River and up the hill for a view of the city. The statue on the bridge is tongue-in-cheek and each part is a little bit wrong. I was amused of their interpretation of the figure representing religion. (She has the cloth over her eyes!!) The scales of justice are lying against some stones in a very casual manner. Look at the face of the 'tough' warrior on the shield!





Later we walked back over the bridge and up to the castle. It was very impressive. Part of it is in good order; part is under restoration. The remainder is in ruins.



It has a very large wine barrel that has been restored. It had a capacity of 227,000 litres. Apparently it has never been full.

We ended the day with a nice meal in a small village where we stopped, on our way home.

Germany, Sunday

We awoke to cloudy but fine morning and enjoyed our first 'frustuck' in Germany. (Very similar to the Dutch 'ontbijt' - in both cases,some kind person had paid an early visit to the 'baecker' for delicious fresh bread rolls.)

Annette & Georg took us out on a trip to nearby provinces to visit local towns. each with old buildings from the 1300s.





First was Eberbach, a beautiful old town built on the River Neckar,in the province of Baden. The autumn colours are at their most brilliant. We were impressed by the high water marks recorded one of the old buildings along the river. The highest mark was dated 1759.



Annette and Georg hurried us along as they said that the next town, in the province of Hessen, was even more interesting and picturesque.

The next town that we drove to was Michelstadt. On one building you could see how these black and white buildings are made, with a wooden frame and mixture of mortar and straw in the gaps.



The final town we visited was Miltenberg, in Bavaria. Here a harvest market was in progress, with a touch of halloween. It was very busy. We queued up to enter a car park. One car could go in as long as one car came out.

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The town has a old castle, and a wall that gave good views over the city and the Maen River.



Doug found this cafe of interest, where he could eat the goose that bit him in Holland.



Finally we headed home to Limbach after this nice meal of bratwurst and sauerkraut at an organic restaurant near Miltenberg.

To Germany, Saturday

We had four trains to catch today, so started early and planned to catch the 8:30 am train to Amsterdam from Bovenkarspel. We had to be in Amsterdam to be on the 10:34 international train to Germany. We were early as usual, and walked onto the platform at Bovenkarspel at 8am to catch the earlier train just as they closed the doors and moved off. They then announced the 8:30 train was cancelled. Stress! The 9am train was running a few minutes late but was an Intercity and had us in Amsterdam at just after 10am.

The international train was nearly full, and the only place for our 20kg bags was in the overhead luggage rack. We sat opposite some German people who spoke no English. A Chinese man opposite was using a large Toshiba laptop that one lady used as a support as she walked along the aisle, to the surprise of its owner.



We left behind the flat wetlands and cows, for rolling hills and trees.



We could see we had reached Germany as the colours of the trains changed to red. 4 hours later we changed trains in Frankfurt airport, than again at Mannheim to reach Heidelburg about 3:45 pm. It was nice to be off the trains, even though they run at 170 km/h. It would be a better trip without the luggage.