It hardly seems fair to write such a brief account of my fab week with Justin & Sam & Grace & Maisie on the road in Bavaria, but then again it's not fair to have waited this long to write about it at all! So, hold on to your hats:

Nuremberg - sausages, sun, steep hills, cool old buildings, harrowing coverage of Nazism in the Rally Ground museum, and praise from the guide of our tour of the old city dungeon for my translation skills (she really shouldn't have claimed to be able to do the tour in English, but luckily I was there to save the day).

Bamberg - the archetypal mediaeval city with insanely narrow roads, made all the more insane by it being the first day of the Sandkerwa, Bamberg's biggest festival. I haven't driven straight through thronging crowds of people since Fallas in Valencia back in '94 - and then it was a wide boulevard, whereas this time Justin had to avoid mediaeval house walls as well as drunkards! What a fine hotel we stayed in though - after being directed the wrong way down one-way streets by an irate policeman. And aaaah, the smoky local Schlenkerla beer: it tastes like Murphy's mixed with bacon!

Würzburg - scary bed & breakfast guy, worrying weather (but it got better again), delicious wines, delightful old town, exquisite royal residence, fine castle up on a hill. Pity Sam fell over and did herself a serious mischief on the gravel path.

The villages & towns of the Romantic Road - each one prettier than the last: Bad Mergentheim, Weikersheim, Creglingen, Rothenburg, Dinkelsbühl, Nördlingen, Donauwörth, Schongau, Füssen. I never had any idea that north and west of Munich was so lovely!

Our hotel in Austria - behind the first hill over the border, up from the Lechfall waterfall, and round the corner into Pinswang. Goodness gracious the divine food!! Garlic soup, schnitzels, all super tasty. And an idyllic setting to match the wow factor of Neuschwanstein Castle the next day.

On the way back to Munich we stopped at Tutzing on the Starnberger lake and ate a tremendous Steckerlfisch, which is a huge smoked mackerel.

And then two day trips from Munich. The first was to Tegernsee where we swam at Rottach-Egern and did the boat tour before settling in at the brewery. The second was to the monastery and brewery at Andechs, followed by a swim in the Ammersee lake.

All this travelling in hot hot summer sun, which showed Bavaria at its finest. Except for the monster thunderstorm at Tegernsee, which we had to run through to get back to the railway station. I haven't got that wet in rain for I don't know how long!