After a (relatively) short drive through the westen side of Switzerland (we passed the Rolex factory so I held up my hand to show my watch where it was born) we drove through Basel and back into France.

We found our campsite, Des Trois Château, on the outskirts of Eguisheim, a delightful medieval town in Alsace famed for it's wine and floral displays. We struggled a bit to find a pitch suitably level for a motorhome but succeeded eventually.

Reception told us that there was a bit of a do going on in the town so after a quick bite to eat we walked the few hundred metres into the centre of Eguisheim to find that we'd left one festival at Le Landeron only to arrive in another.

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This is a festival all about the local food and wines, one we are only too keen to join in with. The central square was packed but we managed to find a table next to the fountain, bought a bottle of the local Pinot Noir and settled down for the afternoon to listen to the music (guitar and synth duo), watch the dancing and soak up the atmosphere.

We regretted lunching at the campsite 'cos people were constantly walking past with Alsatian onion tart which smelt delicious but we decided not to be greedy and to save the tarte d'oignion for tomorrow.

I made my usual mistake of letting myself get dehydrated (wine ≠ water) and felt a bit ill when we got back to site so spent the evening sipping beakers of water to get things balanced again.

Monday dawned, another lovely day and I felt fine again. We had a nice slow start, sorted out wifi access with reception which is free but supposedly limited to a small communal area of the site.  Fortunately my range extender / router system has done it's stuff and the wifi works fine in the van. We caught a bit of sun then wandered down to the town which was empty compared to yesterday so I could get a few more representative photos of the architecture, much of which is really beautiful.

The town is a real foodies delight and after scrutinising menus at many of the restaurants we settled on a set lunch menu at a place run by the Paul Schubnel and his son David, both trained by 3 star Michelin chefs. We started with a little (complimentary) glass of pickled beetroot cubes in a creamy sauce, the entreé was terrine with pieces of fois gras in it with salad and horse radish sauce, plat was a delicious wild boar stew, cheese, a dessert of posh rum baba with a small glass of creme anglais (presented with a straw) and finally coffee. This was all accompanied by a bottle of excellent local riesling (and water this time). Presentation and service was first class and it all came in for under €100 for the two of us.

As you'd imagine we didn't feel like doing too much after that lot, just a bit of pressie shopping then back to the site for a bit more sun.

Our plan for tomorrow was to go over the Haute Vosge to a site near Gérardmer but the weather forecast is pretty awful and it's gone rather black in the past couple of hours. If it's low cloud and pouring rain our plans will probably change. If so this may be the last post on this blog.

The weather on the last day of September turned out to be much better than forecast so we did our run over the Vosge mountains using the Col de la Schlucht. The route climbs to 1139 m (3,737 ft) and is 18.3 km long. This is a favourite 'biker' run and it's easy to see why. The road twists and turns through the forest but is quite wide and well surfaced with good visibility through even the tightest turns so you can really go for it with little risk.

The remapped engine worked a treat and the whole climb was done in 3rd and 4th with the need to select 2nd only in the tightest hairpins. I'd dawdled a bit approaching the Col so I would have a clear run at it, only the last kilometre or so was spoiled by a Dutch motorhome going about half my speed, he probably has more respect for his tyres than I do! Coming down of course is a different matter and you're well aware of the weight behind you and a set of brakes that have to be nursed.

When we got to Géraldmer on the western side of the Col we weren't too impressed with the town and even less so when we saw our intended campsite so we pressed on north and found a nice place for the night on the banks of the Moselle River just outside Nancy. Next morning dawned foggy and whilst it wasn't thick enough to affect progress to any great extent we had a boring hour or so with little to see as we travelled. Fortunately, when we reached Luxembourg the fog lifted and we had a very pleasant run, mainly on single carriageway roads to our present campsite on the outskirts of Wiltz, an attractive town in the north of Luxembourg on the edge of the Ardennes forest.

Tomorrow we've got a 3½ hour drive through Belgium to the North Sea coast ready to hop over to Dunkirk for our ferry on Friday morning. So this really is the last entry on this blog, we hope some of you have been interested in the progress of our trip. If we do the Easten Europe tour next year (no Grand Prix though) perhaps we'll repeat the exercise.

Au revoir, auf wiedersehen, ciao etc!

Sue & Eric.

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