Monday 26th September 2022 – Ribeauvillé, France

We have been lucky with the weather up to now but Autumn has arrived and the rain has started. Fortunately, it was only brief showers and we were able to take shelter when they came. We travelled the short distance to Kayserberg, another pretty Alsace town. There is a motorhome aire there and our aires book showed as costing €20 for 24 hours without electricity - very expensive for a French aire. When we got there it turned out that the charge was €10 for 24 hours but it was next to a busy main road that ran above the site and many lorries were using it. We didn’t want to stay there but the catch was that the price for parking was €10 even if you only stayed for 1 hour. We paid up and walked the short distance into the town centre and headed for the Tourist Information Centre. They had a map and a town trail but it had very little information about the sights and there were only 2 or 3 information boards. It is a pretty town but very commercialised and geared up for tourists. There was a huge choice of places to eat, even on a Monday when many were closed. We enjoyed our visit but much preferred Eguisheim. One highlight was the church of Sainte Croix with a huge Christ on the cross over the nave and a beautifully carved wooden altar piece. Kayserberg was the birthplace of the polymath Albert Schweitzer – theologian, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, physician and organist. His museum was shown as being closed on Monday and Tuesday, so we knew that we couldn’t visit it but when we got there it was closed for refurbishment and extension. I suspect that it will be well worth a visit when it reopens.
We headed off for a quieter aire just north of Ribeauvillé and outside a campsite called ‘Les Trois Chateaux’, the same name as the one at Eguisheim. The campsite closed for the season on 1^st September and there was no charge for the aire. It was beside a road but a very quiet one!

Photos: The altar piece of Sainte Croix church in Kayserberg; A river scene in Kayserberg – a mill stream flows off this section, travels under the houses and powered a mill on the main street; Kayserberg had defensive walls with towers and a moat, the remains of which can be seen here.