Wednesday 14th October – Paulushofen, Germany

Jane walked along the opposite bank of the river to an archaeological site whilst I followed the marked Three Castles Walk. The route was mainly on forest tracks and took me to the three castles around Reidenburg – Rabenstein, Rosenburg and Tachenstein. The first and last are ruins whilst Rosenburg is well preserved and is now a commercial falconry centre. It was a very pleasant walk with some lovely views over the Altmuhl, Riedenburg and the surrounding countryside.
We met back at the van for lunch and then walked into the town. It has a pretty main square with nice architecture and one of the buildings was a brewery. A feature of the Bavarian towns that we have visited is that they all had at least one brewery. Reidenburg is only a small town but it has two breweries. Bavaria has the highest density of breweries in Germany with 647 breweries in total. Bavarians are very proud of their beer and drink a lot of it – 130 – 135 litres per person per year compared with a German average of 84 – 88 litres. Walking to a small lake on the edge of the town, we came across a very large beer garden. It was clear that it was there to cope with the large number of tourists that visit the town, especially by cruise boats when the river level allows. The volume of visitors would help to support the two breweries.
We drove the short, but scenic, distance to Paulushofen. Some stellplatz are run by restaurants that allow overnight motorhome stays without charge if the occupants eat in the restaurant. I had found very good reviews of the restaurant so we decided to try it out. We found a pitch in the car park at the back of the hotel with a view over open fields and then checked with reception that it was okay to stay. Shortly after we arrived a coach and three more motorhomes joined us.
I wanted to watch a webinar at 8 o’clock, so we went for an early dinner at 6.45 and found that the restaurant was full of people who were just being served their desert. Given that they were almost entirely older females, we decided that it was a Merry Widows coach holiday. They were certainly merry – they were all drinking pints of beer or half litres of wine and then they moved on to liqueurs. Being slightly more restrained, we shared a half a litre of wine with our excellent meals. Jane had roasted venison that was very tender and had a lovely flavour and I had a huge piece of shoulder pork on the bone with excellent crackling. This was accompanied by help-your-self salad bar – very welcome given the amount of meat that we had. Landgasthof Euringer is a family-run hotel, restaurant and butchers and they proudly state that all of their meat comes from local farms (their own farm in the case of the pork) or local hunters for the game.
The village church is very close to the hotel and the clock rings the quarters with very loud bells. We were pleased that all went quiet after the 10 pm striking but at 6 am it started again with extended bellringing for a service.
Photos: The Rabenstein Castle ruins; A panoramic view of the Althmuhl River; Looking down on Reidenburg; Jane took this photograph of the pretty Reidenburg riverfront – note two of the castles on the hills above; Graffiti is nothing new, this carving, dating from the early 19^th century, was on the balcony in the church, perhaps carved during long, boring sermons; sunset at Landgasthof Euringer.