Adventures beyond the front door
The ferry had been sailing for more than an hour before the island came into sight. Ever since we’d left the harbour at Stralsund we’d been looking out for it. We knew it was there, across the straits and between the headlands of Rügen island on one side and the mainland of Germany on the… Continue reading Out of Sight – Hiddensee
We just sent out our latest Postcard from The Winding Trail. These are our irregular email newsletters that include original stories from our trips, a round-up of everything we've recently posted on the site (which, seeing as you are reading this, you probably already know), as well as a collection of books we've been reading,… Continue reading Postcard from The Winding Trail 03: Lausanne
Summer is often a time when we hit the road, loading up the car with all our camping gear and heading off to discover new places and, more often than not, meet up with old friends. As with so much of travel, sometimes the best memories and unexpected moments happen during the journey and not… Continue reading The Joy of Road Trips
It was a moment last summer, when the calendar clicked over to 20 months since our last trip to the sea, that we finally snapped. We had stood on the Baltic shore in the December before the pandemic struck, and for more than fifteen years before that we had managed to make it north at… Continue reading Escape to the seaside – Warnemünde
If you live in Germany or are planning a trip to our home country this summer, you can take advantage of this special monthly pass that has been introduced by the government to encourage public transport use and ease the impact of inflation and the rise in energy prices. For June, July, and August you… Continue reading Germany’s 9-Euro Ticket and Outdoor Adventures
From the car park on the edge of town, with the Roer river racing by beside us, the only way was up. Monschau is a mediaeval German town close to the Belgian border, famous for its mustard, its half-timbered houses and for being a centre of the cloth industry back in the day. We wanted… Continue reading Walking the Perlenbachtal – Monschau
As we sit down to write this piece, our friends at Coconat in the small hamlet of Klein Glien are about to celebrate their 5th birthday. And it is indeed five years since we first pulled up outside the old manor house in Brandenburg, not long after they had opened. At the time, Paul was… Continue reading Coconat – A workation retreat
When the last train of the afternoon eased its way out from the summit station, the top of the Brocken was transformed. Earlier, hundreds of people had mingled among the collection of buildings that occupy the plateau of northern Germany’s highest mountain. They visited the museum in an old Cold War listening station, or queued… Continue reading A night on the Brocken
From the pool at the bottom of the old town of Blankenheim, we had set out on a walk that would take us the long way round, through the woods and down the back of gardens, passing the school, the remains of a Roman villa, and the youth hostel in the castle on the hill,… Continue reading Blanq – Beer from the source of the Ahr
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