When I and my longest-standing friend Carole were 16, we went on our first independent little holiday youth-hostelling in the Yorkshire Dales. So it was a great pleasure to be able to celebrate this anniversary with a travels meet-up again as our paths on the way to Austria and from Annecy to Cologne were able to cross in Colmar in France’s Alsace region.
The driving’s musings this time included thoughts about the way this area, with it’s germanic names, had passed back and forth between the two countries. I had to do a double-think at times to make sure I had not gone wrong and ended up in Germany.
We stayed at a campsite in the wine village of Turckheim, 7km cycling along the river and through the vineyards to the lovely historic centre of Colmar. We actually did some wine-tasting in the ‘caves’ of the village, took the bus to the town, as well as a concert in the village church of baroque music including Handel’s Messiah from the two choirs in the village. Colmar was definitely a bigger town than I was expecting, although the centre was quite compact.
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- Looking down on the village and toward the Munster valley
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- Turckheim Village
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- Classic picture of Colmar
Love whiling away time in beautiful city parks
Carole moved on looking forward to Austria and I stayed for a further 3 nights, enjoying cycling the e-bike (hills!) along the Munster valley, walking above the village among the vineyards, and back into Colmar, girding my loins for the week ahead in Cologne then the Netherlands with grandchildren.
There’s loads more to explore in this area, being in the foothills of the Vosges mountains with tourist buses doing circuits in the Summer season, and very well-served by public transport. Strasbourg and Mulhouse are about 1 hour away by train, so it’s definitely worth another visit.