Amsterdam and the Black Forrest

After what felt like an age of preparation, we are now finally underway. Its fair to say that the first three days of our trip haven't been uneventful - part of that was down to a bit of a balls up on my part (Harry M), but I will return to that little episode later. As one might imagine the journey from London (circa an hour and a half drive) to Dover wasn't all that eventful. To be honest, the drive from Calais wasn't all that exciting either apart from the odd relapse of realising that everyone over here drives of the wrong side of the road. Amsterdam was our destination and we couldn't wait to get there. Harry B was the troop leader for this particular episode - already a veteran of two visits to the 'Dam'. We camped just out of Amsterdam and headed straight for the centre in what was supposedly our first night of freedom. Cut a long story short, troop leader Harry B wasn't exactly 'leading from the front' as we made our way back to the campsite later that night. The next morning Harry B had recovered and so we proceeded back into the city centre for a day of sightseeing and the such like. I would just note that Amsterdam is a city in which the British don't do themselves a great deal of credit. T-shirted with dire slogans, these groups such as 'Gregg's stag-do' can be heard a mile off as they shout their way towards the red light district. Anyway, we wrapped up Amsterdam after two nights and made our way towards Charlie's Grandparents who live in the middle of the Black Forest. A what again could have been an uneventful drive was livened up by the excitement of the Autobahn. Now I would hastened to tell my parents that we were not speeding - our little Subaru struggles to achieve the 130 mph speeds that some of the Germans were pulling off. As an experience, it is quite unnerving having a slick, sunglassed German drive up your rear at 100mph - sorry for the euphemism. Given the relative stresses of such an experience it was great to stop off at Cochem for lunch. It's the most amazing town on the Rhine and was the perfect way to break-up the monotony of motorway driving. As such we didn't reach Charlie's Grandparents until around 4pm. We were warmly met by Heinz who suggested that a short walk in the Black Forest would be the ideal way to stretch our legs after the drive. It is about here that my cock-up comes into play. After the walk (which was lovely by the way), there was the inevitable question of where were the car keys. We searched for a fairly long time before coming to the conclusion that Harry B, spotted with said keys last, must have dropped them somewhere on our walk. There preceded a brisk 5k back through the rapidly darkening forest looking for these keys. When no such keys could be found in the forest, we searched the car and our bags from top to bottom. It was only when Heinz suggested a beer that I had my eureka moment. I had placed the keys in an obscure front pocket of my rucksack for safekeeping. My 'cunning plan', as Baldrick would say, to keep the keys safe was so cunning that even I was at a lost as to where I had put them. Its fair to say that I got quite a lot of abuse for this from my fellow companions and probably rightly so. Anyway - onto Bavaria. KBO