Givet to Koi Bad Und Sauna
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Givet, France to Koi Bad Und Sauna, Germany
Motorhome Journey France Givet to Koi Bad Und Sauna
We service Hymer at the emptying station and fill up with water here at the aire de camping cars, Givet, France. Givet is at the top end of a strip of land that goes upwards into Belgium, there is a massive shopping area on the outskirts of the town. Stopping at the Intermarché Hyper on the way out of Givet we stock up with a box of Rose Crémant which is on offer and some more fruit (which is also a good price).
On our way through Belgium on N40 to Arlon, then A6 crossing into Luxemburg where the traffic is noticeably busier. We look for a filling station as diesel is €1.44/Lt (about 11p/Lt cheaper that France) but cannot get off the highway conveniently and find we have crossed into Germany at Perl. Taking A8 to Merzig we come off the highway onto a rural road and find a place to stop for lunch on the edge of a small village. In the afternoon I have a Creative Writing session by Zoom starting at 2.00pm. It is 1.45 and I feel I ought to get the laptop connected via my phone as it can sometimes take 5 or 10 minutes if it’s being temperamental. Mr C. stops me and asks
“What time is your meeting?”
Two o’clock I reply, it is now 1.50pm.
“But that is British time and we are on French time… an hour in front. That makes it 12.50pm in England!”
Panic over, I laugh and glad he remembered! We have another hour so look at the map and decide to drive on to Dillingen this side of Saarlouis, where there is a park with walks around the lake. We find it without trouble and park on the car park. Mr C. puts on his shoes, takes his binoculars and goes for a walks around the lake. Meanwhile, I get set up online with phone and laptop and run the creative writing session with six people. We have a good session with some excellent pieces of writing which generate plenty of thoughtful discussion. Mr C returns about 3.30pm and I have not long finished the Zoom creative writing session.
A quick catch up with each other and we are back on the road! At Wallerfangen we branch south onto A620 towards Saarbrucken and stop at Völklingen Ironworks. The outline and silhouettes on the skyline of the inverted V-shaped blast furnaces (6) and dry gas holders is quite stunning, drawing the eye to an industrial past on a scale rarely seen anywhere is Europe now. It is reminiscent of a long-gone age where steel production was a core industry, employing thousands of men. The whole town of Völklingen given over to steel production processes, coal driven, very hot and steamy with coal smoke belching forth over the whole area and sitting low especially in the winter. One can imagine the smell of coal fired boilers, blast furnaces and hot metals filling one’s nostrils for miles around.
The website undersells it when it says:
The Völklingen Ironworks is a former blast-furnace complex located in the German town of Völklingen, Saarland. Pig iron production occurred at the site from 1882 through 1986. As one of the only intact ironworks surviving from the 19th and early-20th centuries in Europe and North America, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 because of its exceptional preservation and its testimony to ferrous metallurgy and the Industrial Revolution.
We drive in and park up in one of the overnight parking areas for motorhomes. In the middle of and surrounded by such massive steel production equipment I feel completely overwhelmed. The sheer size of the industrial production area, probably a square mile of (now rusting) industrial equipment, vessels, blast furnaces and conveying pipes and chimneys are beyond anything we see nowadays. Closed for 40 years and, apart from the rusting of the metal, it could have closed just last year, a museum to the way we used to live. While many might say a good thing (the pollution must have been tremendous) we forget that this exact same pollution is going on in China today, who produce the steel that we used to, and now have to buy it from them, because we are no longer able to make it ourselves. With the loss of jobs, independence and man-power skills it seems a perverse kind of logic. The museum is open and does regular tours of what used to be.
We intended to stay overnight, overshadowed by these colossal vessels of the steel industry… a chemical engineer’s dream, as I noted the wonder in the eyes of Mr C. who did work at a steel production works in 1969. As we walked around we noted some very odd characters (hobos in cranky old vehicles) and that it perhaps was not really the best place for a ’holiday’ stay! After a good look around, like two children in Santa’s grotto, we decided (reluctantly) to move on. If ever you pass through Völklingen, the Ironworks is a ‘must-stop’, just for its sheer size and awe-inspiring wonder of the past.
From Völklingen we continue on to Saarbrucken and find the Canoe Club by the river where we had intended to stay. It was small and cramped and not very nice so we continued on our way. Back on A620 then A6 towards Homburg, where we exit at A423 through the town (L119) and stop at the KOI Bad Sauna Club. Here, there are 6 motorhome spaces on their car park plus water and emptying facilities but unfortunately all the spaces are taken, so we park over a couple of car spaces in the corner. There was plenty of room and we guessed (rightly) that when the Sauna centre closed at 10.00pm the car park would empty, it did! We cook sausage and tomatoes and finish the rest of the strawberries. With a bottle of wine after a long day of driving (159 miles) it felt like a banquet.
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Keywords Motorhome camper campervan Hymer drive trip trek tour France Germany Czechia