Safe Return Doubtful

A couple of pleasant and cold days in villages of Alsace, Châtenois, Bleinschwiller, Nothalten, and Damnach. The wineries generally offer a place for campervans, with the likelihood they are wine visitors, and will spend in their shops. These spaces are behind their wineries, in their gardens, so covered in snow at present. I stayed in Dambach therefore, where there is a large car park on the edge of the town.

These villages have no visitors at present, though one of the winery owners, Schmitz, did come over and say hello. I took this for a sales pitch, so was coy initially, but he was a campervan owner himself, and interested in my conversion. He assured me that not only was I the only visitor of the day, but of the month as well. He also told me that though the shops of the wineries were in theory ‘open’, it was generally for mail-order business they had. I confessed my ignorance as regards to wine knowledge, especially white wine, but he invited me to his premises and suggested we partook of the bottles he had open, just three of them, all white, though I had hoped for a pinot noir, which the area is famous for also. It was an entertaining hour, for Roja as well, as he had a female black lab and they got on well. The tasting, or rather drinking, was okay, but he didn’t convert me to a white wine fan. I told him I was on route to a Belgian brewery tour, and that formed the large part of our conversation. I think if it hadn’t have been for his two young children, he would have accompanied me.

Overnight, as forecast, the weather changed. There have been cold temperatures at night. By 9 pm it was minus 7, but just crept upwards after that, and snow fell. At first light it was zero degrees, and icy rain falling, with the car park I was on, in effect, an ice rink. I was next to a Primary School, which was closed for the day, as were all the schools I passed during the day. I and Roja did the morning essentials, then settled down to coffee and a book, a short novel about a witch on the Crosby Ravensworth fells, written in 1808.

Roja was restless by 11, so we headed out for a slide around the village. The bakery had no bread, as the supplier hadn’t arrived, and the whole place was reminiscent of a ghost town. By now it was one degree above zero, so I decided to keep to my original plan, and drive an hour into Lorraine, now part of the region Grand Est, but formerly a region in its own right, bordering Belgium and Germany.

There was a rapid thaw while I drove, which made conditions worse. The temperature rose 8 degrees, and led at one point, to a vehicle’s windscreen being hot by falling ice from a tree above, and shattered. An hour’s drive was plenty, and we are tucked away at the back of Phalsbourg, in the Moselle Department. The village is perhaps best known for having an American Air Base here from 1953 until 1967. These days it used by the French military’s 1er Régiment d’Hélicoptères de Combat, and the aire is right next to it.

Currently, there’s a spell of wind and rain, warmer conditions, around 10C, before the ice returns tomorrow.