A testing day!

4 May 2018

Cornelia slept for 12 hours, which usually guarantees a wonderfully fun day with her, but she burst into the tent where I was packing up and promptly burst into tears, sobbing that she didn’t want to leave.  Despite being momentarily cheered up by the promise of a swimming pool at the next campsite, she just became whingier and whingier as the day went on.  In the meantime, I managed to break another tooth – this time, I was just holding the bottle of honey between my teeth – and had to find a local dentist who could help.  God was obviously on my side, because the (previously rather cold) lady at reception told me that there was a dentist in the building literally adjoining the campsite.  I dashed over there, holding the broken bit in my hand, only to find that they were fully booked for the day.  However, they were most sympathetic, and asked me to come back in an hour, which I did.  Within thirty minutes of that, my tooth was fixed, all for the bargain price of €45.

We left Luxembourg feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.  We’d encountered a couple of difficulties, but nothing insurmountable, and neither of us had lost our cool while trying to sort out the problems!  We set off for Germany, initially aiming for Wurzburg, as the start of the “Romantic Road”, but the traffic seemed very heavy, so we decided to start the route further south.  We are both loving the freedom to change our minds at the last minute, and just see how the days pan out!  For those of you who know us well, this is quite unlike our “normal” lives!

We stopped off at a service station for a sandwich, and I took Bugsy’s temperature while we were there.  Her whingeing and flushed cheeks definitely indicated something was up.  And indeed, so her temperature was… 102.4.  I dosed up her on Calpol and after refusing most of her lunch, she fell asleep in the car for an hour, listening to Christmas nursery rhymes (!).  As an aside, I need to remember to make sandwiches in the morning before we leave the campsite, as it takes time to move our belongings out of the way to actually gain access to the crockery etc!

Ian drove for five hours today, and we eventually arrived at Campsite no 2: Azur Camping Ellwangen, which is a small “castle town” north east of Stuttgart.(Yes, we’ve been looking at a lot of maps to work out where we are, or where we are going on any given day!)  First epic Mummy fail.  There is no kids’ playground at this campsite.  Gulp, and cue an unhappy toddler.  I took her temperature again, and this time is was 103.5 (that’s 39.7 for you “others”).  More Calpol, which at least distracted her from the lack of playpark.  Cornelia didn’t want any tea at all, so we enjoyed schnitzel and chips and a very large beer in the campsite restaurant, while she took advantage of some Kindle time.

She went to bed after a large mug of warm milk, and fell straight to sleep, unsurprisingly.  She woke up about 22:00 and cried out for me, but Ian went to see her, and he thinks it was more of a sleep cry, than a real cry.  Apparently, she was looking right through him, repeatedly saying “Mummy, Mummy”, but not really awake.  He managed to settle her back down, and I decided to sleep in the roof of the van (she is still sleeping downstairs on the chair laid flat) just in case she needed me urgently.  And also, I just felt reassured that I was closer to her!

And so, I settled down for the night, warm and comfy, with the gentle quacking of ducks on the lake in the background…