June 3rd - Walhalla

Downriver from Regensburg is a rather odd monument to the heroes of German history – Walhalla. It's named after the Norse home of the gods, shaped like the Ancient Greek Parthenon, and has some rather dodgy bases for its choice of hero.

The thing was put together in the early 19th century by the Bavarian ruling family, before Germany was an actual united country; and so they chose anyone from history who had a "Germanic" background. Basically, in addition to people like Beethoven, this included Anglo-Saxons (somehow Alfred the Great, the cake-burning King of England qualified as a German hero); Dutch greats; Austrians, Czechs and a few others from outside of what we'd view as Germany. This loose view of what was German land was shared by the Nazis a century later.

Fortunately, before you qualify to be a German hero, you have to be dead for over 20 years, and so the Nazis weren't able to put any of their own in there, and in fact, the building now includes members of the German opposition who were murdered by the Nazis.

Anyway, leaving aside the dodgy historical and geographical interpretations, it was a pretty impressive building in a truly spectacular location, on a tall hill overlooking the Danube below, snaking its way through the green countryside.

June 1st – Making Friends From Munich to Regensburg

It's been a while since Tracy had one of her customary rows with an overly officious campsite person, but today she managed to have two. At Munich, they didn't like the fact that we'd parked up in a place supposedly reserved for caravans not campervans. When she pointed out to him that he hadn't made it clear where we were supposed to go, he went mad.

As he raved away, Tracy asked him not to shout at her – "I'M NOT SHOUTING", he bellowed incandescently, "I JUST HAVE A VERY LOUD VOICE". If he gets this angry with uncompliant campers at the start of the summer, I dread to think what volume he'll be at by the end of the Oktoberfest.

Then we headed to Regensburg, to a very nice but officious campsite, where they won't let you in if you turn up in "quiet time", between 1 and 3pm. When we were finally allowed across the threshold, he said "we have a problem with your campervan, the door is on the wrong side". Eh? No campsite's ever said that before. Why don't we reverse in, so that our door is on the "right" side? "Is not possible", came the unbending answer.

So he walked us to a leper's colony, well away from the neatly lined up other campervans with their doors all perfectly aligned, and Tracy asked him, why they had this rule. Well, this lit the fuse of the OCD campfuhrer, who went mad – "IS NOT POSSIBLE! IS NOT POSSIBLE!", plus lots of other stuff we (probably fortunately) couldn't understand.

As it turned out, the place we were assigned was much nicer, although of course we did park the van in the most deliberately wonky alignment to upset Herr Rainman.

May 30th – Down To The Lake

Having cycled every square inch of Munich yesterday, we headed out of town by train to the beautiful Starnberger Lake. This was a last minute choice after flicking through the guidebook for 2 minutes – and what a great choice it was. This place is absolutely beautiful!

The lake is overlooked by snow clad mountains, surrounded by beautiful green countryside, and lapped by clear cool waters (although some of the hardier types were swimming in the lake, so it couldn't be too cold). Apparently Munich's rich and famous flock here to their holiday homes at the weekend, and it's not difficult to see why; not only is it incredibly picturesque but the lake is ringed by so many nice restaurants and cool bars. If this place were in Britain, it would be absolutely mobbed, but on a sunny Monday it was incredibly peaceful and chilled out.

So, we did a big walk around some of the lake (it's way to big to walk all the way round, and much of it is fenced off for the fancy properties), and then we had a pizza in a really nice restaurant in front of a man-made sandy beach.

We could have sat there all day basking in the sun and lapping up the views, apart from the fact that Ade and Lucie had a flight back to Blighty to catch. So, we caught the train back to Munich to say our goodbyes.

Chancing on Starnberg beautifully rounded off a great weekend. How this place isn't world famous I don't know – actually, maybe it is, and I just hadn't heard.

May 29th – Cycling Munich

What a difference a day makes – today was beautifully clear and sunny, so it was time for us to cleanse our bodies of the beer and the pounds of undigested meat in our stomachs, and do some exercise.

Ade and Lucie hired bikes, and we took ours into the centre on the U-bahn to meet them. Munich is full of excellent cycle paths, alongside the roads and the river, which meant you didn't have to be in amongst the traffic (which was pretty light anyway – I assume all the drivers were hungover from the big Saturday night before). We zoomed over to the edge of the city to visit the impressive Schloss Nymphenburg, an opulent mini-Versailles built by the Kings of Bavaria (including "Mad King Ludwig" who we hope to see more of on this trip).

Nearby just happens to be the world's largest beergarden, which was a perfect place to re-fuel with yet more beer and meat (I went for the vegetarian version – chicken). Then we headed to the Olympic Park, the scene of the 1972 Olympics. These days it's a beautifully landscaped park where people come to skate, cycle, row, roll, and stroll – I hope that the legacy of the 2012 London Olympics is used as much by Londoners as this is by the Munich folk.

Now we went on a mammoth cycle along the beautiful river that runs through Munich – on a sunny Sunday, the riverbanks and mini-beaches are absolutely packed with sunbathers. You get the impression that the quality of life in Munich must be pretty good; hot summers, beautiful architecture, plenty of nature in the city, so many people cycling instead of sitting in their cars, plus, of course, there's plentiful beer and meat!

Over the course of the day, we reckon we must have cycled in the region of 30-40 kms, so we were fairly jelly-legged by the end of a beautiful afternoon. The only way to rejuvenate was to head to a traditional Bavarian restaurant for, you'll never guess what, more beer and meat. The elderly waitress didn't speak English and was in no mood to tolerate our ignorance of her language, so we collectively decided to go on a huge charm offensive to draw a smile out of her and stop her being so grumpy. Normally, when faced with such sullenness, I veer towards the offensive rather than the charm, but by the end of it, we had her laughing and joking with us (even though no-one understood a word anyone was saying); although by the end Tracy got a little over-enthusiastic and planted a big kiss on her dumbfounded cheek as we said goodbye at the end of the evening. Anglo-German relations were at an all-time high.

May 28th – Rain, Beer and Meat in Munich

Our plan for this trip was to head down south to Bavaria as quickly as possible to get some good weather – however, constant torrential rain once we got there, wasn't quite what we had in mind. So, after a week of glorious weather on the Rhine, we hit a rain-soaked Munich.

Fortunately, a little sun was shone into our lives by the arrival of Ade and Lucie, who gave us a good excuse to head for Munich's famous beer halls. However, before they arrived we headed for Munich's fabulous art gallery (more research for Tracy), where there was an unbelievable amount of high quality art– Van der Weydens, Albrecht Durers, a da Vinci, and more Rubens than you could shake a stick at. If it seemed way more than you'd expect for a provincial city, you had to remember that all this art was assembled when Bavaria was a rich duchy, and then kingdom, in its own right.

So, that was the culture done for the weekend, now it was time for a little hedonism. We met Ade and Lucie sheltering outside the enormous Hacker Pschorr beerhouse, so we had no alternative but to go in there and sample their wares. When I was 18, my local pub (the infamous Railway Tavern) used to serve Hacker, and we'd only dare drink it if we were on a serious session, but here the whole of Munich was crammed in, trying to tuck as much down them as the could – you had to join in.

The food was great too – as long as you liked sausages or enormous amounts of roast pig, which didn't really excite Tracy. Added to this, Ade delighted in informing us that, unbeknownst to us, Germany was in the grip of a huge E-coli outbreak, that was almost certainly caused by infected salad. Fortunately, Bavarian food is almost entirely meat-based (with some added sauerkraut for the ladies), so it hadn't hit down here.

Once we'd stumbled out of the Hacker house, the rain had cleared enough for us to do a tour of the city centre – the old city was built on a grand and monumental scale, and today the whole place seems very well off and comfortable. Climbing Munich's steepest church tower for a bird's eye view over the city after a few Hackers probably didn't make much sense, but it meant we sweated out a pint or two.

After walking through enormous churches and palaces, the weather was improving and we were inexorably attracted to the Englischer Garten, a lovely park that features a huge beer garden in the shadow of a Chinese tower, all to the background music of suitably clichéd oompah music played by the resident brass band. It was enough to inspire the countless stag parties, hen do's, tourists and locals (of all ages) to get slowly sozzled on enormous steins of lager and weissbeer in the afternoon sun. Everyone seemed really jolly – it made us reflect that if you had several hundred Brits in a garden with all this booze, it would either end up in a fight, or it would just be the preserve of the under 25s, while here it seemed really inclusive.

In Munich, they even manage to combine exercise with drinking - ten man bikes cycling a mobile bar around the park (I hope the barman was steering). Also in the park, we came across an unexpected activity in this landlocked state - surfing. Eager surf dudes flock to a point where the river has been narrowed to create a mini wave which they crab up and down for a few seconds before being flung off, and it's another person's turn.

For our evening activities, we went for a radically different plan, by heading to the Augustiner Beerhall (apparently one of the oldest in Munich), for some lager and the unavoidable plates of meat, before heading to the infamous Hofbrauhaus, just to say we'd gone there. The Hofbrauhaus is impressively huge, full of tourists, and by this time of a Saturday night, completely drunken. It was quite a sight to see, but not somewhere I'd hurry back to – impersonal service while listening to groups of Spanish students sing drinking songs, with scarcely a local in sight.

Anyway, we'd drunk enough by then, so it was time to get the U-bahn back to the campsite on possibly the most inebriated subway train I've ever been on (and incredibly enough we were some of the most sober people on it).

May 25th-27th – Bacharach’s Greatest Hit

We moved down the Rhine to our favourite campsite so far, in the tiny little village of Bacharach (yes, as in Burt Bacharach). There was no sign of Burt himself, but not only did the campsite have fast Wifi, we were also right next to a sandy beach on the river, looking across at a picturesque town, surrounded by vineyards, and overlooked by an imposing castle.

From Bacharach, we did another long cycle ride along the river, passing by vineyards, ruined and restored castles, and little towns, before we arrived at Bingen, a nice little historic town, for a spot of lunch, before a more leisurely ride on the way back "home".

It didn't take long to realise that the Rhine is still a very important transport route – on both sides of the river, passenger and container trains thundered along; large river cruisers and huge barges crammed with containers chugged up and down the river; while lorries and cars sped along the river banks. Somehow, in spite of all this activity and noise, our spot on the river was just so tranquil and beautiful, that our intended overnight stop stretched to three.

It's not difficult to work out why this stretch of the river is known as "the Romantic Rhine".

May 23rd & 24th – BUGA’d in Koblenz

When the sun is shining, Germany is a gorgeous country – especially now that we're in wine country, and the rivers are lined with steep hills of green vineyards.

I'd always thought that Koblenz was in Poland, but it turns out that it's about halfway down Germany, at the point where the Mosel and the Rhine Rivers meet – a strategic position that means that it's been important throughout history, from the Romans right up to today.

After just a measly 8km ride into town along the river, we arrived at the so-called "Deutches Eck", "the German Corner", where the 2 rivers meet, marked by a huge statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I, the man in whose name Germany was united in 1871. The statue was destroyed in the Second World War, and the enormous plinth lay empty until Germany was re-united in the 1990s. I'm not sure if this bombastic symbol of German Imperialism fits with everyone's vision for modern Germany, but the Koblenzers appear to like it.

This summer, the whole of Koblenz appears to have been taken over by a huge garden festival called BUGA, which, having peered through various fences to see what all the fuss was about, didn't appear to be worth the €20 admission to get in. In fact, if you weren't into all the BUGAry, then there wasn't much else to do in town.