Aachen

65 miles, 26.9 mpg

As Fiona and I are both great fans of Germany (we lived there a couple of times - once in Munich and the other in Berlin) so decided we'd head to Aachen, which is somewhere we'd passed by many times but have never actually visited.

With the weather being a lot colder (close to zero overnight) we're burning through our gas quickly but found a motorway services with LPG so were able to refill our Gaslow system.

The only real option for overnighting was the Stellplatz in Aachen. A Stellplatz is pretty much a high end paid Aire, with facilities and electric hook up and with similar prices (17EUR in this case) to a cheap campsite. The Aachen one is close to the town centre and is pretty nice, with a small but well maintained toilet block and plenty of space. It is however just inside the emission controlled zone (by about 200m) and as we didn't have the appropriate sticker we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best - but did get away with it!

Aachen is very nice and we spent a couple of days walking round the town as well as visiting the spa there, which was very nice. We bottled the saunas though as they're all nude only and being reticent Brits it wasn't for us!

The cathedral is spectacular inside and a must visit:

We also found a great bar with many different varieties of Schnitzel - so we ended up visiting it on both days! He're me trying to decide what to have (Currywurst of course).