EUROPE · EXPEDITION E09 · EU MEGA TRIP
Twenty-one days through the part of Germany E03 did not reach: the Black Forest and its bogs, the Kaiserstuhl — warm enough for bee-eaters and praying mantis — Lake Constance, the Bavarian Alps and Berchtesgaden, the Danube gorge, the quarries that produced Archaeopteryx, and the Bavarian Forest, which let a bark beetle kill its spruce on purpose. The autobahn is free and one sticker covers the country. This is the gentlest three-week file here.
01 / MISSION PROFILE
Free roads, one sticker, superb stopovers, English spoken everywhere and infrastructure that works. If somebody wants a first three-week continental trip, this is the file to hand them.
No car or motorhome toll on the autobahn and no vignette, which makes this the cheapest long file in the archive to drive. The only charges are one or two alpine toll roads. After France and Italy the difference is startling.
The green Umweltplakette covers every German low-emission zone. Order it by post before you travel or buy it from a testing station on arrival — unlike Crit’Air, you are not stuck if you forget.
Germany has the best motorhome stopover network in Europe outside France, frequently with a view, and often attached to a brewery, a spa or a vineyard. This is the file where the nights are as good as the days.
Cut Franconia and the Bavarian Forest and come home from Munich. You keep the Black Forest, the Bodensee and the Alps — but you lose the best forest story in Europe, so consider cutting the Alps instead if wildlife is the point.
02 / JOURNEY LOG
Down the Rhine into the Black Forest, east along Lake Constance and the Bavarian Alps to Berchtesgaden, north to Munich and the Danube, into the Bavarian Forest, and back west through Franconia.
Off the shuttle, across Belgium and into Germany. A transit day, and the free autobahn starts the moment you cross.
NIGHT BASE Koblenz / Trier
South up the Rhine plain and into the forest. The Schwarzwaldhochstraße runs the ridge with the whole plain below it on one side.
NIGHT BASE Baden-Baden / Freudenstadt
Down to the lakes and up the Feldberg — alpine plants marooned on the highest ground since the ice age, hundreds of miles from any Alp.
NIGHT BASE Titisee / Hinterzarten
Germany’s warmest corner — a volcanic hill in the Rhine plain with bee-eaters, praying mantis, green lizards and orchids nobody expects this far north.
NIGHT BASE Ihringen / Endingen
East to the Bodensee, where three countries share a lake. The Wollmatinger reed is one of the most important wetlands in southern Germany.
NIGHT BASE Konstanz / Radolfzell
Mainau’s island garden, the monastery island of Reichenau, and a short hop over the Swiss line to Europe’s largest waterfall by volume.
NIGHT BASE Konstanz / Meersburg
Into the Bavarian Alps proper. Neuschwanstein sits above Füssen and is booked out weeks ahead; the walk up to the Marienbrücke is the better half of it.
NIGHT BASE Füssen / Schwangau
Under the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest ground. The cog railway and the cable car both go up; the glacier below the summit is measurably smaller each year.
NIGHT BASE Garmisch / Grainau
A walking day — the Partnach gorge, the Eibsee circuit, and wallcreepers on the limestone if you are lucky and patient.
NIGHT BASE Grainau / Mittenwald
East along the alpine road to Germany’s only alpine national park. The Königssee has taken electric boats only since 1909.
NIGHT BASE Berchtesgaden / Schönau
A day on foot. Golden eagles over the Watzmann, marmots on the alms, and the Obersee beyond the far end of the lake.
NIGHT BASE Schönau / Ramsau
Park well outside and take the S-Bahn. Munich runs a low-emission zone and the city centre is no place for a van.
NIGHT BASE Munich outskirts
A day out of the driving seat. The Deutsches Museum, the Englischer Garten with its standing wave, and the Residenz.
NIGHT BASE Munich outskirts
North-east to a medieval city that survived the war intact, with a stone bridge from 1146 and the Danube running under it.
NIGHT BASE Regensburg outskirts
The river cuts a limestone gorge below a monastery that has brewed since 1050, reachable by boat and by nothing else.
NIGHT BASE Kelheim / Weltenburg
Jurassic limestone, and the quarries that produced Archaeopteryx. Several let you split your own slabs, and what you find is usually yours to keep.
NIGHT BASE Solnhofen / Eichstätt
Europe’s first national park, founded in 1970, and the one that let the bark beetle take its spruce rather than fell it. The grey skeletons and the regrowth beneath are the whole argument.
NIGHT BASE Neuschönau / Bayerisch Eisenstein
Urwald remnants that were never cleared, Ural owls put back after extinction, and lynx that are almost never seen by eye.
NIGHT BASE Neuschönau / Zwiesel
West to Bamberg’s smoked beer and its unaltered old town, or Rothenburg’s walls. Both restrict the centre; both have parking below.
NIGHT BASE Bamberg / Rothenburg
The long haul back across Germany on free autobahn. A transit day, stated as one.
NIGHT BASE Cologne / Aachen
Across Belgium and northern France to the shuttle. Book an afternoon crossing.
NIGHT BASE — aboard —
One thing to book and one to bring. Neuschwanstein sells out weeks ahead and cannot be entered without a timed ticket — though the walk up to the Marienbrücke needs nothing and is the better half of it. And bring a hammer and cold chisel for the Solnhofen quarries: several are open to visitors, splitting your own slab is the point, and what you find is generally yours to keep.
03 / OPERATIONS BRIEFING
04 / THE ACCESS STACK
Berchtesgaden is Germany’s only alpine national park and the Bavarian Forest was Europe’s first, founded in 1970. Both are free to enter, both publish excellent trail information, and both have visitor centres worth the hour.
Germany is heavily covered by the low-season scheme, and Stellplatz-specific apps matter more here than anywhere. Many are free with a small charge for water and power, and the best of them are attached to a brewery.
National Trust covers Northern Ireland and nothing on the continent; English Heritage has no reciprocal arrangement anywhere here. Budget an access line for this file.
Most of these bodies protect land that is already free to walk on — joining funds the work rather than buying entry. The exceptions worth real money are the Dutch Museumkaart, the Irish OPW card, and DNT or STF if you will use the hut networks.
05 / THE EUROPE MATRIX
The Rhine file took Germany’s river; this one takes its forests. Lynx and wolves back in the Bavarian Forest, beavers on a Danube that had none in 1867, Ural owls put back after extinction, bee-eaters on a volcano, and the limestone that produced Archaeopteryx. The whole archive lives on the Europe Matrix page.
★ RARE
Returned to Europe’s first national park after a century away. A track in snow or a camera-trap image is the honest sighting; people who see one by eye talk about it for years.
COMMON
The Solnhofen limestone of the Altmühltal produced the most famous fossil on earth. Working quarries let you split slabs yourself, and ammonites and feathers turn up in the same rock.
LIKELY
Extinct in Bavaria by 1867 and reintroduced from 1966; the state now holds more beavers than anywhere else in central Europe, and the felled willow is unmistakable.
LIKELY
Black and yellow on wet forest paths at dusk after rain, and the Black Forest is the classic German place to meet one.
COMMON
The Bavarian Forest let the beetle kill its spruce rather than fell it, and the regrowth beneath the grey skeletons is one of the most argued-over decisions in European conservation. Go and judge it.
COMMON
Germany’s highest point at 2,962 m, with the last of its shrinking glaciers below the summit and four countries visible on a clear day.
★ RARE
A relict population down to a few hundred birds and falling. Lek areas are closed in spring and their locations are deliberately unpublished.
★ RARE
A thin whistle from dense spruce, and one of the least-seen birds in Germany.
★ RARE
Almost gone from the Black Forest, and clinging on where the raised bog stays open.
LUCKY
Smaller than a starling and hunting other birds. Its whistle carries a long way through cold spruce.
LUCKY
A hollow bouncing song on late-winter nights, from holes a black woodpecker made first.
★ RARE
A specialist of dead standing spruce, and a direct beneficiary of the bark beetle policy.
LIKELY
Crow-sized and entirely black bar the red cap, and the architect of most forest holes.
LIKELY
On the Feldberg and the high Black Forest slopes.
LIKELY
Breeding in midwinter because that is when the cones open. Falling scales give them away.
LIKELY
Burying pine seeds by the thousand and forgetting enough to plant the next forest.
LIKELY
Confined by law to designated areas for decades, and the September rut is loud in the high valleys.
COMMON
On every clearing and field margin at first and last light.
LIKELY
Abundant and nocturnal, and the reason every Baden vineyard has a fence.
LUCKY
Arnica, gentians and alpine species marooned on the highest ground since the ice age, a long way from any Alp.
LUCKY
Hochmoor with cotton grass and carnivorous sundew, on boardwalks that exist because the peat does not recover.
LIKELY
Orange-bellied and slate-blue, in every woodland puddle and wheel rut in spring.
LIKELY
Small wild fish in fast clean water, and permits are local, cheap and well organised.
LIKELY
The smallest cattle breed in central Europe, bred for slopes too steep for anything larger, and still working them.
LIKELY
A serious flush in the spruce and beech, with picking limits that are genuinely enforced.
LUCKY
Germany’s warmest corner is a volcanic hill in the Rhine plain, and it holds the country’s main bee-eater colonies.
LUCKY
Far further north than most people expect, on the dry terraces among the vines.
LUCKY
Electric green on the loess terraces, at the northern edge of its European range.
LIKELY
Dozens of species on the volcanic loess, including several found almost nowhere else in Germany.
LUCKY
Recolonising the warm Rhine terraces, crest up on every bare patch of ground.
LIKELY
Wintering in thousands, and the lake is internationally important for wildfowl.
COMMON
The weed dance across the whole lake from early spring.
LUCKY
Pinging like tiny bells and bouncing over the reed tops on still mornings.
LIKELY
The Blaufelchen, netted commercially for centuries and on every lakeside menu.
LUCKY
Nesting on bare river shingle and gravel workings, and gone the moment you look away.
COMMON
Europe’s largest waterfall by volume, at Schaffhausen just over the Swiss line, and loudest after the alpine thaw.
COMMON
A whole island gardened since the nineteenth century, with palms outdoors on a lake that freezes.
LUCKY
Reintroduced to the Bavarian Alps and now on the high ridges above the lakes.
LIKELY
On the Watzmann faces and lower in autumn when the weather turns.
COMMON
Whistling from every Bavarian boulder field above the treeline.
LIKELY
Berchtesgaden national park holds a well-studied population, and the park publishes its nest counts.
COMMON
At every cable-car station and mountain hut, entirely without shame.
★ RARE
Crimson against grey rock on the Berchtesgaden and Wetterstein cliffs, lower in winter.
LUCKY
On the highest Bavarian ridges, white in winter and invisible in summer.
LUCKY
Jet black on wet paths after rain, and it gestates for up to three years before live birth.
LUCKY
Protected in Bavaria since 1886, and genuinely uncommon.
COMMON
Pink hillsides through midsummer across the whole Bavarian range.
COMMON
Electric boats only since 1909, and the boatman still plays a flugelhorn at the rock face to demonstrate the echo.
COMMON
Meltwater gorges cut so deep the path is bolted to the wall, and loudest in June.
LUCKY
Recolonising Bavaria from the east after being shot out entirely, and now breeding on the river again.
LIKELY
A blue bolt along every clean Bavarian river and gravel pit.
★ RARE
A metre-long predator found only in the Danube basin, and among the most threatened fish in Europe.
LIKELY
Shoaling fish of fast clean water, and an indicator that the river is in good order.
COMMON
The river cuts a limestone gorge below a monastery that has brewed since 1050. Reachable by boat and by nothing else.
COMMON
The Fränkische Schweiz limestone is riddled with caves, several of them show caves, and cave-bear bones came out of them.
COMMON
The Solnhofen and Altmühltal quarries let visitors split their own slabs, and finds are usually yours to keep — which is rarer than it sounds.
LIKELY
On village roofs and chimneys, recovered strongly since the 1980s.
LIKELY
Germany holds more than half the world population, and Franconia is thick with them.
★ RARE
Returned across the Czech border and breeding again in Bavaria since 2016. Almost never seen, and politically contentious.
★ RARE
Extinct in Germany and released back into the Bavarian Forest from the 1970s. It will defend a nest with real violence.
★ RARE
Wanderers cross from Czechia and Poland from time to time, and each one makes the regional news.
★ RARE
An old-growth specialist, and one of the rarest woodpeckers in central Europe.
COMMON
Small patches of forest that were never cleared, kept as a control against everything managed around them.
COMMON
A kilometre-long walkway through the canopy at forty-four metres, and the only way most people ever see a spruce crown.
LUCKY
The realistic sighting: a line of round prints in fresh snow, walking a forest road as though it owned it.
LIKELY
A serious autumn flush in the spruce, and dead wood everywhere for it to work on.
COMMON
Southern Germany in copper and gold, and the country takes its autumn walking seriously.
LIKELY
High Bavarian valleys with the lights below you and long clear winter nights.
COMMON
The warm downslope wind that clears the horizon in an hour, makes the mountains look close enough to touch, and gives half of Bavaria a headache.
COMMON
The largest continuous hop-growing area on earth, and the reason for a great deal of what happens in Bavaria.
COMMON
Streuobstwiesen — traditional orchards grazed beneath, and among the richest habitats in Germany.
LIKELY
Baroque roof spaces hold important maternity roosts, and several churches carry a plaque explaining it.
COMMON
Gardens and campsite edges from April until they turn in.
COMMON
In every wood and park, often near-black in the mountains, and no greys anywhere.
The field law. Capercaillie and black grouse lek areas in the Black Forest are closed in spring and their locations withheld deliberately — a lek disturbed at dawn is a lek abandoned for the season, and these populations cannot afford it. Edelweiss is protected. Bog boardwalks exist because peat does not recover. And fossil collecting is welcomed at the working quarries and prohibited in the national parks; the difference matters.
06 / EXPEDITION TOOLKIT
Run the budget core with the toll field at zero and see what it does. After Italy’s autostrade and France’s Classe 2 barriers, this file’s only road cost is fuel.
Stellplätze usually offer power, so off-grid nights are a choice rather than a necessity. The off-grid core matters less here than on any file except the Low Countries.
Berchtesgaden and the Wetterstein sit high, and alpine nights are cold in any month. Run the endurance numbers with the heating on for the Bavarian half.
Check it in the Europe Engine against whatever else you have planned for the same half-year.
07 / DEPARTURE CHECK
08 / OPEN MAP
09 / WHERE NEXT
The Rhine gorge, the Mosel and the Eifel, with the Dutch delta and the Ardennes attached. Between them the two files cover most of what Germany offers a British van.
If the Bavarian Alps leave you wanting the real thing, E06 goes over the top of them — and teaches pass driving properly.
Poland, Czechia and Slovakia — and Białowieża, the last primeval lowland forest in Europe, with bison in it. The Bavarian Forest is the western end of the same story.
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