Why Alsace Should Be Your Next Campervan Destination

Our 6 week campervan road trip is coming to an end and we are heading home. Join us as we drop into Liechtenstein, a new destination for us and we we then head to the beautiful Alsace region of France.

After a couple of days exploring, we reflect on the top 5 reasons why the Alsace should be on everyones travel bucket list. In this video we will cover:

The beautiful architecture of Colmar and the surrounding towns
The traffic free cycling trails thought the acres of vineyards
The history of this intriguing French/German region
The famous rooftop storks of Eguishein
The world class wine tasting

We are Richard and Jackie and we live in the UK. We retired from teaching at the age of 51 in the summer of 2022. Our plans for early requirement include relocating to the Yorkshire Dales, developing our forever home and travelling the UK, Europe and eventually the world in our VW campervan Nelson.

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Many thanks,

Richard & Jackie

Timeline
00:00 We are heading home after 6 weeks on the road
00:59 Mayrhofen to Liechtenstein
05:36 48 hours in the Alsace
05:44 Eguishein
07:33 Colmar
08:42 Turckheim
09:20 Top 5 reasons to visit the Alsace
13:04 The 3 Castles Campsite Eguishein
13:36 Rate my shower- The 3 Castles Campsite Eguishein
14:36 The road home and coming up next

hi we’re Richard and Jackie from early retirement wonderlust and we’re home we’re back in the UK we have just got back from our six week camper van road trip around Europe and the last time we spoke to you we were in Austria since then we’ve traveled through one of the smallest countries in Europe lonstein which was very interesting and then we headed up to the Elsas wine region so in this video we want to give you our top five reasons why everyone should visit the alsas region at least once in their life [Music] [Music] so sadly we’re down to our last few days of our European road trip and we have got about 3 days left to get back home uh first stop is in lonstein and we have found a great little Park up it is at the top of a huge mountain pass which we weren’t particularly expecting to have to go up uh we’ve got cows for company and we’ve got very little food in the van so we’re having a bit of a using up everything that’s left in the van couple of days so tonight’s dinner we have got a tomato pasta with all the veg that we’ve got got left over it’s all looking just a little bit wonky and Mankey because it’s been so hot in Austria but I’m sure it’ll be fine and we’ve got some nice stuff past us so we’re just going to have a nice evening chilling out cooking and thinking about all the travels that we’ve been doing [Music] welcome to lanstein of very wet lonstein it’s hosed it down last night and one of the worst jobs of packing up is getting this wet thing rolled up and popped back in the van it’s the most horrible [Music] job so something that was in our New Year’s goals that we set way back in January was to visit a couple of new countries and driving through the tiny little country of lonstein was quite an experience for us it was we were so excited to go but actually the weather let us down we found the most amazing car park it was about 14 kmet up some little mountain past we had to go past the castle where the king of lonstein or the very important person of lonstein lives and we were right up at the top of the mountain with the donkeys and the cows so it’s quite atmospheric but it did rain for the whole 24 hours we were there yeah it was quite a drive up it was one of the most challenging drives I’ve done and I was questioning whether lonstein was actually investing in roads or whatever but when we got to the top the cafe was possibly the most expensive Cafe in Europe yes it was 13 Swiss Franks for two coffees two black coffees so out of every cloud comes a silver lining which meant that we had to move on because we needed to get ahead of the weather after 24 hours in the rain so we headed over to the alsas region to use equishine as our base um we used it for cycling and it actually meant that we got 48 hours so see how we got on [Music] so what you cooking for tea tonight Rich we are having spatel which is we’re not quite sure it’s a sort of dumplin sort of pasta type thing in a cheese bacon onion gooiness lovely sauce and uh yeah it’s one of our favorites and it’s home [Music] Comforts this very good [Music] you [Music] he [Music] e [Music] as you can see from the Montage the Elsas region is absolutely beautiful which gave us an idea what are the top five reasons that you really should visit the Elsas region cuz came up with loads the architecture of the region is quite unique it’s very Germanic in style but it is absolutely stunning and we said every town seems to have a real sort of civic pride about the beauty of the town or the village and each of the individual Villages or towns has its own sort of quirkiness that differentiates it from others but all of them are absolutely beautiful we visited three of the different towns uishi was my favorite it’s almost like a little old walled town and it had like rings of very old Timber clad buildings very brightly colored with beautiful paintings and murals paint on the walls and then if you magnify that up we then went into the city of colar and we were quite surprised because it was a city and as you know cities aren’t always our thing it was a lot busier the buildings were a lot bigger but exactly within the same style and yet you were wandering around a city center which was quite strange range we had our bikes with us and The Vineyards of the Elsas region made it really accessible to get between the different towns The Vineyards in themselves are actually really really pretty to cycle through but they have the gravel trails that connect all these different towns and different places you could cycle for miles and not have to go on any of the busy roads and more importantly it’s flat as a pancake as well so it’s actually quite easy to get between the towns I love the alsas region for its history and it’s fair to say it’s got a pretty potted history between French and German um throughout time it the sort of territory has swapped between the two countries um and in the second world war it was obviously a key region um it was occupied and it did really take the brunt of the second world war we visited the small village of turine which was beautiful and we couldn’t quite work out how wellmaintained it was until we saw some of the historic photos of at the end of the second world war where the village had just been absolutely levels so yeah quite a sobering thought when you see those images and then see how they’ve rebuilt it but yeah a really interesting historical place to visit Richard’s all about the history and I’m all about the wildlife and for me one of the big things particularly with egim is that it is a Haven for stalks and as you walk through the village there are loads of great big metal nests where the stalks have their babies and actually we were there at fledgling time of year so you could hardly tell the difference between the adult stalks and the babies and they were all peering over the edge of the nest and most of the roofs had these huge stalks just sat majestically watching what was going on it was really fascinating and I think there is a bit of a trail set up that you can actually um use an app to go and find where the different nests are and it’s a really big tourist attraction for uishi as Jackie intimated earlier The Vineyards within the area are so so impressive and The Vineyards run for miles and miles and miles associated with that is obviously wine tasting we had a very memorable day we cycled from egim to Colmar um had a look at all of the architecture there um maybe sample the wine and then we went to turkheimer the thing to do when it was a little bit dump getting off the bike was to visit one of the vineyard tasting houses and we had a very nice afternoon they did little wine flights it was €4 for three different versions of a grape uh three different wines that they made we had a few and then I don’t think it was very safe cycling back but we did have a great time so we stayed at the three castles Campsite in egim it was a relief to be back in France to be honest because it was1 19 a night and there were no extras on top of that and it was nice to be back in affordable campsites it’s a popular campsite with Brits so it was very busy lots of Brits that were returning and off out on their European trips with a basic price did come basic facilities it wasn’t the most plush campsite we’ve ever stayed at which links beautifully to the latest edition of rate my [Music] shower as you can see the faciliity is are quite tired but very functional and most importantly of all cheap there’s an interesting tile style but no extra marks for that the cubicles are on the rather narrow side the showers are really clean but the age of them really does take the Shine off it there’s a real weakness in the hook and hanging game the Shelf space really isn’t adequate as you can see we back to push button showers but there is a good length of spray on them and there is ample hot water so overall for the three castles Campsite in equishine quite a mixed bag of skores strengths being loads of hot water but let down by the space and the lack of shelving space bringing an overall score of 34 out of 50 as we moved off from eosine we pretty much knew that the big road trip was over and then it was just about getting home and we got a couple of days to get home and we literally just towed it so um you might have seen our video when we were taking the slow road on the way down we didn’t do that on the way back we just wanted to get North so we took the toll roads we found a beautiful Park up at berio back which was just north of reams I think thanks for remembering that um and then it was just a blast through to Cal and to be fair it was a pretty uneventful Journey back we had to rush back for a lovely reason because Luke and Charlotte our son and his girlfriend now fiance were having an engagement pie so that was a really good reason to get back so coming up in our next few videos we will do a video specifically talking about the costings of a six- week road trip through Europe particularly going as far down as Croatia and we have had a really good think about the top 10 things that we would have not done without on that road trip and then back on the traveling theme we are so excited because in sharp contrast to hot sunny Europe we will then be heading off to the northern Isles which is about as far north as you can get in the UK and we cannot wait to explore the Shetland and the ores so that’s all coming up but until then we’ll see you later bye bye [Music] [Music]