The route to Rothenburg-ob-der Tauber: medieval fortified towns and castles

And we're off - the zeppelin over Friedrichshafen, the nearest airfield to Konstanz

After a lovely catch up with Bill and Gisi it was time to continue on.  Hmmm where to?  We were running low on time so Aachen had to be struck off the list, we had a look at going to Rheinfelden but they weren't open on a Tuesday, so we ended up deciding on a South-Western round flight: Rothenburg odT via Mannheim to the Mosel down to Rheinfelden (near Basel) then off to France.

But first a fly by of mad Ludwig's stroke of genius that bankrupted him and lead to his deposition as king of Bavaria - how could a bankrupt be head of state, before now becoming number 1 tourist attraction in Germany....  Considering that there are up to 10 000 visitors per day in June - August I think we were best seeing it from the air.

Yes it's Schloss Neuschwanstein

Depending on who you speak to I've heard mutterings about 'tasteless baroque interior', and I've got to be honest, isn't it a bit odd to be building a castle like this in 1870 when you've already got several perfectly good castles right next door that are authentic????

What's wrong with this castle (in Fuessen)?

We did hope to land in Fuessen, once we saw what a pretty little place it is, located in the foothills,so I called blind on the radio in German to ask if we could land (there were 3 gliders circling, so we figured there'd be someone on frequency).  To which I received a somewhat testy reply that there were 3 airfields on that frequency, which one did I want to land at......  Unfortunately after much discussion it turned out we were too heavy to be allowed to land there so on we went.  Foiled again by the German rules.

So the next question was where to get cheap mogas (98 octane car petrol).  Luckily Plasticpilot had printed us out a map of all the German airfields with mogas marked on it, so with a bit of an effort we managed to localise ourselves on it and start calling the appropriate airfields to see if they were open.

We finally found Aalen, which was really quite busy.  Apart from being obsessed with old open gliders, I'm also obsessed with rocket ship style canards, so I was really pleased to find this one also fuelling.

This is called a Speed Canard, it's a German factory built plane.  About 50 were made: they're fast and fuel efficient.  I want one.

 We then went for an overhead look at Dinkelsbuehl, a neighbouring town of similar beauty before continuing on to land at Rothenburg.

Medieval churches and city walls next to nice half timbered houses.  Unfortunately the weather was a bit bumpy so these two shots are the best I could do