We haven’t written a newsletter for a little while as we have been working hard writing and updating our Roadbooks for the upcoming touring season, as well as working on the touring programme for next year, but we wanted to take this opportunity to give you a sign of life and wish you all a Happy Easter.
The pandemic has changed a lot for us. Not only were we not able to run any of our tours in 2020 and 2021 there are now many other changes that will influence our future tours. Prices are going up dramatically for some of the excellent campsite we use during our tours and many of the group highlights we book for our customers are also more expensive. For example, the tickets for the boat trip during the Rhine in flames fireworks are now much more expensive, because they have had to reduce seating capacity by one third! Many campsites are also fully booked much earlier in the season, because some campsites were forced to close because of the pandemic and the remaining ones are much busier also because of the huge increase in the number of camping vehicles sold during the pandemic.
This time of the year is when we decide on the touring programme for the following year, and we spend a lot of time writing to the campsites and calling them to discuss availability etc. For tours we have run in the past we normally just need to write to the campsites, and we get a confirmation relatively fast. This year it is different. As mentioned above some campsites do not exist anymore, others have changed their concept and added many rental huts, reducing the number of pitches therefore making it more difficult to make group bookings, as we block the pitches for 1-3 days and the campsites prefer customers to stay for at least a week! But we are sure you have had similar experiences even when travelling alone or just with a friend in a second motorhome.
Having said all this, we wanted to give you a brief outlook on the tours we have planned for next year:
We will start in April with the beautiful “Springtime in Holland” tour, because as in previous years, we want to be there during the flower parade and the Kingsday festivities.
For the first half of May we are working on a new tour called “Alluring Alsace” to the Alsace region in France and to the Vosges mountains. We have visited this beautiful area many times and the tour will include time in some of the famous cities like Strasbourg, Colmar and Mulhouse but we will also visit the mountainous areas and of course we are planning to have a wine tasting.
During the second half of May, we will repeat the “Scenic Switzerland” tour, which we are running for the first time this year. For 2022 it is fully booked, and we unfortunately have had to turn people down or have added them to the waiting list, so now they will have another chance in 2023.
During the first half of June, we will bring back our “Picturesque Provence” tour, a great time of year to travel to the South of France and a good chance to stock up our wine!
During the middle of the year, we will have our evergreen tours “Majestic Rhine & Moselle Rivers” and “Breathtaking Black Forest”. These two back-to-back tours allow for a full month of travel in Germany from Saturday 24th June until Saturday 22nd July 2023. The Rhine tour is fully booked again this year, but we still have spaces available on the Black Forest tour for anyone interested in joining us.
In September we will bring back our “Amazing Alpine Roads” tour which starts in Lindau on Lake Constance and continues along the German/Austrian border ending in Salzburg.
In September we will also be running our “Delightful Danube” tour, which would have been new in 2020 but had to be cancelled as a result of the pandemic. It will be somewhat different to what we had planned previously and will start in the beautiful historic city of Regensburg and finish in Vienna.
The final tour of 2023 will be a three-week tour to Andalusia. We will be running our “Andalusian Adventure” for the first time this year. It has raised a lot of interest since we announced this in February and as a result is already over half full.
Keep in mind when you look at the tours for next year on our website, the information is not yet fully up to date, as we are still awaiting feedback from some of the campsites and prices for some of the group events. Nevertheless, if you are interested in any of the future tours, we maintain a preliminary reservation list and people on that list will get priority booking once we have everything sorted out and especially the exact dates & prices. All you need to do is send us an email telling us which tour you are interested in, and we will contact you once you can book.
We still have availability on some of this year’s tours and we would be happy if you would like to join us. It is no longer possible to book the first two tours of the year (“Exciting Eastern Germany” and “Discover Denmark”) but if you are interested in any of the tours later in the year, please do not hesitate to contact us. If the tour you would like to join is full, we could add you to the waiting list. If you would like to book, you can do this on our website, or send us an email and we will send you a booking form.
We would finally like to wish all of you a very happy Easter and a good start in the new touring season.
Best Regards
Audrey & Michael