Summer 2007 - Day 31

Day 31

Our last day of our holiday - we had a quick look at Koblenz and then drove to Marksburg Castle. Koblenz is a 2,000 year old town situated on the banks of the Rhine river where it merges with the Moselle.

Marksburg Castle is the only hill castle on the Rhine that has never been destroyed. It has been lived in for over 700 years. We did a tour of Marksburg which was only offered in German. The tour took 50 minutes and we were given information in English which took 5 minutes to read. It was a nice enough castle though. I got this information on Marksburg from their website when we came home.

Beginning with the construction of the keep in the 12th century, the castle grew into its present shape throughout succeeding centuries. In the Middle Ages, the strengthening of the castle's defences became essential and urgent due to improvements made to firearms. Huge outworks date from this time, as does the conversion of a gateway in the outer wall to a strong bastion. It is mainly due to these extra defence works that the castle was never seriously attacked. In more peaceful times, it was used mainly as a state prison.

The big cannons in this "Great Battery" are aimed at the Rhine river. Their reach amounted to approx. 1,000 meters, the crew was able to cover the width of the Rhine valley. This battery house was erected no more than 400 years ago.

The Kemenate (bed-chamber) furnished with a canopied matrimonial bed, a cradle, a spinning wheel etc. It was one of the few rooms of the castle to be heated with a stove.

The Rüstkammer (armoury) contains a collection of personal armour illustrating the historical development of armour from c.a. 600 BC to 1500 AC.

The former stables underneath the Romanesque Palas (Great Hall) houses the numerous instruments of torture and punishment such as would be used in a typical Folterkammer (torturing chamber).

After Marksburg castle we drove to Bonn to visit the birth house of Beethoven. Ludwig van Beethoven was born in December 1770. Since 1889 his birth house has housed a commemorative museum.

After Bonn we drove home. During our holiday we drove almost 5,300 km. We used a pedometer to help John to learn how to read numbers in thousands. The kids took regular checks of our step count. The accuracy of the pedometer was variable but we walked at least 366,308 steps.

We had a great holiday and saw a lot in that time. The kids got bored occasionally but generally enjoyed the holiday.