Danube Trip – Well, We’re Here #2

Bavarian Army Museum, Ingolstadt

On Friday morning, we drove to Ingolstadt and visited the Armeemuseum. Excellent. My only slight grumbles were, firstly, that it is staffed by some ladies who do not seem to be very happy to be there, and who cheer themselves up by disciplining the visitors, and, secondly, flash photography is not allowed, and the exhibits are preserved by keeping them in such a gloomy environment that we had difficulty reading the notices on some of the displays. Other than that, the place is terrific value at 3.50 euros for an adult. Remarkable collections of weaponry and models of artillery equipment, and some breathtaking dioramas. The dioramas in particular were simply too much to take in – all done in flats, and sometimes using enhanced perspective, by which I mean that smaller scale figures are used at the back of the model.

The emphasis is, obviously, on the history of the Bavarian army, a subject area where my knowledge is very much limited to the Napoleonic period.

30YW Leather Gun

Uniforms of the Crown Prince and Genl Wrede, 1809

Genl Deroy

Abensberg

We spent the afternoon at Abensberg. The Director of the Stadtmuseum there gave me a fantastic amount of scanned material – old books on the Abensberg battles, plus some marvellous old maps from the Austrian war archives. Then he gave us an extensive guided tour of the battlefield itself. I took a lot of pictures and a lot of notes, which I shall enjoy working through, but most of the landscape-type photos are really not very suitable for including here – although the scene makes sense at the time, when explained, a photo of a tiny church tower in the far distance, obscured by woods and buildings which were not present in 1809 is pretty meaningless. It was a most enjoyable day, though – the Battle of Abensberg is one of the more confused actions of the campaign, and it makes it a lot more understandable to visit the various locations, appreciate the distances involved and see at first hand what the protagonists had to cope with.

I’ve included a selection of pictures, to give an idea of what we saw.

15mm scale model of the town of Abensberg in 1808. I don't know where I'll
store it, but I want one...

The inn at Rohr, where Archduke Charles and Napoleon spent consecutive nights

Danube Trip - Well, We're Here #1

Lindach Church

We got here safely enough yesterday. This morning we collected our rental car (it's a yellow Opel Corsa - they must have been looking for someone daft enough to take this one for a while) and headed off for the Eggmuhl battlefield. The battlefield is bigger than I expected, and our guide (Georg) gave us a few inside tales of how things are not always as they are represented. Examples:

(1) The church tower at Lindach is famous because Napoleon is reputed to have climbed up there to see where the Austrians were. In fact, he can't have, because the tower has no proper windows and you can't see anything from that position.

(2) General Cervone was hit by a cannonball, and is buried beneath a monument by the road. In fact, he is buried where he fell, on farmland, but the farmer became so fed up with visitors trampling his crops that he arranged to get the monument shifted. Thus Cervone is buried on the battlefield, but nowhere near his monument.

(3) There are many little villages on the battlefield, and the fighting lasted over two days. Exactly which bit was the battle of Eggmuhl depends on which nation's version you read and which days you include.

Whatever, it was a fascinating and rewarding morning's trip, and we are deeply grateful to Georg for his knowledge and enthusiasm.

This afternoon we wandered around Regensburg old town, and were particularly impressed by an establishment called Dampfnudel Uli's, which specialises in traditional Bavarian steam dumplings, served with custard sauce. If this does not sound particularly interesting, I assure you this is only because you have never tried them...

Tomorrow we visit the Bavarian Army Museum at Ingolstadt, and the battlefield of Abensberg. Here's some pictures from today.

Georg Schindlbeck, in the uniform of a fusilier of the Bavarian I.R. No.5, Graf
 Preysing, gives an impressive display of how to fire two aimed shots a minute with
a flintlock musket

Lend him a Bavarian helmet and a French musket, and old Max Foy can still turn
his hand to soldiering. The car is official Napoleonic army issue.

In our exchange of international gifts, Georg was kind enough to give me a musket
ball, which was found on the battlefield. It's small size suggests that it was either
an officer's pistol ball or - more likely - a Bavarian sharpshooter's rifle ball.

My valiant colleague. Simon the Bookseller on the old bridge at Regensburg. The Danube
 is absolutely raging, and there is about 4 feet clear below the top of the river walk in
the background

Inside DampfNudel Uli's - lots of photos of celebrity guests

Uli - while he was showing me some of the photos of guests, he
was delighted that I told him that, quite correctly, he was more
famous than Ronald Reagan

Danube Trip – Not a Lot of Help

As part of my preparation for my impending trip to the Danube (which starts tonight), I felt I should take advantage of the momentum and enthusiasm and revisit one of my past failures. A failure, what is more, that has nagged me like a mild toothache for years, so this is a good opportunity to sort a few things out at once.

Yet again, it has not gone well.

Around 1990, my late cousin, who was certainly one of the best-read fellows I ever knew, bought me a copy of Claudio Magris’ Danube, which, in its original Italian version, has won more literary prizes than you would believe. My cousin was a lovely, amusing man, but just occasionally he would send me an “improving” book to try to make some inroads into my vast number of years of monastic devotion to ignorance. He introduced me to Primo Levi, and a few other writers whom I have grown to love, but Magris, I fear, has been a step too far.

Now then. Claudio Magris, as you will (of course) know, is a celebrated scholar, essayist and occasional journalist who – among so many honours – is professor of modern German literature at the University of Trieste.

Claudio Magris

Danubio is a work which has received such lofty acclaim that each of my 3 or 4 failed attempts to get through it has been a humbling, not to say humiliating experience. The idea and the structure is that the reader is taken on a ramble down the Danube, from its source (and there is an interesting debate about exactly where that is) to wherever it finishes up (and I have never read anything like that far, though the Black Sea seems a decent guess). On the way, the Professor enriches the journey with snippets of history, local culture, legends and oodles of literary references. Sounds good, but each of my failed attempts has ground to a halt in the same way – bemused by the pointlessness of continually nodding, stupidly, at references that neither I, nor anyone else, is likely to make anything of.

Naturally, if Jan Baltazar Magin disagreed with the writings of Michael Bencsik back in the 18^th Century on some minor aspect of Slavophilism, there is no reason why Prof Magris should not mention it, but how much is enough? My paperback edition runs to some 400-odd pages, and I reckon there are about 10 to 12 such references per page. By any standards, that is heavy going. Who is this book aimed at? What is the reader supposed to do with all this stuff? Take notes? Agree? Check the references? Be impressed? Be convinced? Weep?

I suspect that Magris wrote the book for himself – and God bless him, he is entitled to do just that. The book is very fine – it may even be perfect, I am obviously not qualified to judge. I suspect that any readers who are not actually part of a tiny, closed circle of specialists in the field of Central European literature are purely incidental, and that the circle itself was expected to do exactly what they did – applaud and award prizes.

What is infuriating is the sycophantic noise that surrounds it. If there is anything more wretched than people who make a living out of criticizing literature then I cannot think of it offhand. Well, maybe my own failure to understand some literature runs it pretty close.

I take a random example from the gushy tributes at the start of the book.

Magris writes beautifully (and is beautifully translated by Patrick Creagh); he seems to have read everything. His reading has not made him clever, but wise. On almost every page there are passages that make the heart lift.

John Banville

There you go, you see. He seems to have read everything. Books like this are deliberately intimidating. They are consciously aimed above criticism, because the sort of people who perform literary criticism will be terrified to admit  that they didn’t have a bloody clue what he was on about. All those references – does Banville (for example) have the slightest idea about whether they are genuine, or relevant, or even accurately transcribed and interpreted? Of course he doesn’t. He just wishes, like all the other pseuds who have contributed eulogies, that he himself could have written something so obviously, exquisitely, chokingly learned.

I don’t hold these views lightly. I find inverted snobbery in any form extremely distasteful. There is nothing smart about being dumb. So I have kept going back to Danube, with growing pessimism, in the hope that it would grow on me – and it is, indisputably, finely written, and it contains much that is enjoyable and enlightening. However, I always come back to this problem with the sheer number and density of  references. It is irritating. It gets in the way. I get annoyed. Why has academic writing evolved in this form? I don’t believe that the great pioneers of modern thought behaved in this way, why do modern academics have to hide behind other people’s work in this strange manner?

Not to worry. In a moment of thinking that surely it couldn’t just be me, I looked at the Amazon customer reviews for Danube – no higher plane of intellectual activity exists, as we know. As expected, there were a number of very positive offerings from people who must have had as little idea as I do. In there, however, was the following, which I reproduce in full entirely because I thought it was somehow a blessed relief – something that needed saying.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars

Utterly pretentious 9 Jan 2010

By Hoopdriver

Format:Paperback

The snobbery and name dropping in this book beggars belief. I actually thought it was a send-up at first but as the pages dragged (and I do mean dragged) by it became horribly clear that the cold intellectual snob who wrote this thing is every bit as arrogant and donnish as he appears. I've truly never seen or read anything like it. It is convoluted, full of itself, and lacks any coherent narrative form but seems to wander from one idle whimsy to another, thick with the names of obscure figures in European academe, with the smug and donnish author keeping one eye on the mirror all the while. Its biggest failing is its complete lack of heart or soul or passion for his topic - one of the grandest and most beautiful rivers in Europe. It is not a travel book, or a history; it is purely an exercise in cold remorseless intellectualism, with no regard for either the reader or the river. And yes, I know, I've seen the other five-star reviewers and read their pooh-pooh-ing of those of us garlic-and-onions Philistines who do not appreciate the erudite wit and wisdom of this writer. To them I can say only that a true genius is one who can communicate his (or her!) passions and ideas, speak to every level, and generate enthusiasm in their listeners or readers. This fails abysmally. If one wants to read a brilliant - and erudite - book about the Danube one needs go no further than Patrick Leigh Fermor's travelogue of his journey along the Danube in 1933. And when you read him and compare those truly brilliant and warm and readable books with this bit of pretentious drivel, you will se the difference within a very few pages, and not give this thing a second glance.

Yes, it’s harsh, and I don’t agree with a lot of what it says, but it is, at last, a small riposte on behalf of what appears to me to be commonsense. I shall, needless to say, take my copy of Danube with me on my trip. You never know, God may suddenly lay his hand on me and render me able to understand it. Apart from that, some complete stranger may see me reading it on the plane, and be impressed.

Now you’re talking.

Danube Trip – Bribes & Gifts Dept

In grateful response to excellent suggestions made previously on this blog, I have been arranging for a small stock of diplomatic goodies for our forthcoming trip, to go some way towards rewarding our volunteer battlefield guides for their efforts. For a while I considered painting up a suitable figurine myself, but I don’t really have time (though I would like to have done it), and there is a slight risk that the recipient might not have known what it was if I had.

Thus I have obtained a ready-painted collector figure from FirstLegion, and here he is. This, gentlemen, in 54mm, is a sapper of the Bavarian I.R. Nr. 5, Graf Preysing, as he would have appeared at Eggmühl. He is pictured next to a bottle of genuine East Lothian Falling-Down Water – we have a couple of these to take. They are usually well received.

I did also consider the special, limited-edition Max Foy teeshirt (available in L, XL and XXL), but decided against it. If you are interested in FirstLegion, click here. If you are interested in Glenkinchie, click here.

This just proves that I do occasionally listen to other people’s ideas – thanks very much, guys!

Danube Trip - Napoleon was never this organised

And still I continue to be amazed.

Now that the first and the third days of our visit to Regensburg are nicely organized (Ingolstadt museum and Abensberg battlefield on Thursday, courtesy of the Director of the town museum, plus a guided tour of the historical sites – and hostelries – of Regensburg itself on the Saturday), I’ve been working on seeing if I could arrange some kind of guided visit to the battlefield at Eggmühl on the Friday.

This is not critical – I have a couple of good guidebooks to the field, and I understand it is laid out in such a way that a knowledgeable visitor can find his way around it. However, our success and good fortune thus far in finding people prepared to go to astonishing lengths to help with our mad trip encouraged me to see if I could just come up with someone prepared to take two total strangers – Anglophones at that – around our battlefield of choice on the single day we have available.

Bingo.

In fact, no credit is due to me at all. The gentleman recommended by the tourist board at Schierling turned out to be unavailable on the date we wanted (imagine – the chap must actually have a life), but he was good enough to email me and say that he had passed the message on, and someone would be in touch shortly. Sure enough, a couple of days ago I got a delightful note from Georg, who does battlefield tours of Eggmühl, asking would we prefer to start at 10:00 or 14:00. We have to meet him at the Gastätte Napoleon, in the centre of the village, and everything will be taken care of.

Georg, it seems, has been doing this for 20 years now, and he will be wearing the uniform of a fusilier of the regiment Graf Preysing. Yes – that’s right. For a brief instant, the imp of perversity whispered to me that I should email Georg and ask how we would recognize him, but some jokes do not translate well, so I thought better of it.

Georg, in uniform, with some French visitors

So Regensburg is organized. I have never come across such helpful people, nor such enthusiastic, humbling kindness. Just astonishing.

We have agreed that the Vienna leg of our trip will be rather less regimented, but we are working on a wish list of things we would like to see.

I’m getting nervous. Things are going too well – you know the feeling?

Hooptedoodle #90 - The Electric Sheep

Just arrived on Summer holibags with the family. Nothing has actually happened yet, since we’ve spent a little time catching up with our sleep since we got here, but the place seems nice enough – hot, though. We are staying in the Austrian Salzkammergut, the Lake District. We are at Lake Wolfgang, and it’s about 45 minutes into Salzburg by the local Postbus route #150 – haven’t been there yet, that’s for tomorrow.

I’m gently getting on with my 1809 Danube campaign reading, and have been scoring some minor Napoleonic spotters’ points around these parts. The Austrian army’s crossing of the River Inn into Bavaria, on 10^th April 1809 took place fairly close to here. The left flank of the advance - the Armeekorps of Hiller and Archduke Ludwig  - crossed the river at Braunau, which is just a little way away, and the left flank was covered by Jellacic’s VI Korps, which was at Salzburg itself, in the superb old castle.

Only other thing I’ve seen of relevance thus far in the little town is a rather interesting establishment called the Hotel Radetzky, which has impressive murals on the outside walls of Wagram-period Austrian soldiers.

The picture at the top of the post is the view from my balcony at 06:30 this morning, which is pleasant enough, but I was especially taken with a little electric robot lawnmower which the hotel has clipping the grass in the early mornings and late at night. I’ve seen similarly inspired devices which clean the bottoms of swimming pools, and I’ve heard of one which vacuums the house while you’re out, but I’ve never seen one of these grass-cutting gizmos before. Not only is  it clever, but it’s also hilariously funny – my son and I happily watched it bumbling about like a demented electric sheep for at least half an hour, with Nick providing commentary subtitles, such as “uh-oh!” when it was headed for a tree or similar. It always sorted itself out of problem corners, though there appeared to be a few emergency stops. We keep expecting to meet it in the hotel’s corridors, patiently clipping away, keeping the carpet neat.

These things may be very common – possibly every home in Santa Barbara has one – who knows? – but such technology is new to me, and we definitely want one. No matter that we would have to redesign the garden so that it would not have to cope with stone steps – there must be a way. Anyway, we want one, though we may have moved on to something else by tomorrow. This one is Italian, by the way.

Broadband wi-fi is not good here, and is switched off for large parts of the day – in fact I have a suspicion I may be hacking into a network I’m not supposed to, but I'll keep trying intermittently.

The little town has an interesting WW2 war memorial, which I hope to get a decent look at. We are going on a day trip to Berchtesgarten and the Eagle’s Nest next week, which I’m looking forward to, and the hiking and cycling potential around here seems very good, so once we’ve recovered from the 2-hours’-sleep-a-day regime which early morning charter flights from UK provincial airports force upon us we should be busy enough.

Excellent.

On a slight downbeat note, I am a little disappointed that the local representative of our British holiday company speaks no German at all, though she has been based here for a couple of years. Not a bloody word, though this is not an area where English is spoken as widely as in, say, the Tyrol. She even appears to take a pride in this achievement. Oh well – no point having a national stereotype if we don’t take the chance to reinforce it now and then, though it does seem a bit like employing a man with no arms as a goalkeeper. I must say that the British tourists here are well looked after, but we seem to be expected somehow to be a bit dim. Very like Americans used to be regarded in Paris when I used to go there years ago.

Not to worry – Oi, Radetzky! Get us another beer, will you, me old son?

My Danube Trip - Update

This refers to a private fantasy I mentioned back at the end of last year, here, to visit Napoleon’s battlefields from the early stages of the French counterattack against the forces of the Fifth Coalition in 1809, on the Danube.

The biggest initial challenge – apart from my own lack of detailed expertise on this campaign – was how the blazes to set about getting a handle on such a project. There are very few suitable battlefield tours available – not even written guides, and it would be very easy to attempt something unmanageable, or reduce a long-cherished dream to a sad shambles. Getting the right balance between battlefield-hiking and beer-drinking is also important. Tricky.

Well, I’m delighted to say it’s coming together nicely – my crazy friend and I are definitely going in September. We have flight tickets and hotels booked and everything. We’ll spend three days based at Regenburg, and the rest of the week looking around sights of Vienna.

I am stunned by the help I have received – originally from Old John, who sent me a huge parcel of brochures and stuff for all sorts of places all over the area, and later from various tourist offices and individuals I have approached by email in Germany. People have really been enthusiastic and supportive – fantastic. I am touched and grateful and even a bit embarrassed, all at the same time.

Regensburg - the bridge the French couldn't destroy

The plan is that we will fly to Vienna, via Amsterdam, on a Wednesday, and then take the intercity ICE train to Regensburg (this is the Dortmund express, so should be a classy train). Thursday morning we pick up a hire car in Regensburg and drive out to visit the Bayerisches Armeemuseum in Ingolstadt. In the afternoon we are to meet up with a gentleman who is curator of a local museum and author of a number of publications on the Battle of Abensberg, and he will give us a personal guided tour of the Abensberg battlefield. This is a fantastic asset – Abensberg is so big a battle, and so fragmented, that I had sort of abandoned any idea of trying to follow the events of the day in an organised way. My fall-back plan was to pick on Lannes’ advance, and follow that. No, no, says our volunteer guide – best to do it chronologically. If we supply the transport, he will take us around in a proper manner. Sounds excellent to me.

Bavarian Army Museum, Ingolstadt

Friday is up for grabs, but I’ve been sent a terrific narrative and battlefield guide (in English) for Eggmühl by the tourist people at Schierling – I even got a nice letter from the mayor. I also have contact details for a local Heimatspfleger who can take us around the field. For Landshut there is nothing available, but a local historian typed up an account of both actions at Landshut in an email – a lot of work for him, and much appreciated – and he even recommended a local Biergarten! We may not have the time or the stamina to visit Landshut or Thann, but Eggmühl is a must – I now have the new, locally produced book, and I also have Ian Castle’s very nice book from the Osprey Campaign series, so I’ll take both of those away on the family’s forthcoming holiday at Salzburg, and spend a few idle moments studying these, to improve my understanding of the area.

For the Saturday we have the offer of a tour of the historical highlights of Regensburg (a.k.a. Ratisbon) with our kind curator again, and then I think we should devote some time to wining and dining him to express our thanks.

Schönbrunn Palace

Sunday we catch the train back to Vienna, where we have a few days to check out Schönbrunn and the Heeresgeschichtemuseum, plus a whole pile of other candidate sites, including a concert or two and lots of cakes and coffee. We fly home on the Wednesday. My liver may be resting for a while afterwards.

Mustn’t get carried away here – a lot depends on everything working out, and the availability of some key individuals, but we really could not have had more help or support. I can now get back to reading the John Gill trilogy, Loraine Petre’s 1809 book, Gunther E Rothenburg, Chandler and various other sources with a calmer and more positive mind. Prior to this period of progress, such reading merely heightened my anxiety and the feeling of hopelessness!

I’m really looking forward to it now.

Sunday Morning - This and That

Firstly, here are two new foot units for my ECW armies. The grey chaps are the Parliamentarian regiment of Colonel John Moore (that's John Moore of Bankhall, Kirkdale, Lancashire - noted as the Parliament diarist and regicide - everyone should have a hobby), and the others are the Royalists of Robert Byron (brother of Lord John). I liked the officer, who reminds me a bit of the Mouseketeers (out of Tom and Jerry? - en garde, Monsieur Pussy-Cat). He is from SHQ, and is a fair enough match for his men, who are Les Higgins castings - it is reasonable that he should eat better than the rank and file.

I had a nice email from Amanda, in Sweden, asking me if I could put some more of my home-made flags on the blog again. Always happy to oblige, here are the flags for today's new units. If they are useful to you, please feel free to use them - enlarge the image and download the big version. I print the image at 51mm high, which suits my men, who are a little smaller than 1/72 scale. Please remember that these are complete bunkum - just a guess. The colonel's colour for Moore's shows the family crest.

I've been doing a little more work on the proposed trip to the Danube, pencilled in for September now. Current outline is to fly to Vienna, hire a car and drive to Regensburg for 3 days, then return to Vienna for a further 4 days. The first part of the trip aims to take in Ingolstadt (maybe), Abensberg, Landshut and Eggmuhl, with appropriate intake of cream cakes, coffee and beer. Vienna has so much to offer that we don't really know what our priorities are yet, but cakes and beer will figure there also. Work continues.

I dug out an old map of Germany, and found that it is the Baedeker one I bought in preparation for a family holiday in Bernkastel, on the Mosel, in 1987. Which means, of course, that it shows the border between East and West Germany - my son was fascinated that there was a border around Berlin. How time passes - and how odd that all seems now.

Anschluss - More Ebb and Flow

Following on from my recent mention of Anschluss Publishing, I've now bumped into them again - twice, in fact, in quick succession - which usually means - well, something or other.

Firstly, one of my foreign spies sent me the booklet for The Ebb and Flow of Battle - Module 1: The 1809 Campaign, published 1988, which includes rules and notes on the historical campaign and OOBs. Interesting - pretty good, in fact, though I would not care to use the rules for a game. Some nice ideas in there, to be sure, but written orders, which is a screaming NO for me, and some surprisingly detailed tactical manoeuvring for a 6mm Grand Tactical game designed to handle army-level battles. No dice - all situation/table driven. He who knows the rules best shall win, a doctrine which is normally paraphrased as rewarding generalship.

I am also, most unreasonably, prejudiced a little against any rule set which claims to have captured the "true flavour" of the period, though - since I am patently not a real general - I would not claim to have any level of expertise in the true flavour. I am not really offering serious criticism of Ebb & Flow here - I'm sure it gives a good game. On a fairly gentle reading it does not look like my sort of thing, but that is hardly the authors' problem. I do like the idea of fighting battles using armies which are historically correct, rather than based on balanced points totals, and I also am comfortable with the fact that this means that sometimes one side will have no chance of winning, but will require to demonstrate its generalship by losing as well as they can!

Anyway, Histogaming has arrived, it says on the cover, though it took 25 years to reach me.

Anschluss also came up in the context of the scoping and planning for my proposed trip to the Danube in September. John C has very kindly lent me - among a pile of other useful stuff - Peter Heath's little booklet on Wagram, which has some tidy maps along with the narrative, though the OOBs are presented in wargame form. This booklet predates the Ebb & Flow one by some 3 years, and recommends the use of rules which are accurate yet fast in use - in particular WRG's 1685-1845 set.

There is/was a whole set of these booklets - several sets, in fact, since they covered 1809, 1813, 1814 and there are also Franco-Prussian titles (I think). They are not easy to get hold of - I found some secondhand copies at Abebooks and elsewhere, and they were certainly not cheap. I have managed to track down a copy of the booklet for the Battle of Thann, but there are also, for this campaign, a number of other titles in this Great Battles of History Refought series for 1809 I would like to have a look at.

Book 3 - The Battle of Abensberg
Book 4 - The Battle of Echmuhl [sic]
Book 5 - The Battle of Ebelsburg
Book 7 - The Battle of Aspern-Essling
Book 8 - The Battle of Raab

If anyone has a copy of any of these they would be prepared to lend me for a week or two (I only need them to take some notes for my initial planning) or sell to me (not too expensive - I don't need them that badly, and would be planning to re-sell fairly quickly!), please do get in touch.

My Bluff Is Called? – Feasibility Study

Monument at Eggmuhl

I believe I’ve mentioned here before that I have long nurtured a fantasy that one day I might take a little time to make a tour of Napoleon’s 1809 adventures along the Danube. Like all unlikely dreams, it has a built-in safety factor in that if I never get to do it, I’ll never find out that it was a really stupid idea.

The whole point of a trip like this (in theory) is that you do a lot of enjoyable reading, plan it all out and then spend fulfilling days in the sunshine, walking around clearly-signposted, well maintained battlefields, looking forward to the next bottle of halbtrocken and the odd hot chocolate. Oh – and cakes. Lots of cakes. The campaign is very compact – the early stages involved actions just about on consecutive days, so the distances to be covered are relatively small, and – exactly because it was such a fertile area – Napoleon had his army march right along the tourist magnet of the Danube itself. They would have had cakes every day, you bet.

Stadtplatz, Abensberg

When I mentioned it in the blog before, I got a very gratifying degree of supportive jostling – hey! just do it – all that. Excellent. This is what you need to keep your fantasies tickly and fresh. I can’t even claim to get any opposition at home – Mme La Comtesse thinks it’s a really good idea. Now that I have the time, and provided I don’t have to cash in the kids’ future to finance the deal, there’s no reason why not.

Well....

Landburg Trausnitz, Landshut

Well, that’s true. The only argument against getting on with it is that I would then have to organise it and make a job of it. I might mess it up. It might be, as discussed, a stupid idea. There is a risk that my lovely fantasy might turn into a boring mud bath (like some parts of my recent Hadrian’s Wall pilgrimage), or that the battlefields are now underneath local authority housing estates, or a sewage works. I don’t know the area – the Tyrol and Rothenburg ob der Tauber are as near as I have been. Würzburg, maybe.

Next tightening of the screw is that a friend has expressed great enthusiasm for the project, and reckons we should go next September. Should we do Vienna as well? – maybe that would require a second week? – hmmm. At this point, the kids’ future is looking a bit more shaky.

So I promised I would have a look to see what would be involved, and how it would be, and what the costs might look like, and I would get back to him. I dug out Loraine Petre and the John Gill trilogy, and the trusty Elting & Esposito atlas – now you’re talking – and the AvD road maps, and I started taking serious notes. A return flight to Vienna from Edinburgh is a bit over £200 if you book it far enough ahead. Hire a car at the far end, and from Vienna it is around 250 miles to Abensberg, then short hops back towards Vienna will get you to Landshut, Eckmühl, Ratisbon (that’s Regensburg to you and me and the road signs), then a bit further to Aspern-Essling and Wagram. Small, family-run hotels – possibly a couple of centres would cover the whole area. Or maybe that’s too much for a week. The more I got into this, the more it seemed like an actual military campaign. Needs a lot more work. Where the blazes is Berthier when you need him?

I had a root around on the internet to see if anyone publishes battlefield guides for this campaign, or this area. So far I came up with very little. Maybe the local tourist organisations can provide more information. Now I come to think about it, I don’t even know how many of the battlefields would make a worthwhile visit. I’m quite happy to work away on this – my only misgiving is that at the moment it looks as though it might be a fair amount of work just to decide if it’s at all feasible.

Oh well, all right then

I could, of course, look for a commercially available organised tour – if there is one – these things tend to cluster around bicentenaries these days. The really big downside of such a tour (apart from the cost – I’m sure these are excellently done, but they are not cheap) is that I do not relish spending much time on a bus with a bunch of people who are like me. No, thank you. Also, I was once told a scary story about a trip someone did to the WW1 battlefields of Northern France, which was spoiled only by the fact that the organiser/owner/guide was a total pain in the neck, which caused problems after 5 days of continuous, unrelenting monologue. High risk, I think.

So I would definitely prefer the do-it-yourself approach, if I only had a few more clues to get me started. Please – anyone done this, been to this area, know of any books or sources, have any tips on how to go about it? Even insider info about the best cakes in town would be most welcome.