Things don’t always work out as planned. We were looking forward to a relaxing few days in a spacious naturist site in north-western Germany, an area called the Schwarzwalder Hochwald. And relax we did. And we had some laughs. So we can’t really complain that we didn’t see much sun.

It all started when our younger son developed a passion about space rockets. We then discovered that the Euro Space Centre in Belgium ran summer camps for children. And so, when he reached the magic age of ten, we sent him and his big brother for a week of intensive training, the sort of introduction that astronauts go through. Rather them than me - to be flung around on the multi-axis chair: my husband Paul and I were looking forward to our first child-free period for over 14 years.

We headed over towards Saarland to the south of the Moselle River, a pretty area of wooded hills, green fields and neat villages.

The INF handbook came out as we searched for the possibilities. It took a while to decode the various symbols — figuring out that a snowflake does not imply a weather forecast, but means the site has ice packs available, and the sign for an old folks' home actually means hiking possibilities nearby. The information given is quite comprehensive, giving the size of each site in hectares and whether it has places to rent.

We narrowed our choice down to two, Lichtbund Saar and Escher Wäldchen, and thought we may have time to look over them both (though that didn’t work out either). Having had a couple of experiences that I didn’t want to repeat, I insisted that we visit a site before booking to stay. When we arrived at Lichtbund Saar, some of my worst fears started to surface. We drove down the track and found ourselves in the old courtyard of a dilapidated chateau (Schloss Münchweiler). I was reminded of one of the most uncomfortable nights I had spent; in a naturist place at a chateau near Paris — an experience I definitely didn’t want to repeat.

We cautiously approached the side of the chateau without scaffolding, and saw a sign for "Jägerschule" — hunting school! Stepping inside, against my better judgement, we could hear deep masculine voices coming from a room. On the walls were posters about what prey you might want to blast up. There was also an informative description, with close-up photographs, on how to skin a wild boar. We retreated. Perhaps the naturists had been taken over by these over-hormoned he-men. Then a little old lady walked over to the vegetable garden, so we felt safe to ask her where the FKK site was (FKK is German code for naturist: it stands for Freikorperkultur). She understood and sweetly directed us to the track just round the corner. A couple of minutes later we were faced with the typical welcome to a naturist site — a big green metal gate.

Sounds a dangerous place to situate a naturist site next to a school for hunters — but we didn’t hear any gruesome stories! Seemed like the owner of the chateau was happy to rent out bits of his property to any random bunch of people to bring in some cash to restore the old mansion.

The handbook had indicated the size of the site to be 45 hectares and with a swimming pool. It sounded delightful: a place of that size should offer long peaceful walks in the woods — just wanted we wanted. And a swimming pool would be nice for freshening up after lazing around in the sun.

We were warmly welcomed and shown the small caravan that was available to rent by the night. It looked quite cosy and didn’t smell musty like many rental caravans do. The club-house was large and smart, the sanitary facilities clean and everything was very well-maintained. But there were two surprises: the grounds were only 4.5 hectares in size (the size of a big field), not 45 ha. — and the swimming pool was a pond of dark murky water. However, other than these disappointments, it was quite a nice place, so we booked to stay — and then left for the day as the cloud cover was thick and it looked as if it would rain before long — which it did.

After a day out at the fun pool at Tholey, followed by supper sitting out in the evening sun (which had finally appeared late afternoon), we returned to our little caravan around 10.30 pm. I tried the key in the lock — but failed to open the door. Over to Paul. With growing concern, he tried to unlock it — to no avail. What to do? It seemed as if the site was now deserted; perhaps everyone goes to bed early…. And could we find the caravan of the family who had given us the key? Their caravan was fifth on the right on the second row — or was it the second caravan on the fifth row? There were no lights and we had no torch. In desperation we considered other modes of entry: windows, or skylight even…. It was with some relief that we found that the large rear window of the caravan opened. So our career as burglars was initiated. We wished we had our younger son, who would have had no difficulty nimbly climbing in. As it was, I gave Paul a heave up and fed him in — breathing a sigh of relief that no-one had just happened to arrive at that critical moment, when our actions may have been misinterpreted.

We awoke to the sound that all caravaners and campers dread: rain thumping on the roof. And this wasn’t just ordinary English rain: it was huge drops of continental-style rain. And it just didn’t pause. Not even for a moment. I lay there in bed wondering what to do. There was no toilet in the caravan. I lay there watching it come down, which proved so hypnotic I fell asleep again. Next time I awoke I knew the best course of action — go over to the club-house wearing nothing but a towel over my head. Paul seemed to find this proposition amusing: I don’t know why. I explained that I needed the towel to keep my hair dry. It’s obvious (for a woman).

The next day proved to be significantly drier: there were intervals between the showers and even the occasional sunny minute or two. We drove over to the little village of Waldholzbach where we had read there was a Barfussweg — a barefoot walk! Could this be an introduction to naturism for textiles? The best part was walking through the squelchy bog - so soft, so warm.

When we got back to the site the sun came out and it looked so pretty and green. The pond was tempting enough to consider a swim. We had been assured that although it looked dark brown, in fact the water was very pure, as under it were no less than five fresh-water springs. And it had been dug out and cleaned thoroughly since its previous use as a drinking hole for pigs (some 40 years ago). Just a couple of months previously they had done more work on it to make a small paddling area for tiny tots.

On our final morning, the sun was shining. All was fresh and the air smelt clean and green. We were fortunate, however, to choose to eat breakfast indoors as shortly there was another downpour. There were some beautiful sunny moments while we were trying to pack — but every time I got my camera out, it started to rain. A group of three little children captured the atmosphere well: one had a big umbrella, another was in the nude, another was bedecked in waterproofs.

We paid, thanked them for a pleasant stay and handed in the key. He looked at it with surprise: "So that’s where the key to the tractor had gone!" No wonder we had difficulty trying to unlock the caravan with it!

Marion Burkimsher, 17 September 2000