Campingplatz Rhön Feeling

If you’re hankering after heights, the Wasserkuppen and Kreuzberg peaks are the loftiest of the locals (50 minutes and an hour away), the former popular with paragliders and the latter popular with everyone, due to the monastery making beer and cheese at the top. You could always go inside a mountain instead, heading leagues beneath the earth at the Merkers Adventure Mine (25 minutes) where the saltmines contain an enormous crystal cave, a room where the Nazis stored stolen gold, and a cavernous subterranean concert hall with laser shows. If that sounds like hard work, take a tasty tour of the Viba nougat factory, immerse yourself in nostalgia for the bygone German Democratic Republic at the Geisa Heimatmuseum, or visit Point Alpha, where capitalist West and communist East once divided; all are half an hour away. Alternatively, you could just whizz down the Inselsberg on the mountain luge, 45 minutes from the site. An hour away, the Wartburg awaits: a UNESCO-listed castle on a precipice surrounded by narrow gorges, and ancient beech forests home to European wildcats. After all that roaming of the Rhön, visit Bad Salzungen (15 minutes), for a soak in the saltwater springs, pools and saunas; you may not be cured, but you'll certainly be chilled.