HM's Pad

Our village's equivalent of JR Ewing's South Fork Ranch.

Süd-Planken Bayern  or South-Planks Bavaria

The lovely couple who own the house alongside this sign and own the business have for the last 14 years, put up with Flash regularly depositing his business on the edge of their unfenced garden. He considers it to be one of the best addresses in the county.

From time to time we also meet up with them as they walk their dog along the track leading past their house on the edge of the village and over the fields alongside the river Schwelk.

The sign denotes the registered address of the business but most of the administrative office work is carried out in another house 100 metres away. The warehousing is in the next village Sontheim and the vehicle and equipment depot at an industrial estate site at Memmingen.

As you may have seen on the photos on the link, the business is largely about barriers,  in all shapes and forms, a large portion being road and autobahn crash barriers. Area of operation is Bavaria and the neighbouring state of Baden-Württemberg. As they say on their website "Since 1984, the Allgäu area gives the optimal conditions, calm and strength to operate the business".

One of the aspects of life I like in these parts is the large breadth of small and medium-size companies located outside the main cities. It's a win-win situation for employers and employees.

When you take a simple 20km radius of our very rural village you would be astounded by the number of worldwide active companies and probably not one of them is even a household name in Germany although many will have contact with their products daily.

There is a drawback to parking one's car next to the Süd-Planken HQ when we go for a walk. Whenever I open my Google Maps, I get begging messages from Google to give the business a rating and write a review of the operation.

I know that if I start, then the follow-up questions will start - Is there a public WC, wheelchair entrance, covered carpark, self-service salad-bar, romantic atmosphere?  I have never entered their house, so can't answer any of these but would give 5*s for friendliness.