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No, Ludwig wasn’t mad,” says Gabi, as we clamber back into the hot car. “He was just what we call uberspannt.”

“Underpants!” Liv scoffs.

“No!” Gabi puts the big bad BMW into reverse. “It means “eccentric”. Artistic yes but he wasn’t mad.”

Never upset a Bavarian while she is reversing a hefty piece of German engineering. The Wittelsbach dynasty is still a touchy subject and there’s an ambivalence about its most colourful member. Ludwig II was a great builder of castles, he bankrolled Wagner’s grandiose plans to stage the Ring Cycle and he pretty much bankrupted the country.

We’d already been to the Linderhof with its underground Venus grotto in which the king would float around on a mechanical swan while an orchestra played Wagner to him.

“Weird,” was Livvie’s view. Well it was. And I for one was glad. Tramping children round stately homes is never easy. They lean against furnishings, prod priceless artworks to see if they break and are irresistibly drawn to roped off areas. We’d already done the monumental palace at Herrenchiemsee at least at Linderhof we could enjoy something of Ludwig’s undoubted oddity.

Of course being brought up in Munich, Gabi's daughter, Antonia, was unperturbed. Maybe at 7 she thought it quite normal for heads of state to float around in giant birds, or maybe the whole thing just reminded her of a Disney ride. For 12 year old Liv, though, there was finally something interesting about our day out. Better still the fact her parents shed any mention of Ludwig’s loopiness was adding a certain welcome frisson.

“So where are we going now?” she asks. The car is hot and I want a German beer.

“Neuschwanstein,” says Gabi.

“What did Ludwig ride around on there? Dumbo? A giant teacup, huh? ”

Oh I definitely want that beer.

We stop below the castle in Hohenschwangau while Gabi goes off to get tickets on foot. She is my oldest college friend and is very organised about these things. Hohenschwangau's a typical Bavarian village with a beer garden in which the glasses are two feet tall and the beer comes with an 18” head because the guys behind the bar race each other. My wife goes to dangle her feet in the brook while I try speaking German to little Antonia. She looks terrified.

On a day like today it’s good to get out of Munich. The place bakes when the sun comes out. This circuit of castles in the Allgau foothills is well placed to catch mountain breezes. "Artistic" Ludwig preferred to stay up here and keep out of Munich, some would say he preferred to keep out of reality altogether.

Fortunately there’s a spielplatz next to the beer garden and Liv takes Antonia to play on the swings while my wife and I compare notes on the morning. Germany is a very tolerant place if you have children but I do feel these castles are proving hard work.

“We could just stay here,” I suggest lying down on the bank with my column of beer. “Oh no, I want to see Neuschwanstein. I’m sure Liv will too.”

Besides it’s too late. Gabi is already booking us in. Neuschwanstein gets so many visitors – up to 25,000 a day in August – that the only way to avoid queues is to buy a timed ticket. It’s a lesson they’ve learned from Disney. In the end it’s an hour before Gabi gets back and Antonia is very worried by the time Mama flops down at our table. She’s used the pony and trap in both directions but it’s still taken an age. We’re due to be shown round in two hours, just time to eat. I suggest we all walk up to the Schloss but it proves a hell of a climb, especially after a Bavarian lunch. Gabi takes the girls back and they sail past noisily in a chaise while Kate and I stagger on up.

We make it, hot and exhausted, just in time for our tour. “Isn’t this amazing!” shouts Livvie who has gone hyper from being first to the top. “It’s SO Disney!” And of course it is. Neuschwanstein is what gave Uncle Walt the idea for Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Its towers are as slender as minarets and it flouts any idea that castles had a practical purpose, but then Ludwig built this place at the same time that New York was throwing up skyscrapers. It’s a huge anachronism, left unfinished when he was deposed and drowned, mysteriously, in the lake just in front of Neuschwanstein. His ministers probably wanted to make sure he couldn’t run up any more debts.

We find ourselves in the hands of Carl who speaks perfect English. He shows us Ludwig’s study decorated with images from Wagner’s Tannhauser. “So random,” exclaims Livvie. Next up is the bedroom decorated with images from Tristan und Isolde and then the Singers' Hall decorated with images from Parsifal.

“Carl,” says Livvie. “What’s German for “two sandwiches short of a picnic?”

She gets a thump from her mother for that. Fortunately nobody understands, not even Gabi who was au fait with most English idioms twenty years ago.

But we’re having fun, all of us. That’s the good thing about Ludwig. He may have exasperated his subjects who paid for all this castle-building but he’s great entertainment value today, and my goodness he pulls in the tourists.

On our way back I insist we take the horse and chaise and Liv waves to all the poor sods slogging up on foot.

“Aufwiedersehen, suckers!”

I’m not sure how much more 12 year old girl Germany can take.

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