Friday 3 August 2018

Friday 3 August - Riedlingen

Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz (which is just 3 allocated spaces in a large riverside car park) at Riedlingen (exact location: 48.15215, 9.47792).
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and hot.

It was a huge effort to get out of bed this morning and I was late in getting out the door in my running gear (8am!). It was already hot, my route was unshaded (and complicated by a multitude of tracks - I had to keep checking the map on my phone as I went along) and it probably didn't help that the section of audiobook to which I was listening was telling of almost literally dying of thirst when lost in a canyon in Mexico. And my legs were tired. But on the plus side, my surroundings were pleasant and I passed a field containing six storks (real live ones today).

The usual morning routine ensued, with a bit of consideration as to where to go next. Riedlingen was the answer, taking a bit of a gamble, as the Stellplatz here had two reviews, one good and one saying it was awful. Stellplatz reviews are strange things though, and some people will rate a place as awful for the oddest reasons. My assessment is that it's fine. We're right next to the river and only a two minute walk from town.

It was into the town that we headed soon after arrival and even on approach it looked promising:

It contained all of the expected stuff too, like a "I wonder what that's about" fountain...

...lots of half-timbered houses, and the occasional painted one:

It was interesting enough to make me want to get more information from the Tourist Office, but it turns out that there isn't one; the 'i' symbols take you to a couple of notice boards with a map. I've found out more from the town's website (accessed via the town wifi that we can pick up from the comfort of Bertie).

Lidl was our last stop before lunch and we were almost there when Mick realised he didn't have a coin for a trolley. Shops over here don't have baskets, so we had to go native: put our shopping straight into our bag, then empty it back out at the till. It may be what everyone else does, but it still felt entirely wrong from an English cultural point of view.

Almost back at the Stellplatz, we came upon the most incongruous sight of the day...

...a man, standing up to his knees in the river, playing the accordian, whilst people in canoes (and two swans with six cygnets) paddled past.

Later this afternoon, a hubbabaloo on the river eventually went on too long for me to not know what was occurring, so I made the effort of walking the twenty steps to find out. It turns out that we are next to a put-in portage point for the canoeists, and there were a lot of them:
Lots of people on the water...

...and a big queue waiting their turn.

Other than that, there has been a lot of sitting around in the shade again. I'm a big fan of warm weather, but we're currently firmly in the 'hot' zone (i.e. more than 30 degrees) which is a few degrees warmer than is comfortable to do much*.

(*As I typed that, I thought about all the days spent backpacking (through the Mojave desert and in the Pyrenees, most notably) in temperatures in the mid-30s, even into the 40s, but that's different - sitting around isn't an option in that context.)

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