Where's Bertie? He's in a municipal Stellplatz alongside the River Ems in Haren (exact location: 52.78967, 7.24740).
The banging tunes, possibly associated with the wedding that took place at Hesel church last evening, were audible from Bertie, yet far enough away as to not disturb our slumber last night. That's a good thing, as when I woke briefly at 4am, they were still going strong. They had stopped by the time I got up at 7.30 and took myself for a run along the same route as we walked yesterday afternoon, but over half of the cars of wedding guests, parked within view of Bertie, remained in place.
With nothing to keep us in Hesel any longer, it was to the town of Rhede, less than half an hour away, that I set the SatNav. We knew even as we set out that the Stellplatz there may be closed, but as it was almost directly on our route we thought we would go and have a look.
It makes perfect sense that many municipal Stellplätze in Germany are housed at the towns' festival/fair grounds, which would only otherwise be used for a few weeks a year. It seems, however, that we have just hit a popular week for those grounds to be in use for their primary purpose, thus causing a temporary closure of the Stellplätze. We arrived in Rhede not only in pouring rain, but also to find circus vehicles in residence, even if not set up yet.
On account of the rain, we didn't even pull into the adjacent car park for a quick look around. Instead the SatNav was reprogrammed for the town of Dörpen instead, just 14km away.
Again, we knew the Stellplatz there is on the Festplatz, but I had a bit more optimism about this one. We had encountered two closures in three days, and surely every town can't have their fairs in the same week? There wouldn't be enough fairground rides to go around!
My theory was false. The fairground was just setting up.
Onwards again, another 25km to Haren, where the Stellplatz is not situated on the Festplatz. It is, however, situated a few metres away from the river, and is free, which looked like a recipe for popularity.
Once again, we were lucky, securing the only remaining front row spot, giving us an unfettered view of the water, in a spot unarguably nicer than either of the places we had visited earlier :
It's not busy with craft. This is the pleasure boat that leaves from adjacent to the entrance of the Stellplatz. Judging by the queue to embark at ten to three this afternoon, it's a popular outing.
A stroll around the town in between showers took us past the large church (which, as I often do, I have bent to fit it into a single snap)...
... before walking back along the river.
Doing a quick recce of the best looking location for a jogette in the morning took me over the adjacent bridge, giving a good view over to Bertie and his neighbours:
Not bad for a freebie spot
The 'Ems meadow project' along this bank of the river gives the location a nice feel too:
Most of our journey today was within a short distance of the Dutch border, hence quite a few of our neighbours here are Dutch. The rest are German. If we leave here tomorrow, almost the first thing we will do (after visiting Lidl to get the deposit back on Mick's now-empty beer bottles!) will be to cross the border, leaving just two more countries then between us and our return to the UK.
(Note: My knowledge of German is very poor. I *think* that Stellplatz is the singular and Stellplätze is the plural form of the places we are staying, which is how I've used the terms in this post. I may be entirely wrong.)
The banging tunes, possibly associated with the wedding that took place at Hesel church last evening, were audible from Bertie, yet far enough away as to not disturb our slumber last night. That's a good thing, as when I woke briefly at 4am, they were still going strong. They had stopped by the time I got up at 7.30 and took myself for a run along the same route as we walked yesterday afternoon, but over half of the cars of wedding guests, parked within view of Bertie, remained in place.
With nothing to keep us in Hesel any longer, it was to the town of Rhede, less than half an hour away, that I set the SatNav. We knew even as we set out that the Stellplatz there may be closed, but as it was almost directly on our route we thought we would go and have a look.
It makes perfect sense that many municipal Stellplätze in Germany are housed at the towns' festival/fair grounds, which would only otherwise be used for a few weeks a year. It seems, however, that we have just hit a popular week for those grounds to be in use for their primary purpose, thus causing a temporary closure of the Stellplätze. We arrived in Rhede not only in pouring rain, but also to find circus vehicles in residence, even if not set up yet.
On account of the rain, we didn't even pull into the adjacent car park for a quick look around. Instead the SatNav was reprogrammed for the town of Dörpen instead, just 14km away.
Again, we knew the Stellplatz there is on the Festplatz, but I had a bit more optimism about this one. We had encountered two closures in three days, and surely every town can't have their fairs in the same week? There wouldn't be enough fairground rides to go around!
My theory was false. The fairground was just setting up.
Onwards again, another 25km to Haren, where the Stellplatz is not situated on the Festplatz. It is, however, situated a few metres away from the river, and is free, which looked like a recipe for popularity.
Once again, we were lucky, securing the only remaining front row spot, giving us an unfettered view of the water, in a spot unarguably nicer than either of the places we had visited earlier :
It's not busy with craft. This is the pleasure boat that leaves from adjacent to the entrance of the Stellplatz. Judging by the queue to embark at ten to three this afternoon, it's a popular outing.
A stroll around the town in between showers took us past the large church (which, as I often do, I have bent to fit it into a single snap)...
... before walking back along the river.
Doing a quick recce of the best looking location for a jogette in the morning took me over the adjacent bridge, giving a good view over to Bertie and his neighbours:
Not bad for a freebie spot
The 'Ems meadow project' along this bank of the river gives the location a nice feel too:
Most of our journey today was within a short distance of the Dutch border, hence quite a few of our neighbours here are Dutch. The rest are German. If we leave here tomorrow, almost the first thing we will do (after visiting Lidl to get the deposit back on Mick's now-empty beer bottles!) will be to cross the border, leaving just two more countries then between us and our return to the UK.
(Note: My knowledge of German is very poor. I *think* that Stellplatz is the singular and Stellplätze is the plural form of the places we are staying, which is how I've used the terms in this post. I may be entirely wrong.)
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