Where's Bertie? He's in a car park at Neckarau Park on the south side of Mannheim (exact location: 49.44984, 8.46362).
Weather: Sunny intervals and warm. Most sun this morning.
Last night's Stellplatz at the vineyard at Bad Dürkheim may have given us pleasant green surroundings, but (as I mentioned yesterday) it was also right alongside a road. That road wasn't massively busy and, thanks to how often we sleep in laybys, we're reasonably immune to passing traffic, but this road was particularly noisy - not helped by the number of tractors that trundle up and down. Thus, I was awake not long after six this morning, which wouldn't have been so bad if I had gone to bed earlier and/or hadn't suddenly remembered at 2am that I hadn't put last night's leftovers in the fridge (at least in Bertie the kitchen is only two paces from the bed).
This morning was a relaxed affair with the main feature being a bit of laundry. I think I've mentioned before that, for me, laundry is the one downside of living life on the road, without mains water or electric and with little load-carrying capacity for labour-saving devices. We can go for three weeks without needing to find a laundrette (not because we carry lots of clothes, but because we wear the same things until they start to become offensive), but there are certain things (mainly running gear) that can't wait that long. So this morning I set to a bit of hand washing so that we won't smell too bad when we run in company tomorrow morning.
A grocery shop and a failed attempt to obtain wifi at McDonalds waylaid our departure from Bad Dürkheim and I'm a little ashamed to say that we left the town without having made any attempt to look around.
The drive to Mannheim wasn't long (less than 30km), but a bit of excitement was thrown in when a 2.1m width restriction was suddenly announced about 100m before it applied. Bertie's only 2cm above that limit, but it would have been a tight squeeze to fit him through the width barrier that had been put in place at the start of the roadworks to which the restriction applied. Thankfully there was no-one behind us as we made a very late dive for the adjacent road exit, and a bit of a panic on the part of the navigator (me) with the sudden need to redirect us to the next bridge along the river.
It was gone 2pm by the time we arrived at our destination, by which time we were ready to eat a scabby dog. Thankfully, a plate of bread, cheese and salady bits doesn't take long to prepare.
After lunch came the only real activity of the day, as we set out to fulfil the reason why we wanted to arrive here today, rather than first thing tomorrow morning: to walk a recce of the ParkRun route.
The route mainly runs through a green tunnel of trees...
...although there are some open areas...
...and a nice stretch along the Rhine, which is running very high and fast at the moment (the barges were making hard work of getting upstream):
A ParkRun is always 5km long (give or take a couple of hundred metres, particularly if it's a wiggling course and you take the racing line), but we managed nearly 6k on our recce. It was an incident of neglecting to look at the map whilst busy chatting and a resultant backtrack.
Plenty of people were out enjoying picnics at the recreation area that sits the opposite side of the car park from the ParkRun course.
After all of that, the day was rounded off nicely by me finishing my latest yarny project. Following on from my success at crocheting blankets and knitting socks, I decided a couple of months ago to see whether I could manage to knit a jumper. This evening I was most chuffed, not so much by the successful completion of said jumper, but by managing to un-cast-off half of the cuff of one sleeve, to drop four stitches down six rows and to pick them back up again in pattern to correct an error I had spotted.
A big woolly jumper over my frock. It's not currently the weather for such a garment and I hope it stays that way for the rest of this trip!
As for tonight's nightstop, I always have concerns about staying in a car park in a location such as this on a Friday night. We've opted for the car park that looked the slightly less likely, of the two options available, to attract undesirable company overnight, but I won't be holding my breath for a quiet night. I'll report back tomorrow.
Weather: Sunny intervals and warm. Most sun this morning.
Last night's Stellplatz at the vineyard at Bad Dürkheim may have given us pleasant green surroundings, but (as I mentioned yesterday) it was also right alongside a road. That road wasn't massively busy and, thanks to how often we sleep in laybys, we're reasonably immune to passing traffic, but this road was particularly noisy - not helped by the number of tractors that trundle up and down. Thus, I was awake not long after six this morning, which wouldn't have been so bad if I had gone to bed earlier and/or hadn't suddenly remembered at 2am that I hadn't put last night's leftovers in the fridge (at least in Bertie the kitchen is only two paces from the bed).
This morning was a relaxed affair with the main feature being a bit of laundry. I think I've mentioned before that, for me, laundry is the one downside of living life on the road, without mains water or electric and with little load-carrying capacity for labour-saving devices. We can go for three weeks without needing to find a laundrette (not because we carry lots of clothes, but because we wear the same things until they start to become offensive), but there are certain things (mainly running gear) that can't wait that long. So this morning I set to a bit of hand washing so that we won't smell too bad when we run in company tomorrow morning.
A grocery shop and a failed attempt to obtain wifi at McDonalds waylaid our departure from Bad Dürkheim and I'm a little ashamed to say that we left the town without having made any attempt to look around.
The drive to Mannheim wasn't long (less than 30km), but a bit of excitement was thrown in when a 2.1m width restriction was suddenly announced about 100m before it applied. Bertie's only 2cm above that limit, but it would have been a tight squeeze to fit him through the width barrier that had been put in place at the start of the roadworks to which the restriction applied. Thankfully there was no-one behind us as we made a very late dive for the adjacent road exit, and a bit of a panic on the part of the navigator (me) with the sudden need to redirect us to the next bridge along the river.
It was gone 2pm by the time we arrived at our destination, by which time we were ready to eat a scabby dog. Thankfully, a plate of bread, cheese and salady bits doesn't take long to prepare.
After lunch came the only real activity of the day, as we set out to fulfil the reason why we wanted to arrive here today, rather than first thing tomorrow morning: to walk a recce of the ParkRun route.
The route mainly runs through a green tunnel of trees...
...although there are some open areas...
...and a nice stretch along the Rhine, which is running very high and fast at the moment (the barges were making hard work of getting upstream):
A ParkRun is always 5km long (give or take a couple of hundred metres, particularly if it's a wiggling course and you take the racing line), but we managed nearly 6k on our recce. It was an incident of neglecting to look at the map whilst busy chatting and a resultant backtrack.
Plenty of people were out enjoying picnics at the recreation area that sits the opposite side of the car park from the ParkRun course.
After all of that, the day was rounded off nicely by me finishing my latest yarny project. Following on from my success at crocheting blankets and knitting socks, I decided a couple of months ago to see whether I could manage to knit a jumper. This evening I was most chuffed, not so much by the successful completion of said jumper, but by managing to un-cast-off half of the cuff of one sleeve, to drop four stitches down six rows and to pick them back up again in pattern to correct an error I had spotted.
A big woolly jumper over my frock. It's not currently the weather for such a garment and I hope it stays that way for the rest of this trip!
As for tonight's nightstop, I always have concerns about staying in a car park in a location such as this on a Friday night. We've opted for the car park that looked the slightly less likely, of the two options available, to attract undesirable company overnight, but I won't be holding my breath for a quiet night. I'll report back tomorrow.
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