Where's Bertie? He's in a car park by the River Donau (or Danube, if you prefer), just outside of Immendingen (exact location: 47.93190, 8.74868).
Weather: A sunny start with some clouds building later, but still with plenty of sunny intervals.
A couple of cloudy days with cooler temperatures lulled me into indulging in a lie-in this morning, after our late night last night, on the basis that it would be fine to run later in the morning. Thus at gone 10.30am, I set off along the cycle track ... under a clear blue sky. The next 45 minutes were sweatily spent.
We would have been earlier away from Donaueschingen, except that I couldn't possibly go anywhere until I'd found out the ending of Stephen King's The Outsider. That spanned lunchtime (Mick obliged with keeping me fed whilst I was so busily occupied...) and, conveniently, it delayed us almost exactly the amount of time required to use up the last of the left-over electricity.
(I forgot to mention in my last post that yesterday was bizarrely busy at the Stellplatz. Tuesday night it hadn't been full, but last night van after van after van arrived to find not a space to spare. We even moved over to allow an extra one in next to us (we'd parked sensibly on Tuesday, then our neighbours changed on Wednesday and suddenly we looked like the ones who had parked right in the middle of two spaces. Today, as we left, it was about a quarter empty.)
Today's destination nearly didn't happen. First the SatNav tried to take us via a 'vehicles prohibited' road, causing us to have to turn around only about 200m away from our destination. The next way the SatNav tried got narrow enough for us to pull over and for me to go for a recce on foot. I found the car park, but there was a 3m high bridge on the way and although we would theoretically fit under it, I thought it a bit close for comfort, particularly when you take the radio aerial (which is flexible, to a degree) into account. Not wanting to arrive in our next town stop, only 10km along the road, (where we intend to watch the weekend's football) until at least tomorrow, it was a relief when our third approach worked.
The main draw of this car park, except for the general forest walking, is the Donausinkungstelle - the location where the River Danube suddenly disappears below ground in summer (this is limestone country):
On the left the Danube, then, abruptly, a dry river bed.
If my reading of this is correct, the Danube runs underground from this point for, on average, around 155 days per year.
After walking up to the next car park, we could have returned to the 'sink place' by walking along the river bed, but we chose to cross at the stepping stones and follow the cycle route on the other side of the river for our return.
Bertie is out of shot on the left, so our view out of his front window is this wheat, with the trees beyond masking the nearby road and railway line.
Weather: A sunny start with some clouds building later, but still with plenty of sunny intervals.
A couple of cloudy days with cooler temperatures lulled me into indulging in a lie-in this morning, after our late night last night, on the basis that it would be fine to run later in the morning. Thus at gone 10.30am, I set off along the cycle track ... under a clear blue sky. The next 45 minutes were sweatily spent.
We would have been earlier away from Donaueschingen, except that I couldn't possibly go anywhere until I'd found out the ending of Stephen King's The Outsider. That spanned lunchtime (Mick obliged with keeping me fed whilst I was so busily occupied...) and, conveniently, it delayed us almost exactly the amount of time required to use up the last of the left-over electricity.
(I forgot to mention in my last post that yesterday was bizarrely busy at the Stellplatz. Tuesday night it hadn't been full, but last night van after van after van arrived to find not a space to spare. We even moved over to allow an extra one in next to us (we'd parked sensibly on Tuesday, then our neighbours changed on Wednesday and suddenly we looked like the ones who had parked right in the middle of two spaces. Today, as we left, it was about a quarter empty.)
Today's destination nearly didn't happen. First the SatNav tried to take us via a 'vehicles prohibited' road, causing us to have to turn around only about 200m away from our destination. The next way the SatNav tried got narrow enough for us to pull over and for me to go for a recce on foot. I found the car park, but there was a 3m high bridge on the way and although we would theoretically fit under it, I thought it a bit close for comfort, particularly when you take the radio aerial (which is flexible, to a degree) into account. Not wanting to arrive in our next town stop, only 10km along the road, (where we intend to watch the weekend's football) until at least tomorrow, it was a relief when our third approach worked.
The main draw of this car park, except for the general forest walking, is the Donausinkungstelle - the location where the River Danube suddenly disappears below ground in summer (this is limestone country):
On the left the Danube, then, abruptly, a dry river bed.
If my reading of this is correct, the Danube runs underground from this point for, on average, around 155 days per year.
After walking up to the next car park, we could have returned to the 'sink place' by walking along the river bed, but we chose to cross at the stepping stones and follow the cycle route on the other side of the river for our return.
Bertie is out of shot on the left, so our view out of his front window is this wheat, with the trees beyond masking the nearby road and railway line.
No comments:
Post a Comment