Where was Bertie? He has just spent two nights back at the Stellplatz at Donaueschingen, arriving there 15 days after departing, and having driven in a circle during that period.
Weather: Largely overcast but with sunny periods. Wednesday felt cooler than of late (20-21 degrees?).
I've got behind in my blogging and it's all the fault of Stephen King. I picked up The Outsider on Monday and the time when I should have been tapping out words on the keyboard was spent reading instead. I finished it this morning, so normal service can now be resumed.
My time hasn't all been spent with my head in a book (not just because I was reading on my Kindle...). On Tuesday morning I trotted along some of the tracks in between agricultural plots around Bachheim (I hesitate to call them fields, because they don't tend to have field boundaries here; there will be a field-sized plot of, say, wheat, then next to it a plot of maize and so on, going off into the distance, broken only by the occasional track). Mick then joined me for a look around the village before I availed myself of the free town wifi to download some stuff, after which we made tracks back up the road to Donaueschingen.
Good finger posts in the village of Bachheim
The SatNav thought that the 23km to our next stop was going to take us an hour and thirty seven minutes, and it was only when I removed the intermediate stop at the service point (which sits about 0.5km away from the Stellplatz) that the time dropped to a more reasonable 23 minutes. Bizarre!
Back in Donaueschingen (and once again plugged into someone's left-over electricity), an afternoon stroll got extended due to inadvisably pre-empting a closure of the path we were following, only to find that our diversion left us stuck on the wrong side of the river, standing under the bridge we wanted to go over, and with no way of getting up to it.
Then came the main event of the day: the football. My thinking was that we needed to walk into town to watch the France v Belgium match on the basis that, if for any reason it wasn't being shown then we needed to have a rethink about where we went for the England match on Wednesday. We hadn't seriously expected it to be an issue, so it came as a surprise to find the bar closed for its staff summer outing.
After Mick's initial thought that we hadn't seen any other bar (other than the sister of the closed one - also closed), I remembered the 'Irish Pub'. Yay! Not only football, but also some atmosphere, in that there were plenty of others also watching. The downside was that at least 90% of them were smoking.
Yes, I did take a photo of the toilet roll holder in the Irish Pub. I loved the detail on it!
Wednesday morning was cool, so I didn't need to get up quite so early to go for a run, but I wasn't to know that until I was up, by which time there was no point in delaying.
Pottering and reading, with a bit of strolling, took us through to the evening, when we decided that given the choice between the no-smoking bar with no atmosphere, or the Irish Pub with atmosphere, we would go for the latter. I think there may have been one other chap in there supporting England. There was definitely more cheering for Croatia's goals. There were plenty of tooting cars driving through the streets afterwards holding Croatian flags out of the windows. Whilst I'm pretty sure that I'll not forget the result, I'll record it here just to be sure: 1 all after normal time, Croatia won 2-1 after extra time, thus eliminating England from the World Cup at Semi-Final stage.
It was a dark walk through the park back to Bertie (it was the extra time that did it), and a late night by our usual standards.
Taken during a walk through the park earlier in the day. Two weeks ago there were two swans and 9 cygnets. This time there were two swans and 9 significantly bigger cygnets. That can't be normal, having that many survive!
Weather: Largely overcast but with sunny periods. Wednesday felt cooler than of late (20-21 degrees?).
I've got behind in my blogging and it's all the fault of Stephen King. I picked up The Outsider on Monday and the time when I should have been tapping out words on the keyboard was spent reading instead. I finished it this morning, so normal service can now be resumed.
My time hasn't all been spent with my head in a book (not just because I was reading on my Kindle...). On Tuesday morning I trotted along some of the tracks in between agricultural plots around Bachheim (I hesitate to call them fields, because they don't tend to have field boundaries here; there will be a field-sized plot of, say, wheat, then next to it a plot of maize and so on, going off into the distance, broken only by the occasional track). Mick then joined me for a look around the village before I availed myself of the free town wifi to download some stuff, after which we made tracks back up the road to Donaueschingen.
Good finger posts in the village of Bachheim
The SatNav thought that the 23km to our next stop was going to take us an hour and thirty seven minutes, and it was only when I removed the intermediate stop at the service point (which sits about 0.5km away from the Stellplatz) that the time dropped to a more reasonable 23 minutes. Bizarre!
Back in Donaueschingen (and once again plugged into someone's left-over electricity), an afternoon stroll got extended due to inadvisably pre-empting a closure of the path we were following, only to find that our diversion left us stuck on the wrong side of the river, standing under the bridge we wanted to go over, and with no way of getting up to it.
Then came the main event of the day: the football. My thinking was that we needed to walk into town to watch the France v Belgium match on the basis that, if for any reason it wasn't being shown then we needed to have a rethink about where we went for the England match on Wednesday. We hadn't seriously expected it to be an issue, so it came as a surprise to find the bar closed for its staff summer outing.
After Mick's initial thought that we hadn't seen any other bar (other than the sister of the closed one - also closed), I remembered the 'Irish Pub'. Yay! Not only football, but also some atmosphere, in that there were plenty of others also watching. The downside was that at least 90% of them were smoking.
Yes, I did take a photo of the toilet roll holder in the Irish Pub. I loved the detail on it!
Wednesday morning was cool, so I didn't need to get up quite so early to go for a run, but I wasn't to know that until I was up, by which time there was no point in delaying.
Pottering and reading, with a bit of strolling, took us through to the evening, when we decided that given the choice between the no-smoking bar with no atmosphere, or the Irish Pub with atmosphere, we would go for the latter. I think there may have been one other chap in there supporting England. There was definitely more cheering for Croatia's goals. There were plenty of tooting cars driving through the streets afterwards holding Croatian flags out of the windows. Whilst I'm pretty sure that I'll not forget the result, I'll record it here just to be sure: 1 all after normal time, Croatia won 2-1 after extra time, thus eliminating England from the World Cup at Semi-Final stage.
It was a dark walk through the park back to Bertie (it was the extra time that did it), and a late night by our usual standards.
Taken during a walk through the park earlier in the day. Two weeks ago there were two swans and 9 cygnets. This time there were two swans and 9 significantly bigger cygnets. That can't be normal, having that many survive!
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