Where's Bertie? He's at an Aire in the town of Mondorf-les-Bains which sits on the Luxembourg side of the border with France (exact location: 49.50537, 6.2754).
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine
There's some initiative on in Mannheim at the moment to promote sport in the park (it's called 'Sport in the Park' in that bizarre way that European countries tend to adopt English when they're after a slogan). It's not that there's a lack of people exercising in the park, as I discovered on our previous visit there in June, but there can't be any harm in a promotion that gets even more people out and about. For today's ParkRun it meant a record attendance of 88.
I don't know what the newbies made of it, but if today had been my first time ever, I would have been thoroughly put off. Happily, I know that a 15 minute full-on mass-participation aerobics session (a thing of my nightmares) by way of a warm-up is not normal. Nor is starting 12 minutes late.
Once we did finally get underway, things went better than I had expected, with me bettering the PB I set on the same course in June by 1 minute 34 seconds, coming home in 25.34. Annoyingly, I crossed the line with the knowledge that I could have gone faster, on the basis that I was nowhere near the state I was in when I finished at Stuttgart last week.
Equally good is that Mick also managed to finish without his calf exploding again. That's the first (and possibly last) time I've ever beaten Mick at a ParkRun; I'll gloss over the fact that he was intentionally taking it steady and in so doing, found himself acting as pacer for a first timer.
Then things got even better, as the city of Mannheim had paid for a coffee, at the nearby cafe, for every ParkRunner today. Mick supplemented his with a small breakfast, which I kindly helped him consume:
Contrary to appearances, we weren't on the deck of a boat.
Leaving Mannheim post-breakfast proved to be an incredibly stressful experience. I've been having problems with Google Maps (again!) recently. Unlike the other four mapping apps on my phone, it really struggles to hold a GPS signal and to keep track of exactly where I am. So, over breakfast, I took advantage of the free wifi and updated the App in the hope of improving its performance. It was at the point that we needed to take an unsigned diversion*, around the bridge roadworks with the 2m width restriction, that I discovered that Google Maps was now refusing to show me any roads at all. Not helpful in the slightest!
Clearly, we did finally escape and 240km later, we arrived in Mondorf - chosen because it was the most convenient location I could find, with an official motorhome parking area, for a visit to Luxembourg City tomorrow.
We took a look around this afternoon and as far as we could see, the main attraction here is the thermal baths complex and the surrounding parkland, through which we walked a pleasant circuit.
Fountain of the day
The final joy of the day: they speak French in these parts. After two months of language ignorance, I can understand again!
(*The SatNav does have a 'take me around a roadblock' function, but Bertie's dashboard is about half a mile longer than my arms, so operating the SatNav whilst in transit, and whilst trying to make immediate directional decisions through city centre streets, with nowhere to pull over, is not an easy thing to do.)
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine
There's some initiative on in Mannheim at the moment to promote sport in the park (it's called 'Sport in the Park' in that bizarre way that European countries tend to adopt English when they're after a slogan). It's not that there's a lack of people exercising in the park, as I discovered on our previous visit there in June, but there can't be any harm in a promotion that gets even more people out and about. For today's ParkRun it meant a record attendance of 88.
I don't know what the newbies made of it, but if today had been my first time ever, I would have been thoroughly put off. Happily, I know that a 15 minute full-on mass-participation aerobics session (a thing of my nightmares) by way of a warm-up is not normal. Nor is starting 12 minutes late.
Once we did finally get underway, things went better than I had expected, with me bettering the PB I set on the same course in June by 1 minute 34 seconds, coming home in 25.34. Annoyingly, I crossed the line with the knowledge that I could have gone faster, on the basis that I was nowhere near the state I was in when I finished at Stuttgart last week.
Equally good is that Mick also managed to finish without his calf exploding again. That's the first (and possibly last) time I've ever beaten Mick at a ParkRun; I'll gloss over the fact that he was intentionally taking it steady and in so doing, found himself acting as pacer for a first timer.
Then things got even better, as the city of Mannheim had paid for a coffee, at the nearby cafe, for every ParkRunner today. Mick supplemented his with a small breakfast, which I kindly helped him consume:
Contrary to appearances, we weren't on the deck of a boat.
Leaving Mannheim post-breakfast proved to be an incredibly stressful experience. I've been having problems with Google Maps (again!) recently. Unlike the other four mapping apps on my phone, it really struggles to hold a GPS signal and to keep track of exactly where I am. So, over breakfast, I took advantage of the free wifi and updated the App in the hope of improving its performance. It was at the point that we needed to take an unsigned diversion*, around the bridge roadworks with the 2m width restriction, that I discovered that Google Maps was now refusing to show me any roads at all. Not helpful in the slightest!
Clearly, we did finally escape and 240km later, we arrived in Mondorf - chosen because it was the most convenient location I could find, with an official motorhome parking area, for a visit to Luxembourg City tomorrow.
We took a look around this afternoon and as far as we could see, the main attraction here is the thermal baths complex and the surrounding parkland, through which we walked a pleasant circuit.
Fountain of the day
The final joy of the day: they speak French in these parts. After two months of language ignorance, I can understand again!
(*The SatNav does have a 'take me around a roadblock' function, but Bertie's dashboard is about half a mile longer than my arms, so operating the SatNav whilst in transit, and whilst trying to make immediate directional decisions through city centre streets, with nowhere to pull over, is not an easy thing to do.)
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