Sunday 16 June - Ulm

Where's Bertie? He's in a stellplatz in Ulm, where he also stayed for a couple of nights at the end of July last year.
Weather: Grey and slightly showery morning, clearing to give some sunshine this afternoon. Feeling cooler and less humid.

There was a severe weather warning out for thunderstorms in the south-west corner of Germany last night. Bertie was sitting right on the very edge of the affected area and the weather forecast told us we were in for a night of heavy rain. In reality, whilst there was drumming on Bertie's roof loud enough to wake us briefly, it started later and finished earlier than forecast. Not a single rumble of thunder was heard. By this morning we were down to just a few light showers as we drove the hour down to Ulm.

Given our unfavourable opinion of the Stellplatz in Ulm when we stayed last year, it's perhaps surprising that we opted to come here again. The benefit of the place, that drew us back, is the location, not just in terms of our journey down to Bad Waldsee, but because the parking area is next to a riverside park, through which one can gain easy access to the Donauradweg path, providing a nice running route for tomorrow.

Ulm is a city worth seeing, but having been here before (click here for last year's posts with photos of the bits I found notable), we didn't feel any obligation to go out and explore.

Having finished the book I'd been reading, the lack of activity got too much for me and before lunch we took a stroll around the parkland and along the river. After lunch we walked the other way along the river, found ourselves in town, did a quick circuit of the centre, then walked back along the opposite bank. Being Sunday, people were out in droves. It's amazing how such strolling can add up - it has amounted to over 5 miles today.

A couple of views along the Danube from this afternoon's walk

^{(Today's aside: we often pull into a motorhome parking area and immediately suspect that a van (or some vans) already there is in long-term residence. There's often nothing you can put your finger on indicating the full-timer-in-residence status, but it often becomes apparent during our stay that our first feeling was likely right. Similarly, we'd not long been in Esslingen when I suggested that the only other van there was owned by a local who was using the Stellplatz as a handy parking area for a couple of days whilst he loaded up for the weekend. Again, subseuqent comings and goings suggested I was right. Last year when we arrived in Ulm we didn't immediately form such an impression of anyone here, but it didn't take us long to notice that the occupants of three vans didn't fit the usual motorhomer demographic and behaviour (particularly the behaviour...). When we returned to Ulm a couple of days after we had left, the vans in question were still here and we began to wonder whether they were, in fact, in residence, even though they seemed to move to different spaces at least five times a day. Arriving here this morning it didn't take us long to find the same three vans, still here. They seem to have been joined by another 8 that we can identify. I think we can safely say the '48 hour max stay' either has a loophole or isn't enforcable/enforced.)}