Wednesday 19 June - Bad Waldsee

Where's Bertie? He's back in the same space at the Stellplatz at Bad Waldsee, having spent the day at Hymer's workshop.
Weather: Sunny and hot.

It was an uncomfortably warm night, with the temperature inside Bertie not falling below 22 degrees. It didn't result in a great night's sleep.

When daylight woke me at 0530, I did as I usually do and closed the blind on the skylight above the bed (we slept with that window wide open, hence the open blind). However, I didn't go back to sleep, not because I couldn't, but because it occurred to me that if I stayed awake, I could solve my problem as to how to fit a run in this morning and not be horribly rushed to get to our 10am appointment at the Hymer factory.

It's not possible in a living space the size of Bertie for one person to get up and put the kettle on without disturbing the other, so I was restrained and lay quietly until 0600. I then crept around making as little noise as possible.

I'm not sure what the temperature was first thing, but running was a sweaty affair. I do know that it was 21 degrees when we drove out of our space just before 9am.


The Stadtsee was beautifully still and reflective as I ran my first lap.

As I said the other day, my expectations of our visit to Hymer weren't high. I thought we would be in and out in half an hour and was thus tempted not to go prepared with a day's worth of food and drink. However, we've made that mistake elsewhere before, so I duly packed a couple of flasks, a couple of bottles of water*, some sandwiches and a couple of pastries (bought from the mobile bread van when it visited the Stellplatz this morning - we nearly missed it until it suddenly occurred to me that bell we've heard the last couple of mornings heralded the arrival of said vendor).

To our surprise our allocated technician at the workshop was thorough in finding out from us what the problems were. He then came with us on a decent test drive so that he could hear the noise the bed makes when we're driving. It probably goes without saying that, having creaked and groaned without fail on every single leg of the journey to date, it stayed absolutely silent on that drive. Grrrrr. We can only assume that the hot weather has caused sufficient expansion to shut it up. (Later, driving back from the workshop, it rattled again. Is Bertie in rebellion? Did he not want to come back to his birthplace? Is this like a child trying to embarrass his parents?)

With Bertie taken off for investigations, this became our view for the day:


Unlike our experience with our Belgian dealer, here we received an update after about an hour and were told we were free to go out for a couple of hours. Any temptation to do so was checked by the thought of walking around in the midday sun on a such a hot day. Not that it was significantly cooler inside the showroom.

By mid-afternoon parts had been ordered from the parts facility (also in Bad Waldsee), received and fitted. So, that's the fourth design modification that has been implemented. Funnily enough, this design of bed, which was new in 2016, was discontinued last year...

By the time we had Bertie back we didn't feel inclined to move on. The concensus was to return to the Stellplatz for one more night and we got the same space back - a fact that was clocked by those neighbours who remained from yesterday (we're the sole GB van, so stand out; there are a couple of Dutch and Swiss and an Andorian, but the rest are German).

Yesterday we had dithered over whether to deploy the 'silver screen' insulating covers for our cab windows and later, as the temperature inside Bertie escalated, rued having decided against. On arriving back today, with the sun full on Bertie's massive windscreen, we had those covers on within minutes of his handbrake being applied. It was a wise decision and bore out that they will be just as useful to keep heat out in summer as to keep warmth in during winter. Once applied, the interior temperature remained relatively stable, peaking at just 31 degrees. As I type this at just gone 9pm (with the screens having been removed as soon as the sun had gone), it's a mere 25 degrees and falling - that's 2 degrees cooler than it was when we went to bed last night.

(Goodness me, I'm wittering on a lot about having done not a lot today. I'm nearly done...)

After tea (which nearly involved the use of the oven, until I thought about the implications, whereupon I changed the menu to salad), a walk into town was on the agenda. A very quick shufty around Google hadn't confirmed that the laundrette in town still exists, so we wandered down to look. It is still there (and every bit as dated as it was last year; more so, I suppose), and as laundrettes are thin on the ground in Germany, I'll be making use of this one before we leave town.


Random snap looking along one of the streets in town. Eating out was a popular choice tonight, with pavement seating being put to good use.

^{(*The reason for taking a full day's worth of drinks with us is that our dealer almost never offers us a drink (it reserves that for prospective customers; once they have your money, you no longer merit refreshment). At Hymer they have a pleasant seating area with two drinks machines (hot and cold). You do have to pay for drinks, but at 40c for a cup of coffee (decent coffee, not instant) or 50c for a bottle of chilled water, I came down on the side of "We've driven 1200km to get here, an extra 40c is a mere bagatelle" rather than "We've driven 1200km to get here and they can't even give us a free cup of coffee!".)}