Thursday 29 August - Merzig

Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz at 'Das Bad' in Merzig. It costs €7.50 per night to stay here, including electricity. Water is available for an extra fee. Exact location: 49.44652, 6.62492.
Weather: Some cloud this morning, but gloriously sunny this afternoon. Hot (low thirties).

A man, speaking a language that did not sound European, decided that Wadern's motorhome Stellplatz was an appropriate place to carry on a phone conversation at 12.45 this morning. That may have been because he was availing himself of the free internet, but I wasn't awfully amused at his lack of volume control.

Once he'd done his chatting all became peaceful until 6.30am when a work crew arrived with a JCB and started removing the curbstones in the Stellplatz. Yes, really. In a place designed for people in motorhomes to sleep, they decided this was an appropriate time of day to clank, bang and shout instructions.

By 8am my opinion of Wadern was low, yet we stirred ourselves to walk into the town, albeit without expectation of finding anything interesting. With low expectations, we weren't disappointed and when our intended route to the Schloss, just outside the town, was thwarted by the lack of a footpath we decided we'd seen enough.

Straight to Merzig, or a one-night stop somewhere en-route? We opted for the former.

The Stellplatz here in Merzig is kept a secret, hidden away without a single sign pointing towards it (an unsual state of affairs), but the SatNav located it for us. However, we found it to be behind a barrier (again, very unusual in Germany), with no signage as to how to gain access.

No great investigative work was needed. There's only one building immediately nearby and that's the swimming pool/spa, so we presented ourselves at their reception.

"Sprechen sie Englisch?" we asked.

"Nein" came the blunt response. It didn't occur to me until later that, being so close to France I should have tried that language as the next option, so the entire transaction had to be carried out in German.

Had this occurred at the beginning of last year's trip, we would have struggled. However, our German vocabulary has come along nicely this year (purely from absorption, not from structured learning), so we came away triumphantly clutching a set of keys and a receipt. We'll be keeping that receipt safe, because they *really* don't want you to drive off with the keys - there's a €50 deposit on them. Yep, you read that right, we had to hand over €50 against a €7.50/night stay. Fortunately someone had mentioned this in their online review so we had been pre-warned.

As for Merzig (where there are to be found branches of Woolworth and C&A!), the town centre is functional, with only a small handful of slightly-eyecatching buildings. I'd noticed on the drive over here that the places through which we were passing didn't have a German look about them, and Merzig is no different, being so close to both the French (5km) and Luxembourg (25km) borders. French and Luxembourish number plates are plentiful on the roads here.

With only four days left in this trip, we'd likely move on tomorrow, to split the journey home into more even sections, but our purpose here is our final German parkrun on Saturday, so we'll be sticking around tomorrow.

Only four days left! Where did the summer go? And how am I going to cope with the British autumn after three months of shorts and t-shirts?

There's a marina just along the river from the Stellplatz, and a little chapel up on that hillside opposite.

Tuesday and Wednesday 28 & 29 August - Altenglan and Wadern (via Peterberg, by Braunshausen)

Where's Bertie? He's in a free Stellplatz in the town of Wadern, where water and elctricity are available for a fee but wifi is free (exact location 49.54266, 6.89211). Yesterday he spent a fourth night in Altenglan.
Weather: Yesterday: hot gloriously sunny until late afternoon when clouds bubbled up for a time. Today: an overcast morning, gradually clearing, but hot all day (low thirties again).

Although there was little to see or do in the immediate area of Altenglan, it was a nice spot to spend a few days lazing around. Once the weekend was over, few vehicles used the car park just along from the motorhome Stellplatz and thus only a handful of vehicles passed Bertie each day. The views were almost entirely of woodland and meadows and we had a tree under which to seek shade. The only thing marring the location was the external compressor unit (presumably related to refrigeration) at the Chinese restaurant (currently closed for the owner's annual holiday) just the other side of the railway track. It was so peaceful every time it stopped, but it started up regularly. At least we're not such light sleepers that it disturbed us at night.

As pleasant as our stay in Altenglan had been, it was time to move on. We'd been seeing and greeting the same locals, some multiple times per day, and it was getting to the point where it was beginning to feel rude that we didn't know each others' names!

Thus after a final run along the old railway track this morning, a relatively long (by our standards) drive of 50km was taken to a car park on a hill just outside of Braunshausen. The attraction there was a 1km-long Sommerrodelbahn (summer bobsleigh track). I haven't been on one of those since 2014 and fancied a ride.

Mick humoured me and we bought two rides apiece. My theory from 5 years ago was that you need the first run to get to know the track, then the second run to maximise speed. Today I employed a slightly different theory: it must be safe to go down at full pelt, without braking everywhere that signs advise slowing, so that's what I did.

Going up! On this track you get hauled up to the top in your sled, before riding it back down. Obviously, the upward leg is straight. The downward leg (which I couldn't photograph) is big on the wiggles.

I knew that Mick had ascended just behind me, but when I got out at the bottom I seemed to wait an age for him to appear.

Here he comes!

He had slowed for every turn and was surprised by my kamikaze approach. With a school outing having arrived during our first ride, we wasted no time in going straight in for the second, before a queue developed. Mick adopted the 'no braking' approach this time and finished just behind me.

All good fun, but two rides was enough; the joins in the stainless steel tracks come every few feet and don't half chatter your teeth!

The adjacent car park would have been a perfectly nice place to while away the afternoon and evening, but after a bit of dithering we opted to move on, to Wadern. The photos I'd seen of the Stellplatz here didn't make it look very nice and the reality is slightly worse. It's not going to go down anywhere in the top half of the 'attractiveness of places we've stayed this trip' table*. My immediate impression is that at least three of the other four vans here are full-timers who may have taken root.

Graffiti of various standards on the community hall behind which we are parked. On the other side of us is a bus parking area, approached through a petrol station and across the road from that is a multi-storey car park of a design that was probably the height of modern design when it was built.

Hopefully it will be fine for the purposes of sleeping and there may be stuff of interest nearby - but that's something we won't find out until tomorrow.

^{(*For the avoidance of doubt, we don't actually rate the places we stay and I'm not quite sad data obsessed enough to have such a table.)}

Slightly random snap of the day:


Cigarette vending machines are a common sight on German streets, sometimes even to be found on entirely residential streets. I couldn't help but think that the arrangement photographed here, with the kids' machines right under the tobacco one, would make youngsters look forward to the day when they could use the adult version. Smoking certainly seems more popular here than it is in the UK, including amongst teenagers. We walked past a school at break time one day last week and an incredible number of students were outside the gates, puffing away.

Monday 26 August - Altenglan (via Kusel and Burg Lichtenberg)

Where's Bertie? After visiting a couple of other Stellplätze today, he's back in the same spot in Altenglan.
Weather: Gloriously sunny except for a spell late afternoon when clouds bubbled up and rumbles of thunder were heard. Hot (low thirties).

Whilst we want to spend a couple more days loitering in this area, the next nearest Stellplatz is only 6.5km along the road, in the town of Kusel, so that's where we headed this morning.

It wasn't a successful visit. Incorrect positions info in Park4Night, caused us to drive narrow town centre streets until I called a halt at a point where the next turn looked like retreat would be difficult if we couldn't proceed. An on-foot recce found no hint of a parking area. Digging out our 5-years-out-of-date Bord Atlas (German Stellplätze directory) I found the correct location and directed us back through narrow, cobbled streets only to find it closed due to being occupied by a fairground. It's incredible that we've got this far through August before having this issue; two years ago we were being thwarted by fairgrounds on a daily basis.

With thoughts of looking around Kusel abandoned, I suggested we may as well go on another 4.5km to the castle at Lichtenberg.

It was moments before we arrived that I pointed out that it's Monday and thus it was likely everything would be closed. Initially indications didn't look good:

Bertie, all alone in the bus/motorhome parking area

First view of the castle - one of the largest in Germany and dating from 1200

It turns out that you can wander inside the castle walls at any time, where you'll find located a large Youth Hostel, three museums (open on Mondays!), a restaurant (closed on Mondays) and a tower, amongst the historic remains. We had a good shufty around and (of course!) climbed the tower...

Mick admiring the views

...for good views of the surrounding countryside:

Having decided against any museum visits, it didn't take us awfully long to look around, after which the only things we could see to do in the immediate area were to go for a walk or to sit around in a tarmac car park with little shade. We weren't in the market for any significant walking (rest day today after yesterday's long runs) and if we were going to loiter somewhere then the surroundings at Altenglan are much nicer for the purpose. So, back we came.

Our neighbours set out on a bike ride just before we left this morning and got back shortly after we returned. I'm sure when they saw us sitting out on our deckchairs they must have assumed we'd been in that position all day. Soon after their return, they left, leaving Bertie currently all on his lonesome.

Worthy of Fountain of the Day? I'm not sure.

Sunday 25 August - Altenglan

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Stellplatz in Altenglan.
Weather: Gloriously sunny and hot (29 degrees).

I'm struggling to think of a day on tour when we've spent so much of it sitting around. We're experts in sitting around when at home, but it's a rarity when we're away.

We've not been entirely without activity, having started the day with a run (9 miles for Mick, 12.7 for me (I miscalculated a little on my intended 12-miler)). It was a lovely cool start (the forecast said 18 degrees but it felt cooler), but by 10am it was heating up fast.

Snaps taken mid-run

The benefit of the heat was that I knew that the hand-washing I did at lunchtime would dry. Using the drying rack that hangs through an open window, we were then forced to stay in (that's my excuse anyway!) - or to sit out on our deckchairs, initially under the shade of the adjacent tree, then in the shade of Bertie.

Between 10am and 2pm we had plenty of passing pedal-powered-train-carriage-thingies. I had assumed yesterday that the rideable route would only extend 4 or 5 miles down the disused branchline, but noted today that almost everyone had coolboxes and bags on the back of their carriages and it thus looked like they were out for the day. Curiosity got the better of me and I turned to the internet for some answers. It turns out that the ride is 25 miles long and the cheapest of the pedal-carriages (carrying up to 4 people) costs €39/49 (mid-week/weekend) per day to rent. As it's a single track, all of the traffic goes in one direction only and we'd hypothesised yesterday as to how the logistics work. Today we noted that the traffic was flowing the opposite way and the website confirmed that on odd days of the month you ride from, and on even days to, Altenglan (we're sitting about 200m from the end of the line). There are various places you can stop en-route (how does that work? Sidings?) - hence the picnics.

Other than keeping abreast of the cricket score via the BBC Sports App (a more modern version of when I used to 'watch' snooker via teletext), that has been the extent of our day.

Saturday 24 August - Altenglan

Where's Bertie? He's in a 4-vehicle Stellplatz on the edge of the small settlement of Altenglan. It costs €5 per night to stay here (honesty box). Electricity and water are available at extra cost. Exact location: 49.54977, 7.46435.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and hot.

Over 33,000 people currently serve in the RAF and within moments of Mick chatting to one of them (a chap also called Mick, but who I'll call Michael) at this morning's parkrun they had established that Michael's current colleague at Ramstein previously served with Mick on CXX Squadron at Kinloss. By lunchtime Mick had received a message from that ex-colleague and we're due to meet on Tuesday. Small world, eh?

Photos taken from Seewoog parkrun's Facebook page. I'd love to know what I'd just said to Mick when the first one was taken and what he'd said to me before the second one

As for the parkrun, it was good! Whilst it may not quite be the hilliest course in Germany (I think I said a couple of days ago: per my measurements, Kräherwald just pips it), I couldn't dispute today's slightly different assertion: that it is the hardest. I finished seconds ahead of Mick, who beat me convincingly on age grading. (Meanwhile, the other Michael set a new course age-grading record, and I took my hat off to the woman who finished in a speedy time whilst pushing a double buggy - she didn't just have hills to contend with, but soft and uneven gravel on some of the tracks.)

It was nearly noon by the time we left, by which time, in spite of cake brought by one of the runners, I was hungry enough to feel a raid on the fridge was in order. However, I was also aware that it's a sunny Saturday and that our chosen destination for today was a Stellplatz with only 4 spaces. To maximise the chances of there being a space free (and I wasn't optimistic), we paused neither to wash nor to eat, but came straight here.

We arrived to find just two other vans*. The lack of busyness was explained a couple of hours later when we went for a look around and found that there is nothing nearby to attract the masses. We discovered three supermarkets, one restaurant (currently closed for the owner's holiday) and plenty of residential streets.

We'd read before arrival that the railway line that runs alongside the Stellplatz is disused.

What the Stellplatz does have, however, is nice surroundings, with views of lumpy terrain, meadows and woodland. Oh, and a passing riverside cycle route, which is what drew us here, for running purposes.

The railway line isn't quite disused, but its pedal-powered carriages are good fun to watch as they pass!

It didn't take me long to knock up the second sock of this (not quite matching) pair, but I'm now going to rip back the first one, made earlier in the summer, because it's a bit on the snug side.

^{(*We left the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg (where school holidays will continue until 11 September) and entered Rhineland-Palatinate last week and I think the school holidays have already finished here. However, I'm not convinced that makes a significant difference to the number of motorhomes in the sorts of Stellplatz we usually frequent. Our neighbours are usually retirees, not families. Of the two other vans here, one was parked by us in Bad Dürkheim - it was their dog we recognised first. They recognised us, probably because British vans are a rarity - I don't think we've seen many more than half a dozen other GB-plated vans in our 11 weeks to date. I don't understand why Germany isn't more popular amongst our countryfolk.)}

Friday 23 August - Ramstein-Miesenbach

Where's Bertie? He's back in the same spot as he was last night, in the Stellplatz just outside the Ramstein USAF base.
Weather: Gloriously sunny and warm.

I may have been scathing of this Stellplatz yesterday, but it did exhibit one point of great merit overnight: it was peaceful indeed. A good night's sleep was had.

I opened the blinds this morning to the suprising sight of another motorhome next to us. No idea when they arrived!

Over breakfast I searched at length to find anything within a 10-mile radius that looked worth travelling to see. I came up with nothing. That gave us a day to kill and given the choice between sitting here or returning to Seewoog (the lake we were at yesterday), there was no contest - to Seewoog we went.

Always good to get your ducks in a row...

A day of pottering, knitting, walking and people-watching ensued, accompanied by a smattering of American accents from those around us. Most of the signs around here (including some road signs) are bi-lingual as well, which feels odd after our experience everywhere else in Germany.

Another view of the lake

As the parking area at Seewoog started getting busy at around 5pm, we took it as our cue to leave. We could have tried out a spot to the north of Seewoog for the night, but working on the principle of 'better the devil you know', we returned to Ramstein, arriving half an hour too late to enjoy the stream of national anthems being played over the tannoy at the air base next door (we assume it's a nightly ritual).

A sign showing the scheme of improvements being made to the recreational facilities at Seewoog. Note that No. 8 is the creation of 4 motorhome parking places. Pity they haven't got round to that bit of the programme yet.

As we've done so little today, I'll give an update on a couple of things Bertie-related:

1) Remember the issue with the bed making a noise when we were driving? The noise that went away for one journey only, and that was the journey when the Hymer technician was on a test-drive with us? I'll just go back a bit further in the history of this problem: it was a constant issue for the first two years we owned Bertie, then in January this year, when yet more adjustments were carried out on the bed, it stopped. It stayed stopped until May, when it suddenly reappeared and worse than before. It annoyed us on every journey until a week or two after its brief and mysterious disappearance on the day of our visit to the Hymer workshop. Being  familiar with the workings of Bertie's bed mechanism, I wracked my brains to try to decide what was causing it and how it could have been silent for four months before returning. I decided the likely culprit was movement of the retracting spindle that forms part of the release mechanism against the ledge upon which it sits when stowed. The only explanation I could see for its period of silence was that it had been greased, but the grease had worn off. I eventually stirred myself to get the WD40 out and spray the relevant bits of the mechanism. And what do you know? The noise went away! It's been quiet for weeks now. What a relief!

This is Bertie's living room. The bed is stowed against the roof, above the cab seats. The light-coloured panel in the middle of the front of the bed is a lever that is pulled foward from the bottom to release the retracting pins to allow the bed to be lowered.

This is Bertie's bedroom, with the bed dropped down for use. Blimey, even got matching bedding on it at the moment! 

2) Remember the flooded garage we had on the third night of this trip? After that incident we put pieces of kitchen towel in various places around the garage, to try to narrow down where the water was coming in (i.e. which of them would get wet after rain) and on many occasions I've stuck my head into the garage (via the internal door) during rain to check for ingress. We've had a lot of heavy rain this summer (in our experience to date, it seldom rains for long in Germany in summer, but when it does, it pours, often accompanied by thunder) and not once have we had a drop more water in the garage. Mick came up with the theory that would appear to explain how this can be: when the ingress happened we were parked on a marked slope with Bertie's rear driver's side tyre downmost. His garage door on that side only secures with one lock in the middle (the other door is bigger and has a lock top and bottom). Being parked at such an angle applies tortional forces to Bertie's body which must have been enough to twist the body away from the top of the door. Also because of the angle and the position of the solar panel, water would have been cascading off his roof in that corner, thus channelling it into any gap between the door and its seal. We can only confirm this for certain by continuing to stick a head in the boot when it rains heavily if we find ourselves parked at a similar angle, but for now it doesn't seem to be a worrysome problem.

Thursday 22 August - Ramstein

Where's Bertie? He's in a free (but no-facilities) Stellplatz just outside the perimeter fence of Ramstein US Air Force base. Exact location: 49.44629, 7.57129.
Weather: Gloriously sunny and warm.

Bertie started this morning. A big 'Yay!' for Bertie!

That was a good start to the day. Things then went downhill when, after getting away early, specifically so that I could do laundry, we had a laundrette failure. The first such establishment lay only about 20 metres off our route and we didn't find anywhere obvious to park nearby. I'm sure that a small amount of effort would have yielded somewhere, but as there were two other laundrettes near our route, we continued onwards. It turned out that both of the others (both listed on Google Maps, both with reviews, none of which mentioned this one key feature) were sited inside of US Air Force bases.

We're not desperate for anything (in fact it's possible we could get home without doing more than the odd rinse of running gear*) so after a bit of dithering we continued onwards to Seewoog, a small lake just to the north of Ramstein.

My purpose there was a running recce of the parkrun course, having been told last weekend, by a chap involved in setting up the course, that it's the hilliest in the whole of Germany. I dispute that claim - I did 310' of ascent today, versus 330' at Kräherwald in Stuttgart. The difference here is that all of the ascent comes in the first half of the course.

Mick, nursing his thigh niggle, walked the course** whilst I ran it and once I was done I walked back to meet him, rather than just sitting around waiting.

The start is on the side of the lake...

...goes across arable land...

...but mainly runs through woods.

We had hoped to be able to spend a couple of nights at Seewoog, but it wasn't clear what area was covered by a nearby 'no stopping 2230 - 0800' sign, so we opted to move the short distance to this official motorhome Stellplatz by Ramstein.

Not representative of the norm for German motorhome parking places!

It has to be the most inexplicable German Stellplatz we've come across to date. It's a medium-sized car park (it would probably fit 50 vehicles) with woodland on three sides. So far, so good. The oddness comes in its wasteland appearance (normal in Spain and Portugal, not in Germany) and the fact that other than a swimming pool complex across the road, there doesn't appear to be anything to see or do in the immediate vicinity, other than to walk around the perimeter of the air force base. I suppose Ramstein-Miesenbach is within walking distance, so maybe we should have ventured there to confirm our assessment, although nothing on the map suggests its worth a visit. It's no surprise that we are the only vehicle here.

Perimeter fence of the US Air Force base on the right, woods on the left. Not the most inspiring walking, although made more interesting in places by a *huge* building project going on and glimpses of action on the American Football pitch at the on-base High School.

(*It's a bit like running out of food. When our supplies are low, it's never a case that we're about to starve, it's just that without a visit to a shop subsequent meals would involve non-standard food combinations. Without doing laundry we're not about to run out of clothes, nor be forced to wear things that are dirtier than usual - we just won't have available to us the items that we choose to wear the most.
**Since last week's lost-in-the-woods incident Mick has installed ViewRanger on his phone. I marked out the parkrun route for him AND he took his reading glasses with him, so he knew where he was at all times.)

Wednesday 21 August - Bad Dürkheim

Where's Bertie? He's back at the Stellplatz in Bad Dürkheim, having left for a couple of hours in the middle of the day.
Weather: Glorious sunshine this morning and this evening, with a bit of cloud forming (and unforming) during the afternoon.

A speedy walk up the nearby hill started my day, before I returned to Bertie to release his engine battery ready for replacement. Then we set about waiting for a man with a battery to appear.

I filled that time by finishing off my jumper, swiftly followed by a photo shoot:

It's taken me months to knit this one, in part because every last inch of the whole thing is patterned, so there's no mindless straight knitting, and also because the summer temperature in southern Germany isn't conducive to making progress on anything that requires yarn to slip easily through the fingers.

I'm glad I didn't put even one more row on the length. This is how much yarn I had left over.

Moments later a man with a battery appeared. He didn't impress us. "Are you going to carry out any checks to make sure the battery is faulty?" Mick asked. He turned the key in the ignition. The engine failed to turn. "Yes, it's dead" he said. I'm glad we do know a thing or two (and have had input from some people on the Hymer Owners' Group too) to be happy with our own diagnosis, because he would have been happy to charge us for a new battery just because of, say, a fault with our charging circuit.

Leaving us with an invoice and a request to go and give him some money later, we finished packing away, used the service point and then set out to make a series of battery-unfriendly journeys (i.e. short hops that were going to take more out of the battery than they put in).

The garage came first, where I left Mick loitering whilst I trotted off to find a cashpoint. In another demonstration as to how cash rules in Germany, this garage couldn't accept a card. I returned with €100 notes - something I'd never seen before (given the current exchange rate, they're almost the equivalent of a £100 note).

Next was a trip to Lidl (adjacent to which was a more commercial-looking workshop with a number of motorhomes outside; perhaps we would have been better off going there ... if we'd known of its existence?) as our enforced stay yesterday had left our supplies varying between 'dwindling' and 'exhausted'.

By then it was past lunchtime and we'd not even had elevenses, so were ready to eat a scabby dog. However, we didn't have far left to drive, as we'd decided to stay in Bad Dürkheim again tonight, just in case the battery problem transpires to be a more serious electrical problem that manifests itself again in the morning.

My chosen entertainment this afternoon was to cast on the partner of a sock I knitted weeks ago. Unfortunately, since then I had forgotten how to do Judy's Magic Cast-on, so before I could get started I had a need for wifi to watch a YouTube tutorial. That's how I came to find myself sitting on the pavement outside of a branch of Deutsche Bank (the only open wifi I found in town), staring at my phone whilst knitting. Probably best if I don't dwell on what other people make of my behaviour at times like this!

Mick came along with me for the walk and snapped me deep in concentration.

Fountain of the day. Possibly of the month. I found it when in search of a bank this morning.

Tuesday 20 August - Bad Dürkheim

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Stellplatz in Bad Dürkheim. It was entirely Bertie's decision to stay, not ours.
Weather: Overcast and cool enough to need a fleece all day.

At about 7.30 last night, the foursome occupying the two vans immediately to Bertie's right got out their musical instruments (accordian & guitar is what it sounded like; I didn't go and look) and started to play and sing. They were a talented bunch and in another setting the music wouldn't have been offensive in the slightest. However, I'm of the opinion that it's not acceptable to inflict any music (or TV or radio) on your neighbours in a campsite setting, no matter what its quality, and certainly not at that volume.

At just gone 10pm the neighbours on our left retaliated. Every time there was a gap between songs on our right, the couple on our left started broadcasting pop music at volume.

We were stuck in the middle, wishing and waiting for it to finish, which it finally did a few minutes before 11pm.

Thankfully, I didn't wake up silly-early this morning, so there was no sleep-deprived grumpiness as I dragged myself out of bed when the alarm went off.

An hour later (a late start, but it didn't matter, being cool today) we were running a circuit of tracks through the vineyard opposite the Stellplatz. An enjoyable start to the day, although Mick did have to slow down with a muscular niggle after 3 miles. Fingers are crossed that it settles down quickly.

Running through the vines

Time ran away with us during the rest of the morning, as it so often does, such that it was only a few minutes before lunchtime when we unplugged Bertie and turned the cab seats back around ready to drive. I programmed the SatNav, and Mick turned on the ignition whilst I watched the engine battery voltage on the control panel reduce from full to empty. Bertie had decided: we weren't going anywhere today after all.

Tools came out. Precise battery readings were taken. Research was done. The general concensus was that we have a dead cell in the engine battery*.

We opted not to call the breakdown service, instead walking the mile to the nearest garage to see if they could help. Failing to go armed with details of our battery was a silly omission and required us to walk another round trip.

Some disassembly was required just to see the details of the battery, which are under the array of positive wires.

The chap at the garage (whose claims to only speak a little English were overly modest; he didn't stumble over a single word) was most helpful and is due to deliver a new battery to us tomorrow morning. It's going to cost rather considerably more than it would have if we'd been able to order one off the internet and fit it ourselves at home. But, we're in a little town and have no ability to drive anywhere, so our options are limited.

There are certainly far worse places to be stuck in a breakdown situation, although if I could be picky, I would rather that the musicians to our right weren't still in residence...

^{(*The current unknown: is it a random fault or has it been caused by another fault that will repeat itself with the new battery?)}

Monday 19 August - Bad Dürkheim

Where's Bertie? His wheels have not turned (although his engine has, just to check!); he's still in the meadow at the vineyard Stellplatz in Bad Dürkheim.
Weather: Mainly sunny and warm

Our Marco Polo map of Germany has the name of Bad Dürkheim highlighted in yellow, denoting that it is a place worth visiting. Our Michellin map doesn't. I'm tending towards agreeing with the Michellin map, although perhaps the main attraction here is the visiting of wine producers, which isn't something that interests me.

The town certainly expects a lot of visitors: its main car park is huge and when we drove past it yesterday afternoon it was busy.

The Stellplatz was also reasonably busy last night, but from early this morning vans started trickling out. By mid-afternoon it was surprisingly quiet (I can understand the usual exodus on a Sunday afternoon, ready for people to go back to work, but why so many departures on a Monday morning?).

The Stellplatz in a state of almost empty. Around a dozen vans have since arrived.

Our walk around the town this morning showed it to be a perfectly pleasant place for an urban stroll, but at the same time nothing of great interest jumped out at us*.

More interesting was this afternoon's walk, which I took solo whilst Mick finished his book. We've entered a vaguely lumpy area, and right opposite the Stellplatz are a couple of small hills, one of which was callling my name. It was a nicer outing than I expected, making it more of a shame Mick wasn't with me. After an initial section of concrete track through the vines, the surface switched to cobbles then, once out the top of the vines, dirt tracks through the forest beyond.

View across the vines

When the path levelled out through the forest

Mick had finished his book by the time I got back, so I took advantage of having mains electric by getting the clippers out and having him play barber (I did his hair a couple of weeks ago but opted to leave mine at the time, which was a mistake). That feels better!

Sitting outside in the shade into the evening I've made enough headway on my knitted sweater to be able to say with reasonable confidence that I do have enough yarn to finish it off. There may be a 'ta-dah!' photo any day now after all.

This would certainly have got a 'fountain of the day' award if it hadn't been disqualified for currently lacking a key ingredient of a fountain.

^{(*What did jump out at us, or otherwise draw us in by some mysterious magnetic force, was a Chinese restaurant advertising an 'All you can eat' buffet. There were only eight dishes on offer, but we managed to pig out quite comprehensively. We were only down that road because we were looking for a bakery to buy some bread rolls for lunch.)}

Sunday 18 August - Bad Dürkheim

Where's Bertie? He's sitting in a large (100+ spaces) grassy Stellplatz at a vineyard in Bad Dürkheim. He also spent a night here in June 2018. It's €8 a night to stay here. Water and electric are available for an additional fee. Exact location: 49.46966, 8.16800.
Weather: Gloriously sunny and hot for most of the day but with a monsoonal thunderstorm mid-afternoon.

That was a more eventful day than we'd anticipated when we woke up this morning!

The very process of waking up was a tricky one, as we had been plagued by the bass thud of dance music (quite a distance away by the sound of it, but loud enough to disturb us) until 4am. In hindsight I've a vague recollection that we could hear music when we stayed in that spot on a Saturday night last year, but the wind must have been in a direction such that, on that occasion, it was loud enough to be heard when awake, but not enough to wake us.

Once my alarm had rudely roused me from my slumber at 7am, it didn't take me many moments to notice that my body had reacted excessively to an insect bite. Such was the size of the swelling on my leg that I would have been alarmed if I hadn't had similar reactions before. I resolved to ignore it as best I could and continue as normal in the hope that it will go down in a couple of days time - which meant donning running gear and getting outside.

The Rhine, busy with barges even on a Sunday morning

Mick's plan today was 8 miles (maybe 9 at a push); mine was 10 miles. We thus ran together for around 7.5 miles, when Mick said he was turning back towards Bertie (about a mile away). I continued onwards and was mid cool-down walk when my phone rang. It was Mick, sounding a little sheepish: "I'm lost in the woods". (Obviously my first question was the nonsensical one: "Where?"). Fortunately, he did have his phone on him. Unfortunately:
- he only had Google Maps by way of a navigational tool;
- he didn't know where Bertie was parked;
- he didn't have his reading glasses with him; and
- once I'd given him a lat/long, he found he no longer had enough of a data signal for Google Maps to tell him where it was.

We managed between us to work out where he was and a while later we were reunited.

I had to keep moving whilst waiting for Mick (who had Bertie's keys, so I was locked out) as even though it was warm out, my clothes were sopping with sweat. Walking towards Mick, I found a snake. The first photo makes it look bigger than it is. The second includes my shoe for scale.

With that little drama over, we breakfasted, showered and decided that as we were only moving half an hour along the road, we would do so before lunch. That plan went awry when Bertie refused to start. Poor Bertie! His engine battery had gone flat.

Without a set of jump leads long enough to reach from his habitation battery to his engine battery, there was nothing we could do to fix the situation. Frustratingly, given it was such a sunny day, we were parked under the full shade of a tree, so the solar panel was useless to us. If we could have just driven a few feet forward into the sunshine, it could have solved our problem ... but if we could have driven we wouldn't have had a problem!

There was only one thing for it: put coffee on to brew and call the breakdown service.

An hour and a half later an ADAC man pulled up in front of us and five minutes later Bertie was up and running*.

The next challenge was leaving Mannheim. I recalled it as being a stressful business last year, due to a combination of a 2.1m width restriction on the main route out, and having just that morning updated Google Maps on my phone, only discovering when needing to find an alternative route in a hurry that the update had implemented a glitch giving me maps with no roads. To our surprise the width restriction is still in operation, but today I had functional maps and managed to get us out of town without resorting to swearing or crying.

Onwards to Bad Dürkheim, which we had previously only used as a convenient night-stop, not taking the time to look around. On that occasion we found the popular Stellplatz here to be blighted by road noise and wouldn't have chosen to return, except that without throwing large detours into our route home, there are few options between Mannheim and Ramstein (next week's parkrun location). It's supposed to be a nice town (we'll go and see tomorrow), so here we are for at least one night.

The first priority on arrival was to plug into the mains, thus ensuring that the engine battery gets properly charged. The second was to hand wash the running gear to give it the maximum chance of drying in the afternoon's heat and sunshine. I was just finishing rinsing it when the sky suddenly went dark and within moments the rain was absolutely bouncing. Just what you want with a bowl full of sopping clothing in your hands! Thankfully, after a twenty minutes or so, as quickly as it started it stopped and within seconds the sun was back out.

I think that's enough drama for one day. Let's hope the remaining two weeks of the trip go as uneventfully as the first ten!

<sup>(*The ADAC man apparently wasn't familiar with motorhomes, but thankfully we knew to isolate the habitation electrics electrobloc to save the danger of it frying in the jumping process. Of course, once the engine was running we needed to leave it so, which left us listening to the 'your door step is out whilst your engine is running' alarm. The driver's door step was out because it operates automatically on the opening/closing of the driver's door, and that door had to be open because the engine battery sits under the floor in front of the driver's seat. Finally free to close the door, the step wouldn't retract. Ah yes - the electrobloc was still off. Turned back on, and it still wouldn't retract. Nooooooo! I was picturing a game of 'hunt the relevant fuse', but patience was the answer; it takes the habitation electronics a short while to reboot. It did highlight once again that we have no use for that step and having it on a microswitch attached to the door catch is more trouble that it's worth.

As for the battery, from the brief tests carried out by the ADAC man, it seems the most likely explanation is that something drained the battery in the last 24 hours, rather than there being a fault with the battery or its earthing. The likely contenders are the radio or the alarm system. Obviously, we hope it was a one-off.)</sup>

Friday 16 and Saturday 17 August - Schwetzingen and Mannheim

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park at Neckarau Park on the south side of Mannheim. The last time he was parked in this very spot was, coincidentally, on 17 August 2018. He was also here on 15/16 June 2018 (Exact location: 49.44977, 8.46363). He spent Friday night in the Stellpaltz* in Schwetzingen.
Weather Rainy from just before 9am until just after 10am, then again from around 4pm, but in between dry and warm.

Friday
Having visited Schwetzingen and its magnificent palace gardens last year we indulged in a quiet day yesterday, with our only activities being a couple of walks. In the morning we took a turn around the outside of the perimeter of the palace gardens...

Sections of hedge have been cut low so that you can see into the gardens, but the view doesn't give an idea of how worthwhile they are to visit.

...in the middle of which we took a detour around the town...

I posted a snap of this chap/lass/swine last year too. I still have no idea what it's about!

...and in the afternoon it was a walk out to the nearby town of Oftersheim*.

Saturday
With our usual Saturday morning early start, we had breakasted, serviced Bertie** and driven the 15km to Neckarau Park by just gone 8am. When we toddled off across the road a while later, to where the parkrunners were gathering, we were met with "Haven't we seen you here before?". We didn't have a clear recollection of anyone we met on our two visits to this parkrun last year, but they remembered us.

The rain that started just before the off gave us the coolest running conditions of any Saturday morning this summer, but unfortunately for me this morning 5km turned out to be 1km further than I could sustain at the pace I wanted to go, so whilst I convincingly beat the fastest time I ran here last year, I didn't beat the PB I set three weeks ago. Mick finished not very far behind me, having run most of the way behind a 'young woman of about 16'; when he viewed the results later he found she was in the W25-29 category. Oh dear - he must be getting old!

From top to bottom, the Rhine on 15 June and 17 August 2018 and 17 August 2019

The post-run coffee location is only a couple of minutes' walk away, and is a nice place, but it's not got the best table lay-out for socialising. Even so, it was half eleven by the time we found ourselves wandering back to Bertie.

The outside contingent of the post-run coffee gathering. The English speakers were mainly outside; the Germans inside. Contrary to appearances, we weren't on a boat, but the restaurant is on stilts due to being very close to the river.

There are no convenient rivers in the area we're heading next, which led to our decision to stay here tonight so that we can have a riverside run tomorrow. Bertie couldn't stay where we had initially parked him, but he only had to move half a kilometre to settle in the same spot in the same car park as he used twice last year. Being next door to the 'gardens' (think British allotments, but mainly used as ordinary gardens, with lawns and borders instead of for growing veg) it was busy here in the hot sunny weather we had last summer. Today it seems that the garden owners looked out of their windows and decided it was a day for staying at home; accordingly, the large car park has maxed-out at half a dozen vehicles.

There has been a short strollette this afternoon, but mainly I've been knitting. It was in this very spot that I finished my first knitted jumper last year; by the end of today I will have finished all bar the neckband of this one. There may not be a "ta-dah!" photo on its way, as I find myself mixed up in a game of 'yarn chicken' (i.e. I fear I'm going to run out of yarn before finishing the garment). After spending many months in the making, that will be annoying if it happens.

<sup>(*Water at the motorhome service point in Schwetzingen is unusually expensive. €1 for 80-100 litres is the norm. Sometimes it's available in 10c increments if you don't want a full Euro's worth. Occasionally it's 50c. The price at Schwetzingen is €3 for 100 litres.

In the grand scheme of things, particularly when parking is free, it's a negligible sum. However, we only needed 20 litres in our drinking water containers, meaning bottled water would have been cheaper. But, I don't like to buy bottled unless absolutely necessary, so I went against my frugal instincts. It turned out well: someone must have put €1 in without realising the price and thought it was out of order when they didn't get their water, so we effectively got ours at a discount.

**The walk out to Oftersheim came about because it was the location of the nearest 'up market' supermarket to where Bertie was parked. Immediately behind Bertie was Lidl (our usual supermarket that has won our custom by publishing a Europe-wide SatNav file of all of its stores) and next to that was an Aldi. We were in need of one item, however, that our ten weeks in Germany had told us is not stocked by Lidl and whilst I had seen it in an Aldi a few weeks ago, this store didn't carry it. So, out to an Edeka we walked. We called into Lidl on the way back for a list of more regular items and what should jump into my line of sight there, but the exact item we'd just walked 3 miles to buy.)</sup>

Thursday 15 August - Sinsheim & Schwetzingen

Where's Bertie? He's at a free Stellplatz in Schwetzingen, where he also spent two nights on 17/18 June 2018. (Exact location: 49.37788, 8.5581)
Weather: Grey, showery and cool start, but clearing to a warmer, dry and sunny-ish afternoon.

Driving along the A6 Autobahn in the vicinity of Sinsheim one cannot miss the large building with various planes, including a Concorde and a TU144 (Concordeski), on its roof:

The motorway runs the other side of the building, closer than my position when I took this snap.

It's the 'Auto & Technik Museum, Sinsheim' and having driven past a couple of times before (heading south both last summer and this), today we paid a visit.

Arriving around opening time, we perused the site map and learnt that the place is formed of two huge exhibition halls, with the planes being housed on the roof of the second one. Figuring that Concorde was going to be the most popular attraction once the place got busy, we didn't follow almost every one else in the logical direction of Hall 1, but headed straight for Hall 2 and, once there, went straight up onto the roof.

Big planes, big roof. They're set at the take-off angle of 15 degrees, which makes for a surprisingly steep climb from the rear door up to the cockpit.

A good call! We didn't have to queue and even had both supersonic jets to ourselves for at least some of the time we were in each. I imagine it would be frustratingly cramped once a queue has formed.

Once finished with the 7 or 8 planes on the roof, there was a choice for getting back into the Hall below. You could walk back down the stairs, or go down a slide that originated inside one of the aircraft. Mick took the stairs...

See the slide coming out of the side of the plane and entering the roof of the building? It was quite steep on the final descent.

The rest of the museum was absolutely packed full of a whole variety of planes, trains and automobiles (plus military displays, bikes of the push and motor variety, organs, chain saws, sewing machines...).

Vintage Cars in Hall 2, with various planes suspended above

Having learnt our lesson from the Mercedes-Benz museum, we went armed with more food today, but it was unnecessary as once we had finished in Hall 2 we were able to return to Bertie for a quick lunch.

We had already acknowledged that we were likely to spend less time in Hall 1, no matter how interesting it was, due to reaching saturation point. That happened at around 3.30pm, by which time we had also seen:

Vintage American cars, including all sorts of racing cars (drag, stock, hot-rods, Nascar), with planes suspended above

The outside military display, being mainly tanks

Tractors, with planes suspended above (you may have noticed there were planes suspended *everywhere*)

Perhaps the best illustration of the eccentricity of the place: a military display, with planes suspended above, and with a sizeable pipe organ in the background. Along the mezanine to the right was an extesive display of Airfix-style model planes and tanks.

Some of the exhibits had interactive features that could be activated by paying a Euro. Those included various self-playing musical instruments, so as we were walking around there would suddenly be loud umpah or dancehall type music nearby.

Museum visiting is always a tiring activity (far more than going for a long walk) and after six and a half hours, we were flagging. A portion of chips at one of the on-site eateries rounded off our visit nicely.

As museum entry fees go, this one was up there as one of the most expensive we've visited (€16 a head), but we came away feeling we'd had value for our money. For anyone with even a passing interest in planes or cars, it's worth a visit. I think that our guidebook has hit the nail on the head in saying that whilst huge and stuffed with exhibits, the whole place does have the jumbled feel of an amateur presenting a private collection. I was picturing the owner/founder as being an eccentric chap.

We could have stayed the night in the car park (there are dedicated motorhome bays for the purpose), but driving the half-hour over to Schwetzingen means we get to be stationary for two nights before heading up to Mannheim early on Saturday morning. For a Stellplatz with such mediocre reviews, it's every bit as popular as it was last year, but we were fortunate enough that there were two spaces remaining when we arrived.