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!
(*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.)
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.
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.
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!
(*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.)
Are you sure it wasn't that snake that bit you?
ReplyDeleteI did see the snake near to where we were loitering before the parkrun on Saturday, and I think that's when I got bitten, but I'd like to think I'd notice if a mini-snake started ascending my leg!
DeleteThat snake is adorable!
ReplyDelete(A juvenile barred grass snake, btw., just like at home😊)
ReplyDeleteThank you! I didn't know what it was (my identification skills for snake-like things extends to slowworm and adder). Because it was in danger of death where it was sitting (track busy with runners, walkers and bikes), I got a stick and moved it off the path. I don't think it appreciated my intervention.
DeleteWell done! Brave move, considering you didn't know if it was venomous or not...
ReplyDeleteIt was a tiny snake and a long stick!
Delete