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.