Where's Bertie? He's in a neglected Stellplatz in the village of Eschershausen. The water/waste services have, apparently, long been out of service. It looks like the electric point may still work but we haven't tried it. Exact location: 51.92973, 9.62817
Weather: Cool overcast morning, with a low cloud base, clearing to a sunny and warm afternoon.
The Wesser, snapped during this morning's run. Mick went north down the river, I went south, and again we both arrived back at Bertie simultaneously.
Similar to our visit to Wilhelmshaven in 2017, today's visit to Scharfoldendorf and Eschershausen has involved quite a lot of poring over maps (aerial, landscape and road) to try to work out the locations of places Mick remembers from his time here as a child. We started by visiting the Ith ridge to try to find the site of the Scharfoldendorf Army Camp, but where, to Mick's disappointment, he recognised nothing. This could, we supposed, be because the main road has moved in the last 50 years and thus we were slightly misplaced from where we wanted to be, or because the buildings he remembers no longer exist, but we didn't have much information to go on.
We walked out and back up a few tracks from the main road, with Mick recognising nothing, until we came to an information sign with photos of crags sited exactly as Mick had described them to me. We obviously were in approximately the right place, and a few minutes more walking brought us to the childhood playground of Mick and his older brother:
Mick says it was much more open, with fewer trees, in the 1960s
Re-enacting the moves of his 10-year-old self.
We were still no wiser as to the location of the camp and the quarters, so returned to Bertie for a bit more online searching, during which I turned up this key bit of information...
...and elsewhere on the same forum I found this photo of the Schloss mentioned in the description above, taken in 1958:
Yet more poring over aerial imaging on Google Maps and I finally found what we were looking for:
It turns out we were sitting about 50m from the gates that would have given access to the Schloss (about another 100m further away), but the signs at the entrance were clear that it was private land and entrance forbidden. We had to make do with what we had seen.
With our stomachs making it known that lunchtime had been and gone, we drove straight through the village of Scharfoldendorf, coming the short (1.2km) distance to the neighbouring village of Eschershausen and its Stellplatz.
The reviews of the Stellplatz on Park4Night aren't great, purely because the services have long been broken and nothing has been done to fix them. To a German, who is used to an excellent network of motorhome parking places, this is a valid cause for complaint. Being from the UK, where motorhome parking provision is so woeful, being only in its infancy, just having somewhere sanctioned to stay is very much appreciated.
Deciding to defer our visit to Scharfoldendorf village until the morrow, this afternoon we headed out to find the one place Mick remembers from Eschershausen - the outdoor swimming pool complex. That we did, and sure enough it does have the Olympic-sized pool he recalls, although he thought there were more diving boards (whilst also acknowledging that he could be conflating his memory of this place with the equivalent in Wilhelmshaven).
Weather: Cool overcast morning, with a low cloud base, clearing to a sunny and warm afternoon.
Similar to our visit to Wilhelmshaven in 2017, today's visit to Scharfoldendorf and Eschershausen has involved quite a lot of poring over maps (aerial, landscape and road) to try to work out the locations of places Mick remembers from his time here as a child. We started by visiting the Ith ridge to try to find the site of the Scharfoldendorf Army Camp, but where, to Mick's disappointment, he recognised nothing. This could, we supposed, be because the main road has moved in the last 50 years and thus we were slightly misplaced from where we wanted to be, or because the buildings he remembers no longer exist, but we didn't have much information to go on.
We walked out and back up a few tracks from the main road, with Mick recognising nothing, until we came to an information sign with photos of crags sited exactly as Mick had described them to me. We obviously were in approximately the right place, and a few minutes more walking brought us to the childhood playground of Mick and his older brother:
We were still no wiser as to the location of the camp and the quarters, so returned to Bertie for a bit more online searching, during which I turned up this key bit of information...
...and elsewhere on the same forum I found this photo of the Schloss mentioned in the description above, taken in 1958:
Yet more poring over aerial imaging on Google Maps and I finally found what we were looking for:
It turns out we were sitting about 50m from the gates that would have given access to the Schloss (about another 100m further away), but the signs at the entrance were clear that it was private land and entrance forbidden. We had to make do with what we had seen.
With our stomachs making it known that lunchtime had been and gone, we drove straight through the village of Scharfoldendorf, coming the short (1.2km) distance to the neighbouring village of Eschershausen and its Stellplatz.
The reviews of the Stellplatz on Park4Night aren't great, purely because the services have long been broken and nothing has been done to fix them. To a German, who is used to an excellent network of motorhome parking places, this is a valid cause for complaint. Being from the UK, where motorhome parking provision is so woeful, being only in its infancy, just having somewhere sanctioned to stay is very much appreciated.
Deciding to defer our visit to Scharfoldendorf village until the morrow, this afternoon we headed out to find the one place Mick remembers from Eschershausen - the outdoor swimming pool complex. That we did, and sure enough it does have the Olympic-sized pool he recalls, although he thought there were more diving boards (whilst also acknowledging that he could be conflating his memory of this place with the equivalent in Wilhelmshaven).
Not open today, so we couldn't go in
Our wander back to Bertie involved cake and ice cream (one of each) - a few pence into the local economy, and thanks to paying for both with notes, a small restocking of our depleted bag of coins.
Looks like a good team effort going on there trekking down that history.
ReplyDeleteOoh, cake!
ReplyDelete