Saturday 17 September - Bad Eilsen

Where's Bertie? He's back at Bad Eilsen, where he spent a night a few weeks ago when we were on our way east.
Weather: Showers overnight, mainly sunny this morning, then coming in for showers mid-afternoon, one torrential. 

A quiet night was had last night, except for the sound of rain drumming on the roof, as one of 15 motorhomes in the free car park. The rain stopped just before we set out for the parkrun, and with just one brief last hurrah a couple of minutes before the start, the weather got better as we ran the one-lap route*, and stood chatting afterwards. I'm not approving of this sudden shift from summer to autumn, mind: 11 degrees is pleasant for running, but a bit cool to stand around in skimpy clothes for an hour afterwards.

Look at that blue sky! That's the team of volunteers just leaving, having packed everything away, whilst we still stood chatting to Marina.

With lunchtime approaching the time came to move on westwards across Germany. I gave Mick a few options, most of which were places we've not been before, but shunning those, we opted for a repeat visit. The advantage of Bad Eilsen (or neighbouring Bückeburg, had this Stellplatz been full) is that it sits at the foot of some little hills, and after four weeks of travelling through areas with no more than gentle undulations in the landscape, hills sounded good for tomorrow's run.

With the morning's fine weather no longer looking quite so assured, we headed out at lunchtime with our trusty ponchos:

Yes, they look pristine, because they've never been out of their bags. We bought these years ago, and thus far have a 100% success rate that, when we carry them, it doesn't rain. Hope I haven't just jinxed that stat...

Alas, only one eatery in town (town is probably a generous description of this place) was open at lunchtime and they didn't sell anything appealing. So, back to Bertie via the supermarket, and an afternoon of indoor activities whilst showers came through at regular intervals. The couple of huge rumbles of thunder we heard didn't coincide with any rain.

I finally completed a pair of socks for Mick that I've been knitting two-at-a-time on a single long circular needle. It's the second pair I've made using this method and it has pros and cons. My main knitting project on this trip was supposed to be a Fair Isle jumper for myself, but I think I'm going to jump straight into another pair of socks for Mick, as two of the pairs he has with him are about to wear through under the heel. Unfortunately, the new pair are in the same colour scheme as the pair in the snap above (it's 'owl' from the West Yorkshire Spinners' birds collection) - it's not the easiest of colours to work with, with the brown being so dark, and the light grey blending into the needles.

(*A successful run. I ran my fastest 5km since September 2020, and Mick since November 2021. A couple of weeks ago, I set up a Garmin training programme on my watch, with the modest objective (because I'm too lazy at the moment to want to work hard for speed!) of getting back to a 26:30 5km, after spending the whole year to date training for distance not speed. Today, in week 2 of the 11-week programme, I ran 26:05. What did my virtual coach make of this? Laughably, he's still not entirely convinced that I can meet the programme's objective:

I have now modified my objective to make him even less confident in my abilities.)