Where's Bertie? He's at a private Stellplatz at Düren at a cost of €8, including water and waste. Electricity is available for an extra €4 per day. Exact location: 50.80862, 6.46630
Weather: Much better than forecast a couple of days ago! Sunny start, soon clouding over, but still dry as I type this at gone 5pm. 21 degrees.
Being a day behind ourselves due to the extra night at Leichlingen, I thought we'd get up early this morning and move to Opladen (location of the laundrette) before breakfast. What that achieved was putting us in rush hour traffic, with one particular roundabout more than doubling what the journey time would have been at a quiet time of day (it was a 7km hop that took us over 20 minutes).
Finally in Opladen, whilst Mick put the kettle on, I nipped across the road to an empty laundrette, set a machine running, then returned to Bertie for breakfast.
With everything washed, dried and put away, onwards to Düren we came. This was arguably a mistake, and certainly made me realise that there was no reason for the early start.
I don't usually plan ahead, but before we left Düsseldorf I came up with a few places to stay between there and Maastricht, with the first one being Düren. That was over a week ago, as our late change of plan had us head east for a week before turning back west. Knowing that I'd already noted the places to stay, once we turned west I didn't review them again.
We'd parked and paid up in Düren before I came to realise that I must only have chosen to come here because we needed a service point. I suppose the same holds true this week too, but had I made a note that there was no other reason to come here, I would have found somewhere more interesting to visit on the way.
I'm not sure I can say that we've made the most of being here (as I'm not quite sure what that would entail), but we did walk into town, figuring that if nothing else we could go out for lunch.
There was little of note about the town centre itself, other than that it was as busy as we've seen a town, and that it appears to be home to the biggest concentration of immigrants that we've seen. Germany has welcomed a significant number of immigrants over the last few years, and it's apparent to see in most areas, but Düren seems to be winning (at least out of the places we've been) at cultural diversity. Judging by the shops and takeaways, the Turkish population seems to be particularly strong. (And as I type that I'm kicking myself that we didn't come back from town via out outward route and thus didn't visit the baklava shop we'd espied on our way in.)
It was another wok for us for lunch.
Whilst the town is a 20 minute walk from the Stellplatz, the river Ruhr is rather closer. I ambled down there this afternoon, but only to check how to access it ready for a run there in the morning.
I thought this may be the only contender for Sculpture of the Day...
...but then we found this, which would have been Fountain of the Day, had it been running.
Weather: Much better than forecast a couple of days ago! Sunny start, soon clouding over, but still dry as I type this at gone 5pm. 21 degrees.
Being a day behind ourselves due to the extra night at Leichlingen, I thought we'd get up early this morning and move to Opladen (location of the laundrette) before breakfast. What that achieved was putting us in rush hour traffic, with one particular roundabout more than doubling what the journey time would have been at a quiet time of day (it was a 7km hop that took us over 20 minutes).
Finally in Opladen, whilst Mick put the kettle on, I nipped across the road to an empty laundrette, set a machine running, then returned to Bertie for breakfast.
With everything washed, dried and put away, onwards to Düren we came. This was arguably a mistake, and certainly made me realise that there was no reason for the early start.
I don't usually plan ahead, but before we left Düsseldorf I came up with a few places to stay between there and Maastricht, with the first one being Düren. That was over a week ago, as our late change of plan had us head east for a week before turning back west. Knowing that I'd already noted the places to stay, once we turned west I didn't review them again.
We'd parked and paid up in Düren before I came to realise that I must only have chosen to come here because we needed a service point. I suppose the same holds true this week too, but had I made a note that there was no other reason to come here, I would have found somewhere more interesting to visit on the way.
I'm not sure I can say that we've made the most of being here (as I'm not quite sure what that would entail), but we did walk into town, figuring that if nothing else we could go out for lunch.
There was little of note about the town centre itself, other than that it was as busy as we've seen a town, and that it appears to be home to the biggest concentration of immigrants that we've seen. Germany has welcomed a significant number of immigrants over the last few years, and it's apparent to see in most areas, but Düren seems to be winning (at least out of the places we've been) at cultural diversity. Judging by the shops and takeaways, the Turkish population seems to be particularly strong. (And as I type that I'm kicking myself that we didn't come back from town via out outward route and thus didn't visit the baklava shop we'd espied on our way in.)
Whilst the town is a 20 minute walk from the Stellplatz, the river Ruhr is rather closer. I ambled down there this afternoon, but only to check how to access it ready for a run there in the morning.
"I don't Usually plan ahead...", perhaps the understatement of the year?
ReplyDeleteThis trip has concentrated on running and town centres. Surely in Germany there must be uplifting hill walks and the like to mix and match a bit? Maybe that would interfere with your fairly structured running/training programme?
I should have qualified the statement about planning ahead. Some thing I plan meticulously; other things (like deciding where we're going next and where we're going to sleep at night) tend to be on-the-day decisions.
DeletePrevious trips to Germany (further south) have mixed up town visits and hill walks. The reason that hasn't happened on this trip is because we've largely been in incredibly flat areas, where it's difficult to find more than a couple of contours together, never mind a hill. Only this last week, along the Ruhr, have we found appealing undulations (although still not really hills). Whilst I'm happy to have explored the mid-section of the country, due to the absence of an interesting landscape (particularly further east; the industrial history around the Rhein and Ruhr adds a different sort of interest), I wouldn't feel any urge for a revisit (unlike Bavaria, to where I could happily return time and again).
So, that has left us with towns, parks, forests (and Germany does do good parks and forests!) and rivers for our daily entertainment. Museums have also been sadly lacking on this trip due to so many still requiring or requesting not just face coverings but FFP2 masks.
Neither of us has been training for anything during this trip, so it's not the running that's been preventing us from doing other things, although many of our outings in forests and along rivers have been done at a run, leaving us with only towns and parks to explore for the rest of the day.
Eeeh, that was a reply so long that maybe I should have made a blog post out of it!
I have on occasions done just that, aborting a comment to save for a blog post.
ReplyDelete