Monday 3 October - Bergisch Gladbach - Paffrath

Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz in Paffrath, a suburb of Bergisch Gladbach, just east of Köln. It costs €10 to stay here, plus €2 for water. Electricity is also available for a not-small fee (€2 for 8 hours). Exact location: 50.99886, 7.09073.
Weather: Sunny intervals and warming up to around 17 degrees.

It was an 'up and away' morning. We thought we'd get up and drive to this morning's bonus-parkrun's location at 7am, then settle in for first breakfast. At that hour on a public holiday our drive straight across the city was painfree.

Parking wasn't as easy as hoped. The recommended parking turns out to be a clearway until 9am and €1 per 15 minutes thereafter. Plan B was 1.5km away, but en-route we spotted a convenient 4-vehicle layby, not displaying any 'mit Parkshein' (pay and display) signs. We dithered a bit (did the clearway signs also apply to this layby?), but when a parkrunner bearing trays of biscuits (assumption: must be local) arrived and parked behind us, we figured it would be fine - and it was.

I said on Saturday that we weren't taken aback by the number of parkrunners, having recently come to realise that there would be an influx of tourists. This morning I was taken aback. What a crowd!

People gathering as 9am approached

This event's previous highest turnout was 61 on Unity Day last year. A week last Saturday they had 8 finishers. That was boosted up to 41 with tourists this Saturday. Then today they had 197 - which was far more finish tokens than they had available - a situation with which they coped admirably. It was a good riverside course and the sunshine was a bonus.
If you look past our mugs, some of the key landmarks of the city are just across the water.
We loitered, catching up with those we'd first met on Saturday across town (Mark & Catherine, Fiona & Barb, and Coz, the marathon runner) as well as encountering a chap who has run 6 entire and unique parkrun alphabets*.

Back at Bertie I continued consideration of the issue that has taken up far too much time over the last few days: where to go next. Germany is generally an easy country to tour by motorhome, with Stellplatz and facilities all over the place. We've found a gaping exception to this along the Rhein from Bonn to Duisburg and whilst it wouldn't have been out of the question to manage through to next Saturday afternoon without a service point, it wouldn't have been ideal. The lack of facilities ruled out Bonn as our next parkrun location, so I presented Mick with three options:
1) A Stellplatz just on the north side of Köln at €15 (+€1 for water), but not in a peaceful location. Crow flight: 1km; by road: 5.3km.
2) A free Stellplatz (water €1) 50km  out of our way. 3) This Stellplatz a 13km drive away, where you can only arrive between 10am and noon, when the office is manned.

Option 1 might have been the most obvious choice, but for the number of negative reviews stating that the owner is rude - seemingly mainly towards non-German speaking visitors. Option 2, whilst seemingly an excessive drive, might have been the best choice, as it's in a town that looked like it could be interesting. Clearly, we went for Option 3 ...and we're unconvinced that was the best move. €10 for a space in a car park in a suburb with nothing to see is excessive, and I'm not impressed that the entry barrier is currently missing so anyone can come and go when the office is closed.

We've walked through the 'town' this afternoon, and through the park next to the Stellplatz. Then we reminded ourselves that we're here for the services, not for the surroundings and we'll be moving on to somewhere (hopefully!) better tomorrow.

^{(*That is to say he's run six different events starting with an 'A', a 'B' and so on. He's nearing the end of his seventh alphabet, at which point he'll be stymied by a lack of available events starting with some of the more obscure letters.)}