Where's Bertie? He's in the old car park of an abandoned football ground on the edge of the town of Velbert. Approximate location: 51.33053, 7.01983.
Weather: Soon clearing to give a mainly sunny day, climbing up to the high teens.
Jogging across the park just after 8.30 this morning, we joined a gaggle of people at the parkrun start/finish area. This is a parkrun that tends to get anywhere between 20-40 participants, but their numbers were boosted this week by an abnormal number of tourists, including a group of eight from the NE of England, bringing us up to a field of 45.
I felt like I set out at a keen pace and having done so I thought I may as well see how long I could keep it up. It made for a hard run, such that I was expecting a significant gain on my times of the last few weeks. Alas, it seems my perception of effort was a step away from reality, and I knocked just 2 seconds off my best time of the trip. To boost my ego, no fast women turned up today, so I managed my fourth 'first female' of the trip.
No pastries at the post-parkrun coffee location, so I had to have bananenbrot, which was served more fancily than it needed to be..
Back at Bertie, there was a lengthy period of consideration: where were we going to go, and how were we going to fill 6 days between Düsseldorf and Maastrict (a distance of 100km). I duly came up with a good plan, but we were aware that we would be left with a whole week and a Saturday without a parkrun once we left Maastrict. So, I had a look at the parkrun event map in case there was another run locally in Germany that had magically appeared.
What timing! There on the map was a new location, whose inaugural event is next Saturday. Sixty kilometres away (and yep, we have headed east again) but as attending inaugural events as a non-local is not frowned upon in Germany, it seemed like an excellent plan to head there instead. So, 6 days to cover 60km. Another significant period of perusing maps and resources, and I'd come up with a new plan.
Alas, the plan started to fray at the edges when we got to the first stop (out of three earmarked to see us through to Friday) and found it full. A shame, as: a) it's a good location, in the shadow of a towering viaduct and only a 10 minute walk from town; b) simply going on to the next location wasn't a good option, considering the time/distance stats of the week ahead of us.
We have thus found ourselves 2km away from the Stellplatz, in a car park with no apparent merit other than its existence. We're too far away from town for a simple stroll in and the amount of litter (and particularly the pattern of that litter) tells us that yoofs gather here in cars at night. There's fly tipping in the bushes too. And the old football stadium has been extensively vandalised. We've tucked ourselves away between a caravan and a motorhome that are clearly in storage here, to prevent anyone from being able to park too close to us. We'll hope not to have too bad a night, and will return to the Stellplatz tomorrow in the hope of a space having opened up.
With the benefit of hindsight, we would have been better staying in Düsseldorf for a second night, where at least there were green spaces we could have ambled around this afternoon, but having not struggled to find available parking all trip, we hadn't expected it to be an issue today.
Weather: Soon clearing to give a mainly sunny day, climbing up to the high teens.
Jogging across the park just after 8.30 this morning, we joined a gaggle of people at the parkrun start/finish area. This is a parkrun that tends to get anywhere between 20-40 participants, but their numbers were boosted this week by an abnormal number of tourists, including a group of eight from the NE of England, bringing us up to a field of 45.
I felt like I set out at a keen pace and having done so I thought I may as well see how long I could keep it up. It made for a hard run, such that I was expecting a significant gain on my times of the last few weeks. Alas, it seems my perception of effort was a step away from reality, and I knocked just 2 seconds off my best time of the trip. To boost my ego, no fast women turned up today, so I managed my fourth 'first female' of the trip.
Back at Bertie, there was a lengthy period of consideration: where were we going to go, and how were we going to fill 6 days between Düsseldorf and Maastrict (a distance of 100km). I duly came up with a good plan, but we were aware that we would be left with a whole week and a Saturday without a parkrun once we left Maastrict. So, I had a look at the parkrun event map in case there was another run locally in Germany that had magically appeared.
What timing! There on the map was a new location, whose inaugural event is next Saturday. Sixty kilometres away (and yep, we have headed east again) but as attending inaugural events as a non-local is not frowned upon in Germany, it seemed like an excellent plan to head there instead. So, 6 days to cover 60km. Another significant period of perusing maps and resources, and I'd come up with a new plan.
Alas, the plan started to fray at the edges when we got to the first stop (out of three earmarked to see us through to Friday) and found it full. A shame, as: a) it's a good location, in the shadow of a towering viaduct and only a 10 minute walk from town; b) simply going on to the next location wasn't a good option, considering the time/distance stats of the week ahead of us.
We have thus found ourselves 2km away from the Stellplatz, in a car park with no apparent merit other than its existence. We're too far away from town for a simple stroll in and the amount of litter (and particularly the pattern of that litter) tells us that yoofs gather here in cars at night. There's fly tipping in the bushes too. And the old football stadium has been extensively vandalised. We've tucked ourselves away between a caravan and a motorhome that are clearly in storage here, to prevent anyone from being able to park too close to us. We'll hope not to have too bad a night, and will return to the Stellplatz tomorrow in the hope of a space having opened up.
With the benefit of hindsight, we would have been better staying in Düsseldorf for a second night, where at least there were green spaces we could have ambled around this afternoon, but having not struggled to find available parking all trip, we hadn't expected it to be an issue today.
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