Where's Bertie? He's in a large car park in parkland that sits between the Rhein and the Alltstadt at Monheim am Rhein. Exact location: 51.09168, 6.87928.
Weather: wall-to-wall sunshine. Cooler than the last couple of days but still pleasantly warm when in the sun.
By our usual standards, a busy day. It started with a run along the river; a short one today but with some speed intervals on which I failed to hit any of the required paces. Hey ho. I enjoyed it anyway (maybe because I failed to hit the paces...).
Next was a trip to the sculpture park at Sindelwald, only 2.4km distant from Bertie, but we were too lazy to walk that in both directions, particularly when we were going to be driving in that direction today anyway, so we parked 1.2km away and walked from there.
The location of the 'park' was a lovely bit of forest on one side of a small, steep-sided valley, at the bottom of which was an old mill. The walk through the forest was worthwhile, but many a 'hmm' and a 'well' was uttered in response to the 'sculptures'.
Art in the forest
Weather: wall-to-wall sunshine. Cooler than the last couple of days but still pleasantly warm when in the sun.
By our usual standards, a busy day. It started with a run along the river; a short one today but with some speed intervals on which I failed to hit any of the required paces. Hey ho. I enjoyed it anyway (maybe because I failed to hit the paces...).
Next was a trip to the sculpture park at Sindelwald, only 2.4km distant from Bertie, but we were too lazy to walk that in both directions, particularly when we were going to be driving in that direction today anyway, so we parked 1.2km away and walked from there.
The location of the 'park' was a lovely bit of forest on one side of a small, steep-sided valley, at the bottom of which was an old mill. The walk through the forest was worthwhile, but many a 'hmm' and a 'well' was uttered in response to the 'sculptures'.
Pond next to the mill race
A quick trip to Lidl, where I finally found some chia seeds (for future reference, they were somewhat illogically next to the instant mash and pasta), then onwards to Monheim am Rhein. Once here a late elevenses was immediately followed by lunch, before we headed out to look at the old town (Alltstadt), finding at its entrance an information board describing a walking tour taking in all the key points of interest, with blue goose foot prints painted on the pavements showing us the way.
It is a nice place, but the street through the old town is mainly modern buildings, and even the historic ones looked too new. It wasn't until we got to the church that we found a plaque telling us it had been bombed in 1945 and subsequently rebuilt, thus making it seem highly likely that the other 'historic' buildings share the same history. I should clarify, I have no problem with destroyed buildings having been rebuilt to their original design, as it does preserve a level of heritage, although I prefer if we're told that's the case.
Looking along the main street of the old town to the tower
I translated the sign telling us about this building and can now remember nothing about it other than that the chap who had it built was a lawyer from Düsseldorf.
Another nice warm day, so why not indulge in more ice cream before it turns cold again?
We'd spotted in the corner of Bertie's car park a garage (docking station?) for four driverless electric buses, and whilst out and about we encountered one a couple of times. Whilst driverless, it seemed to have a conductor aboard (perhaps they're still undergoing trials?), and he tooted his horn at us, as we were holding his bus up. The thing was, we were walking along a pavement, and it was the fault of the bus that it was seeing us as an obstacle or danger. We duly stopped, and the bus went past, but there's clearly a flaw in their operation if they can't drive by a pedestrian who is walking in a straight line along a narrow pavement, and it's clearly not reasonable to expect pedestrians on pavements to stop in order for the bus to continue. It's the first time we've encounterd driverless vehicles and on that performance, we're not impressed.
Driverless bus, as it left the bus station.
Having completed the walking tour of all of the points of interest within the town centre, we crossed the road into the park and took a walk onto the flood defence to look down onto the Rhein...
Not the mature parkland we usually come across in Germany, but still attractive
A barge passing on the Rhein.
A quick trip to Lidl, where I finally found some chia seeds (for future reference, they were somewhat illogically next to the instant mash and pasta), then onwards to Monheim am Rhein. Once here a late elevenses was immediately followed by lunch, before we headed out to look at the old town (Alltstadt), finding at its entrance an information board describing a walking tour taking in all the key points of interest, with blue goose foot prints painted on the pavements showing us the way.
It is a nice place, but the street through the old town is mainly modern buildings, and even the historic ones looked too new. It wasn't until we got to the church that we found a plaque telling us it had been bombed in 1945 and subsequently rebuilt, thus making it seem highly likely that the other 'historic' buildings share the same history. I should clarify, I have no problem with destroyed buildings having been rebuilt to their original design, as it does preserve a level of heritage, although I prefer if we're told that's the case.
The stained glass in the rebuilt church was modern and, I thought, cartoonish.
We'd spotted in the corner of Bertie's car park a garage (docking station?) for four driverless electric buses, and whilst out and about we encountered one a couple of times. Whilst driverless, it seemed to have a conductor aboard (perhaps they're still undergoing trials?), and he tooted his horn at us, as we were holding his bus up. The thing was, we were walking along a pavement, and it was the fault of the bus that it was seeing us as an obstacle or danger. We duly stopped, and the bus went past, but there's clearly a flaw in their operation if they can't drive by a pedestrian who is walking in a straight line along a narrow pavement, and it's clearly not reasonable to expect pedestrians on pavements to stop in order for the bus to continue. It's the first time we've encounterd driverless vehicles and on that performance, we're not impressed.
Having completed the walking tour of all of the points of interest within the town centre, we crossed the road into the park and took a walk onto the flood defence to look down onto the Rhein...
Sculpture of the Day
I see you are still indulging in your individual approach to numbers of meals and meal times.
ReplyDeleteGot to keep our strength up!
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