Tuesday 11 October - Hattingen

Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz just outside of Hattingen, where it costs €12 per night, including wifi and toilets. Showers, electricity and water are available for small extra fees. Exact location: 51.40846, 7.18070
Weather: Sunny. Cool start, warming up to mid-teens.

Our breaths were vapourising as we stepped out of Bertie at 0830 for a run along the old railway line. Not just a straightforward run for me today (and thus for Mick as he came along with me): my virtual coach wanted me to do a 10 minute warm up, followed by a 1.6km time trial. With that bit of the session done*, we were significantly further than a 10-minute cool down away from Bertie.

With a hindsight that we weren't to gain until mid-afternoon, we should have stayed in Velbert for another night. In order to achieve that hindsight, we stuck to plan and left. After tootling 10km along the road, Bertie hauled us all the way up to the car park of a climbing park (we've found hills, albeit tiny ones!), only to find it full. Mick didn't favour loitering until a space came free, due to the tree cover (no solar gain to heat Bertie), so we quickly came up with a Plan B: back at the bottom of the hill, I'd spotted a Stellplatz sign. It wasn't in the Park4Night database, but we thought we'd go and check it out.

We managed to find the Stellplatz - a few spaces at the end of a swimming pool car park. Also under trees, rather out in the sticks, and (most importantly) on a slope that even our levelling ramps wouldn't be able to iron out. It was at this point that I pulled out our BordAtlas (hard copy directory of German motorhome Stellplätze), whereupon I discovered other places locally that aren't in Park4Night. I'd not been using the hard copy directory on this trip, assuming that Park4Night is sufficiently comprehensive (even though, in 2019, we found it not to be so in Germany).

We didn't immediately go on to one of the options I'd found in the directory, deciding instead to go to a car park we'd passed on our way to the slopey Stellplatz. Again, with hindsight, we probably should have spent the night there and taken a walk into the local town this afternoon. However, after a quick sushi lunch, we decided instead to come to Hattingen. Not fancying our chances of finding a space after mid-morning at the Stellplatz that I had earmarked for tomorrow and Thursday, we headed instead to the dedicated motorhome spaces in one of the town car parks.

Those spaces were immediately next to a junction of two busy roads. Fine for a look around town, but far from ideal for overnight. Another perusal of the options, and it was a short hop to the Rathaus car park, where it seems the motorhome bays have been removed and the car park is now for cars only (it's the problem with having a hard copy directory that's 8 years out of date).

Back to the previous car park we went, resigned to just putting up with the traffic for one night. Bertie was nicely settled into one of the bays, I went to buy a ticket, and discovered that the price had increased from €5 to €7. The lower price seemed expensive for such a poor location and no way was I paying more than that.

Seventh time lucky! Realising that the Stellplatz we had earmarked for tomorrow was now only 2km distant, we thought we may as well go and see if they had space. They had two**! It's impressive how they've managed to fit 18 parking bays into such a small space, but it's a quiet location, has facilities (including a café and a mini-golf course), and is but a few steps from the Ruhr river.

So, a new record has been set. On 16 July 2017 it took us 6 goes to find somewhere to spend the night and I didn't think we would ever beat that. Let's hope that today's record stands for a long time to come.

From this afternoon's walk along the river

^{(*The 1.6km turned into 1.9km due to operator error with the watch. Averaged 4.43/km pace over that distance, but unfortunately (for today's purposes) the entirey of the distance was gently down hill. Hadn't anticipated that would be the case when we opted to turn left along the railway route.}

^{**The other space was taken within five minutes of our arrival. We pulled into our space, applied the handbrake, rotated the cab seats and were all set for the next three nights. The new arrival next to us took somewhere in the region of an hour to get themselves comfortable. I will give them credit for the fact that their set up involved outdoor chairs and two tables (dining and side), with a table cloth on the dining table, which they immediately set with cups and saucers and a sugar bowl. A few minutes later an insulated pot of coffee was brought out. Then they decided their van needed to be about three inches further back on their pitch, so their steadying legs (4 off) were retracted, they rolled off their ramps, they manoeuvred that three inches, then repeated the levelling/steadying process. All good entertainment.)}