Where's Bertie? He's in a car park on the edge of Brander Wald - a forest next to the town (Aachen suburb?) of Brand. Exact location: 50.75508, 6.18977.
Weather: Rain overnight, then a murky, but warm, start, finally clearing to sunshine at lunchtime. High teens.
We stepped out of Bertie into a misty, murky morning. A blanket of warm dampness. It persisted as we ran out and back along the Ruhr, often enclosed in trees, but sometimes with a view of the water.
Along the river Ruhr
Back at Bertie it seemed sensible, as we had a service point freely available for emptying and filling, to have showers, and once we'd breakfasted and done that the morning was marching on towards 11am and it felt like we ought to leave the Stellplatz.
It was only as I was setting the SatNav post-Service Point visit that I realised that the place I'd identified last night for a visit today wasn't on our route to Aachen. Whilst I contemplated what to do about that issue, Mick drove us to Lidl and nipped in for the one item we needed (and only came out with three items!). By the time he emerged I'd decided that we would proceed with the visit, but would travel the direct (little roads) route, rather than the indirect motorway route favoured by both the SatNav and Google Maps.
Mick prefers motorway driving to unknown little roads, but with this route taking us through gloriously coloured forests and little towns and villages, where substantial stone buildings were plentiful, I was a happy passenger - much more interesting than being a passenger on a motorway.
Thanks to the continuted murkiness of the day, our destination car park was quiet on arrival (it's been busy the last couple of hours), so we slotted Bertie into an appropriate space and had lunch before heading out.
I had declined to tell Mick why we had come here, feeling that the objective would be better if it was a surprise. Setting out into the forest, Mick started guessing: dolmens; wood sculptures; or airplane crash site. I answered each in the negative.
Our approach to the site was indirect (mainly because I hadn't looked up exactly where we were heading before we set out), but the forest made for a pleasant walk even without an objective. A little way before reaching the site, we entered a military zone (fortunately no flags flying), and (apparently!) soon after this Mick wondered, but didn't ask, if our objective was abandoned tanks.
Nail on the head
We only visited three of the four, because I erroneously thought there were only three and thus we didn't look for another. A bit of Googling since we got back tells me they are American tanks from the 1950s that, when no longer required by the USA, were acquired by the German military to use as targets in training. I have no idea how true this is as I've not found what I would consider to be a reliable source of information. On the one hand, it would have been nice if there had been some information on site, but on the other hand it was good to go blind, giving us the chance to hypotethise based on what we could see.
Verdict: an interesting diversion during a walk through a forest.
A quick change of subject, but relevant to the late afternoon when this car park got busy:
When we registered Bertie, we bought 'GB' number plates for him, complete with the EU circle of stars. When the UK changed from 'GB' to 'UK' last year, I bought stickers to cover over and change the country identifiers on the plates. It turned out those stickers were of inadequate quality and by the end of our 2 months in Spain earlier this year they had faded. By summer, they were bleached white. Because we don't need to have number plate country identifiers, provided we have a 'UK' sticker on the back, we've left the number plates as they are. That means that: 1) our nationality is not obvious from the front of the vehicle; and 2) given that pretty well every vehicle you see in Europe has that blue section on their plates, it looks a bit dodgy that ours is semi-covered up. As a result, multiple times per day we will have people standing in front of Bertie staring at his number plate. If it's a couple or a group, a discussion will often ensue. Occasionally, someone is curious enough to walk around to the back to have a look at his rear. I cannot tell you how many people have done one or more of those things this afternoon. I'm a bit torn whether to leave the number plates as they are for our entertainment, or whether to splash out on new plates to put passers-by out of their misery. (There is, of course, a fair chance that many people, in seeing the UK sticker, but no Union Flag to assist them in identifying the country, assume we're from Ukraine. The fact that we're left hand drive will probably assist in that assumption.)
Weather: Rain overnight, then a murky, but warm, start, finally clearing to sunshine at lunchtime. High teens.
We stepped out of Bertie into a misty, murky morning. A blanket of warm dampness. It persisted as we ran out and back along the Ruhr, often enclosed in trees, but sometimes with a view of the water.
Back at Bertie it seemed sensible, as we had a service point freely available for emptying and filling, to have showers, and once we'd breakfasted and done that the morning was marching on towards 11am and it felt like we ought to leave the Stellplatz.
It was only as I was setting the SatNav post-Service Point visit that I realised that the place I'd identified last night for a visit today wasn't on our route to Aachen. Whilst I contemplated what to do about that issue, Mick drove us to Lidl and nipped in for the one item we needed (and only came out with three items!). By the time he emerged I'd decided that we would proceed with the visit, but would travel the direct (little roads) route, rather than the indirect motorway route favoured by both the SatNav and Google Maps.
Mick prefers motorway driving to unknown little roads, but with this route taking us through gloriously coloured forests and little towns and villages, where substantial stone buildings were plentiful, I was a happy passenger - much more interesting than being a passenger on a motorway.
Thanks to the continuted murkiness of the day, our destination car park was quiet on arrival (it's been busy the last couple of hours), so we slotted Bertie into an appropriate space and had lunch before heading out.
I had declined to tell Mick why we had come here, feeling that the objective would be better if it was a surprise. Setting out into the forest, Mick started guessing: dolmens; wood sculptures; or airplane crash site. I answered each in the negative.
Our approach to the site was indirect (mainly because I hadn't looked up exactly where we were heading before we set out), but the forest made for a pleasant walk even without an objective. A little way before reaching the site, we entered a military zone (fortunately no flags flying), and (apparently!) soon after this Mick wondered, but didn't ask, if our objective was abandoned tanks.
We only visited three of the four, because I erroneously thought there were only three and thus we didn't look for another. A bit of Googling since we got back tells me they are American tanks from the 1950s that, when no longer required by the USA, were acquired by the German military to use as targets in training. I have no idea how true this is as I've not found what I would consider to be a reliable source of information. On the one hand, it would have been nice if there had been some information on site, but on the other hand it was good to go blind, giving us the chance to hypotethise based on what we could see.
Verdict: an interesting diversion during a walk through a forest.
A quick change of subject, but relevant to the late afternoon when this car park got busy:
When we registered Bertie, we bought 'GB' number plates for him, complete with the EU circle of stars. When the UK changed from 'GB' to 'UK' last year, I bought stickers to cover over and change the country identifiers on the plates. It turned out those stickers were of inadequate quality and by the end of our 2 months in Spain earlier this year they had faded. By summer, they were bleached white. Because we don't need to have number plate country identifiers, provided we have a 'UK' sticker on the back, we've left the number plates as they are. That means that: 1) our nationality is not obvious from the front of the vehicle; and 2) given that pretty well every vehicle you see in Europe has that blue section on their plates, it looks a bit dodgy that ours is semi-covered up. As a result, multiple times per day we will have people standing in front of Bertie staring at his number plate. If it's a couple or a group, a discussion will often ensue. Occasionally, someone is curious enough to walk around to the back to have a look at his rear. I cannot tell you how many people have done one or more of those things this afternoon. I'm a bit torn whether to leave the number plates as they are for our entertainment, or whether to splash out on new plates to put passers-by out of their misery. (There is, of course, a fair chance that many people, in seeing the UK sticker, but no Union Flag to assist them in identifying the country, assume we're from Ukraine. The fact that we're left hand drive will probably assist in that assumption.)
You may need new number plates to get through your next MOT!
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