Where's Bertie? He's in a Stellplatz (no services; it's a few dedicated bays in the car park of the Community Centre) in the town of Leichlingen. Exact location: 51.10328, 7.02155.
Weather: Sunny and warm, getting up into the high teens, maybe even hitting 20.
Let's try for a brief post tonight. I finished knitting Mick's second pair of socks last night, and completed the tension swatch for my new jumper, so I'm eager to get it cast on and underway this evening.
The redeeming feature of last night's expensive (for what it was) Stellplatz was that it was adjacent to a forest, giving me a good running location this morning.
Next stop, having availed Bertie of the service point, was the town of Opladen, because it had a laundrette with convenient parking just across the road. Having paid €2 for 24-hours parking, once the laundry was done and lunch had from the eatery adjacent, we thought we may as well take a walk around the town. Nowt interesting there, which we surmised was because it had been bombed to the ground during WWII - confirmed when I spotted an information sign on the site of the old Rathaus (28 December 1944). Not a wasted visit - we finally managed to find the exact outside front door mat we've been after (too many nights on gritty Stellpältze on this trip!), a chopping board to replace the one I've cut through, and we fell into an eis cafe for a couple of ice creams. We ate the latter sitting on benches marvelling at everyone wearing winter coats, when we were perfectly warm enough in shorts. The thermometer in front of us read 22 degrees, albeit not in the shade.
Weather: Sunny and warm, getting up into the high teens, maybe even hitting 20.
Let's try for a brief post tonight. I finished knitting Mick's second pair of socks last night, and completed the tension swatch for my new jumper, so I'm eager to get it cast on and underway this evening.
The redeeming feature of last night's expensive (for what it was) Stellplatz was that it was adjacent to a forest, giving me a good running location this morning.
Next stop, having availed Bertie of the service point, was the town of Opladen, because it had a laundrette with convenient parking just across the road. Having paid €2 for 24-hours parking, once the laundry was done and lunch had from the eatery adjacent, we thought we may as well take a walk around the town. Nowt interesting there, which we surmised was because it had been bombed to the ground during WWII - confirmed when I spotted an information sign on the site of the old Rathaus (28 December 1944). Not a wasted visit - we finally managed to find the exact outside front door mat we've been after (too many nights on gritty Stellpältze on this trip!), a chopping board to replace the one I've cut through, and we fell into an eis cafe for a couple of ice creams. We ate the latter sitting on benches marvelling at everyone wearing winter coats, when we were perfectly warm enough in shorts. The thermometer in front of us read 22 degrees, albeit not in the shade.
It's Christmas in the shops over here too
We were never going to stay in Opladen, so on to Leichlingen we came (only 6km up the road). Unusually, it was a post-dinner walk into town for us this evening, as I wanted to check out the cycle path alongside the river for tomorrow morning's run. The light was fading by the time we did that, so no photo.
Having left Bertie in an empty car park, and not feeling like we'd been gone long, we returned to find it half full of cars, with bikes parked all along the railings, and a motorhome next to us.
Sculpture of the Day (in Opladen)
Like that cliché phrase from cowboy films, "we're moving out..."
ReplyDeleteI'm just finishing a Hawker Tempest, it has a shiny red spinner on the propellor which is topically a "distraction" * drawing attention away from minor imperfections in the camouflage elsewhere.
* I don't know if you have been following the Truss saga but she and her chancellor are heavily into "distractions."
I generally try to avoid reading any news other than the headlines, and particularly anything political, so I currently stand blissfully unaware of the details of the distraction techniques.
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