Where's Bertie? He's in a car park next to an Aire immediately next to the Citadel in Bitche. Exact location: 49.054839, 7.434614.
Weather: Sunny and warm (24 degrees max)
I wasn't appreciative of the 7am alarm this morning, but Mick was quite right when he pushed me out of bed a few minutes later. I was off on a long run and wanted be back both before lunch and before it got too hot.
Hot wasn't a concern first thing. It got down to 8 degrees last night, such that if we'd had the duvet to hand at 5 this morning, it would have been appreciated; as it goes it remains unused thus far on this trip.
Usually I find my longer running routes online (wikiloc is my main resource) and download a gpx file. This one I found in a leaflet issued by the town of Hornbach, but I couldn't find a corresponding gpx file anywhere. You'd not believe how long I spent last night trying to plot it based on a high-level line drawing - I plot my routes on the Gaia App and it wasn't behaving as it ought.
The route turned out to be varied, with some quiet roads, lots of tracks through countryside, a few field margins, some forest tracks and one village. The village was in France, making it a two-country run.
I only knew I'd crossed into France when I saw this sign.
In the French village. Zoom in to see the mail box.
'Mon Réve'. I bet he didn't dream of a garden that shabby.
Gorgeous day for it. There red kites in this photo. I'd just scared them out of a tree.
The high point of the route was at Chapelle St. Joseph at 374m...
Not the style of church I'd anticipated standing by itself at a high-point, a distance above the nearest village.
...altough a while later I took a minor detour to visit another point that was nearly as high.
The views were far reaching in many places, but only of farmland, so I shoved my face in front of this one.
This is how I knew I'd run back into Germany (the label on the bin, not the bin itself)
I was flagging a little with 5km to go, so called Mick who duly gave me a pep talk: "You chose the route and the distance. You can't complain about it!" He was quite right, so I just got on with it. By then I was in a rather lovely forest too - no views, but more pleasing, I thought, than the open countryside.
Weather: Sunny and warm (24 degrees max)
I wasn't appreciative of the 7am alarm this morning, but Mick was quite right when he pushed me out of bed a few minutes later. I was off on a long run and wanted be back both before lunch and before it got too hot.
Hot wasn't a concern first thing. It got down to 8 degrees last night, such that if we'd had the duvet to hand at 5 this morning, it would have been appreciated; as it goes it remains unused thus far on this trip.
Usually I find my longer running routes online (wikiloc is my main resource) and download a gpx file. This one I found in a leaflet issued by the town of Hornbach, but I couldn't find a corresponding gpx file anywhere. You'd not believe how long I spent last night trying to plot it based on a high-level line drawing - I plot my routes on the Gaia App and it wasn't behaving as it ought.
The route turned out to be varied, with some quiet roads, lots of tracks through countryside, a few field margins, some forest tracks and one village. The village was in France, making it a two-country run.
The high point of the route was at Chapelle St. Joseph at 374m...
...altough a while later I took a minor detour to visit another point that was nearly as high.
I was flagging a little with 5km to go, so called Mick who duly gave me a pep talk: "You chose the route and the distance. You can't complain about it!" He was quite right, so I just got on with it. By then I was in a rather lovely forest too - no views, but more pleasing, I thought, than the open countryside.
Back at Bertie I didn't tarry and as soon as I was washed and changed, we were off. Via a quick visit to the service point, to Bitche we came (pronounced Beech, apparently; that's not what I'm going with). This was supposed to be our next stop after Rodemack, 10 days ago; our quick German detour turned out to be rather more extensive than intended!
The main point of interest in Bitche is the citadel, which we intended to visit tomorrow. Then at lunchtime, Mick reminded me that we have a phone call tomorrow and we didn't yet know at what time it would be, so we made haste and went to the citadel this afternoon instead*.
It was by far the best fortress we've visited, by virtue of the access to the underground elements. However, the tour consisted of a dramatised version of the events of Franco-Prussian war (and seige of Bitche) of 1870/1871, with a section of the story being played on a screen in each room we stopped in, and the timing was such that it gave no time to look at the rooms/tunnels we were passing through. Moreover, it became really confusing as to where we were meant to go in the middle; our group of 6 managed (maybe more by luck than judgement) to figure it out, but the fact that we kept then being joined by more people who had walked ahead from groups behind us told that many had missed out at least one, if not two stops along the way. I would have prefered more of a museum approach, with each room set up as it might have been during the seige, with just an audio description of the story, rather than a TV dramatisation.
The outside exhibits (read with the help of Google Translate) completed our visit, which had been well worth the time and money.
We returned to Bertie (who isn't parked in the motorhome parking area purely because we didn't notice its location when we first arrived, then didn't feel inclined to move) to find he had new neighbours: British vans on both sides. Those on Bertie's door side have parked with their door facing ours, and have put their awning out so far that it's a good job that Bertie doesn't have an awning, as there wouldn't be room for it (not that we would get it out in a car park, even if he did). Bizarre, given that there's acres of space here.
Within those acres of space is a van we were parked next to in the Aire in Rodemack a week and a half ago.
(*At the ticket office, Mick was flattered when they tried charging him full price and the questioned whether he was over 65 when I requested a senior ticket for him. He was disappointed that they didn't then ask him for proof of age. Prices were €11 for me and €9 for Mick.)
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