Sunday 5 August - Binzwangen, Riedlingen and Anhausen

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park to the south of Anhausen (exact location: 48.28531, 9.50070).
Weather: Almost entirely wall-to-wall sunshine, hot and humid.

"To move or not to move" was the question we were still asking ourselves when I finished last night's blog post. Was the inconvenience of being kept awake by screeching tyres and music greater than the inconvenience of driving off somewhere, only to need to return tomorrow?

As it approached 9pm, we were leaning towards staying. Then yet another boy racer came haring through the car park at such a speed that any stray child would not have stood a chance. The needle suddenly swung right around to 'Go!'.

It was an incredibly good decision. We drove 12km to the car park of an open air museum to the north of Binzwagen (or 'Bin Wagon' in my head), which turned out to be in the middle of open countryside, on a quiet road - perfect for an undisturbed night. (Incidentally, had I known the nature of the museum in advance, we would have arrived earlier for a look around - missed an opportunity there (exact location: 48.0956, 9.40863).)

As we had gone to bed tonight, the plan for this morning was to drive back to Riedlingen first thing so that I could run the section of river from there. This morning's change of plan was that I ran straight from Bertie's door, reaching the river after a couple of miles, and reaching Riedlingen another 4 miles or so later. There I waved to Mick, who had put Bertie back in the spot we had occupied yesterday, and continued on along the river for another couple of miles before turning back. Of the ten miles run, about nine were in the sunshine, so by the time I was finished I was hot and bothered and my thighs were disgruntled at the effort. Solution: go and stand crotch-deep in the river for a while. It felt so good - even if I probably did look a bit odd.


Breakfast, showers and faffing around preceded me investing an hour in trying to sort out the problem of why Blogger was refusing to let me post with photos (for the last two days I've had to add the photos afterwards, via the Blogger dashboard, which is painful and something I only took the trouble to do because we had wifi). My final test post seemed to work, but we're sitting somewhere with no mobile phone signal tonight, so I'll not know whether this post will go until we leave here.

Eventually, via the Service Point which ate our Euro but refused to give us any water (the nearby public toilets gave me 5 litres for free, which will tide us over), we made a move, finally leaving the Danube for the last time on this trip.

Our journey to tonight's stop wasn't straightforward as the SatNav's route involved an 'Access Only' road and Google took us to the end of a dead-end vaguely near where we wanted to be, but short of driving through some farm buildings and wheeling Bertie off a cliff, it wasn't going to get us here. We happened upon the right route in the end and found that we had seriously mistimed our arrival, not having known in advance that this is a very popular riverside picnic spot, complete with lots of picnic tables, a children's play area and some barbecue pits. The car park was rammed, as were all of the nearby roads. Yet, we still managed to find somewhere to shoehorn Bertie (thanks to a German van moving over a little) and since then we have moved three more times - making like Goldilocks, albeit in our case waiting until a better spot was free before taking it and then repeating until we hit on somewhere relatively flat where we are not reversed into tree branches.

It's a lovely location. I'll take some pictures tomorrow (and, hopefully, Blogger will allow me to post them).

Saturday 4 August - Riedlingen

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Stellplatz at Riedlingen, although he may not remain so.
Weather: cycling between clear skies, to quickly building thunder clouds and heavy showers, twice so far.

Another bad night. A gathering of yoofs in the car park and loud dance music until midnight. Then they moved slightly further away. At 5.20am a group of lads thought it would be fun to stand right behind the motorhome spaces and yell at the top of their lungs. We had already resolved by then that we wouldn't be staying here tonight and I had drafted a letter in my head telling the town council that it's no good installing motorhome facilities to encourage tourism if they also have such badly behaved residents. Funnily enough, both of our neighbours left first thing too.

Today:
- a failed run along the river for Mick (calf still not well);
- a walk along the river for me (running rest day):

- a walk out of town for bacon and egg McMuffins and some fizzy pop (yes, I am ashamed to admit this when there is such a selection of bakery/cafes in town; you know, I can't even remember the last time I drank pop);
- a visit to the fire fighting museum - it's a small private collection of fire fighting equipment and memorabilia and was worth a look:

- by way of redemption for our breakfast option, a visit to a local café to enjoy some cake in celebration of my achieving another year of life:

- arrival back at Bertie about 10 seconds after the next batch of rain arrived - given how heavy it turned out to be, this was good timing.

By the time we had done all of that we were feeling disinclined to move on. However, at 8pm cars started gathering again. They've just all screeched off, with much tooting of horns, but I reckon there's a fair chance they'll be back. So a decision needs to be made: should we stay or should we go.

(I'm having great difficulty adding photos to posts at the moment. I know I got the first two in this post transomed,  but it's too painful for me to put right.)

Friday 3 August - Riedlingen

Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz (which is just 3 allocated spaces in a large riverside car park) at Riedlingen (exact location: 48.15215, 9.47792).
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and hot.

It was a huge effort to get out of bed this morning and I was late in getting out the door in my running gear (8am!). It was already hot, my route was unshaded (and complicated by a multitude of tracks - I had to keep checking the map on my phone as I went along) and it probably didn't help that the section of audiobook to which I was listening was telling of almost literally dying of thirst when lost in a canyon in Mexico. And my legs were tired. But on the plus side, my surroundings were pleasant and I passed a field containing six storks (real live ones today).

The usual morning routine ensued, with a bit of consideration as to where to go next. Riedlingen was the answer, taking a bit of a gamble, as the Stellplatz here had two reviews, one good and one saying it was awful. Stellplatz reviews are strange things though, and some people will rate a place as awful for the oddest reasons. My assessment is that it's fine. We're right next to the river and only a two minute walk from town.

It was into the town that we headed soon after arrival and even on approach it looked promising:

It contained all of the expected stuff too, like a "I wonder what that's about" fountain...

...lots of half-timbered houses, and the occasional painted one:

It was interesting enough to make me want to get more information from the Tourist Office, but it turns out that there isn't one; the 'i' symbols take you to a couple of notice boards with a map. I've found out more from the town's website (accessed via the town wifi that we can pick up from the comfort of Bertie).

Lidl was our last stop before lunch and we were almost there when Mick realised he didn't have a coin for a trolley. Shops over here don't have baskets, so we had to go native: put our shopping straight into our bag, then empty it back out at the till. It may be what everyone else does, but it still felt entirely wrong from an English cultural point of view.

Almost back at the Stellplatz, we came upon the most incongruous sight of the day...

...a man, standing up to his knees in the river, playing the accordian, whilst people in canoes (and two swans with six cygnets) paddled past.

Later this afternoon, a hubbabaloo on the river eventually went on too long for me to not know what was occurring, so I made the effort of walking the twenty steps to find out. It turns out that we are next to a put-in portage point for the canoeists, and there were a lot of them:
Lots of people on the water...

...and a big queue waiting their turn.

Other than that, there has been a lot of sitting around in the shade again. I'm a big fan of warm weather, but we're currently firmly in the 'hot' zone (i.e. more than 30 degrees) which is a few degrees warmer than is comfortable to do much*.

^{(*As I typed that, I thought about all the days spent backpacking (through the Mojave desert and in the Pyrenees, most notably) in temperatures in the mid-30s, even into the 40s, but that's different - sitting around isn't an option in that context.)}

Thursday 2 August - Munderkingen

Where's Bertie? He's sitting on a basketball practise court just outside of the village of Munderkingen. It's a strange place for him to be, but bizarrely, the court doubles as the official Stellplatz. (Exact location: 48.23358, 9.65048)
Weather: Cloudy start, soon burning off, then sunny until gone 6pm when a wall of cloud and rumblings of thunder slowly approached from the east.

It was a bit of a disturbed night, with heavy rain and a few rumbles of thunder coming in around midnight, the former necessitating the closing of the rooflights as, even in their lowest open position, bouncing rain gets in. Closing the four rooflights didn't do anything to help the temperature inside.

Even so, I was up early for a run, which turned out on a nicer route than expected, albeit it was a bit harder going on mixed terrain, after being spoilt with such good riverside tracks lately. I did wuss out on running back up to Bertie - that 200' climb was over too short a distance for my liking, so I called it my warm-down.

Back at Bertie, Mick had splashed out 50c on 1kWh of electricity, at my request. At the risk of too much information, my legs had reached a stage of yetiesqueness that required some mains power for the strimmer epilator. We managed to use the whole kWh before we left, then donated a further 40c to the town at the service point. The machine said it was 51c per 5 minutes of water, which seemed a bit strange (particularly as the machine didn't take any coins smaller than 10c), and it wasn't until I put the last coin in (which, even more strangely, took our registered amount to 47c versus the reality of 50c) that I realised that we could have put in just 10c for 1 minute. We only needed to fill two bottles. Even my most skinflint tendencies couldn't begrudge the town a few cents in return for giving us a free Stellplatz.

Onwards to Munderkingen - a whole 11km along the road - where on arrival we were a little confused. The Stellplatz was well signposted, so there was no doubt that we were in the right place, but the gravel entrance to the field gave way to grass, where there was a football pitch to one side of us and a basketball half court on the other side. I got out and had a little look around for the best spot, whereupon it became clear that the basketball court *was* the parking area.

Bertie, wondering what happens if some local kids want to use the hoop

This sign is on the court and the diagram is perfectly clear - four motorhomes can park here.

Our walk into and around the village this afternoon showed it to be a nice little place, with interesting features including:
- removable flood defences (no photos of that);
- a pretty main square:

- another of those "What's that about then?" sculptures:

- the church (a religious bling-fest):

- and seven storks (but my phone will only allow me to put an even number into a collage):


The late afternoon has seen us sitting outside on the basketball court (the other side of which runs the Danube), where, in the shade, it's been quite a nice temperature. Then, just as I went in to prepare tea, a band of bumbly clouds was seen approaching, followed rapidly by rumbles of thunder. It was an hour and a half before it hit us, but when it did, goodness, that rain was heavy and one of the claps of thunder didn't half rattle the ground. It's just starting to pass by now, which is a good thing, as I feel like I might melt if I can't open the windows again soon.

Wednesday 1 August - Ehingen

Where's Bertie? He's at the Stellplatz on the edge of the town of Ehingen (exact location: 48.27945, 9.73436). Electricity and water are available for a charge; waste is free.
Weather: Until 4pm, sunny and too hot. Then clouding over and a strong breeze picking up, cooling things down considerably.

Our plans for a walk around the nearby lake were thwarted this morning, when my assumption that the 'road closed ahead' sign applied only to cars and bikes (i.e. to the road, whereas we were on the embankment) proved false:

Nope, we won't be getting through there!

Instead we did some out-and-back wanderings along one edge of two lakes (impressive array of bird life), plus a detour to the river. The only thing it felt like we were missing on the revised plan was the shade we would have had through the trees on the opposite side of the water. It had been 25 degrees when we got up this morning and was pushing 30 by 9am.


Given the temperature, it was unfortunate to arrive in Ehingen to find all shady spots at the Stellplatz (which must be the Festplatz - it's a huge tarmac area that is mainly empty) taken. Even with Bertie's back turned to the sun and with a black-out blind on the cab window, and towels as sunshades over his kitchen window and door, I'm not sure we would have been able to tolerate the lack of shade if it hadn't been for today's saviour: there was a breeze - something that has been absent on previous sunny days.

Towels as sunshades. Must make up some insulated foil covers for the side windows.

The temperature wasn't such to make us want to be very active, but I did take a longer walk than intended when a circuit I was checking out came to a dead-end at a river and I had to backtrack.

A huge building passed on my walk, seemingly in the middle of open countryside. I couldn't believe how well it blended in.

Later we took a walk into town, which wasn't anything notable, bar a couple of features:

Fountain in the main square.

If the owners of this building had gone for the World Record for crookedest house, rather than the one we saw in Ulm at the weekend, I reckon they might have got it.

The stop at H&M on the way back through the town wasn't because I was after another new frock...

I didn't buy it. Its cut and my body didn't go well together.

...but because it offered a few minutes inside somewhere with air conditioning. The main church was similarly cool, but only the porch area was open (separated from the main body by glass walls/doors, so we could see inside, but not walk around).

By the time we got back to Bertie, he was creating shade for us on 'our' side (i.e. the side with the main door; we could have sat out earlier on the other side, but we would have felt like we were invading our neighbour's space). Even with the shade, it felt like we were in a fan oven for an hour or so, until suddenly the edge of a cloudy weather front was seen approaching. The wind picked up several notches, the sun went in and gradually the temperature has cooled (as I type this at 8pm it is just under 30 degrees inside - we hadn't got that low by 10pm last night).

We'll likely be on the move tomorrow, as there is nothing here to make me think that we will want to stay. Given how little of interest there seems to be in the immediate area (we are right next to the Donau cycle path, but it doesn't run along the river here), it's surprising how many vans there are here, and how many of them look to be here for a few days at least, the occupants seemingly happy to spend their days sitting in deckchairs in a huge car park.

Tuesday 31 July - Donaurieden

Where's Bertie? He's in a small car parking area, alongside a very quiet road, between the Danube and some lakes, just by Donaurieden (exact location: 48.30989, 9.87070)
Weather: Mainly sunny and a bit too hot.

There's even less to report today than normal. After an early run along the river...

A flat track with distance markers every 200m - perfect for some speed intervals

...and a couple of errands in Ulm, I set out a number of options as to where we could go this week. Mick plumped for continuing the Danube theme, so here we are 20km to the SW of Ulm, heading back towards where we left the river to take our detour down to Bad Waldsee 9 days ago.

Very little has been done since we arrived. I've sat in the shade as much as possible and when I lost the shade for an hour or so, I got the bed down and took to lying as still as possible, feeling that I may melt otherwise. A little bit of a snooze may have accidentally occurred.

We have both wandered around the immediate area, although not at the same time, so as to save having to shut Bertie's windows.

It's a really pretty location in which we have found ourselves, and given a temperature a few degrees lower, I would have enjoyed to explore it further.


View from Bertie's front window, across a field of sunflowers to a castle and church on yonder 'hill' (/slightly raised ground)

The nearest lake to where we are parked, about 50m away

About 200m in the other direction is the Danube. You may notice it's much smaller here than in the photos from the last couple of days, taken just 20km down stream. That's because there's a series of control barrages around Ulm that have made the river there artificially large (to my mind, a series of slowly flowing lakes).

Monday 30 July - Thalfingen (Ulm)

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park on the Danube, only a few km to the NE of Ulm (exact location: 48.43470, 10.06348).
Weather: Sunny and hot.

It was a productive start to the day. At 9.30 we were just heading back to Bertie with two backpacks and one carrier bag full of clean laundry. That should keep us going for a few more weeks, although possibly not quite to the end of the trip.

Once back at Bertie (where the 23 degrees inside felt deliciously cool compared to outside and the laundrette), the laundry wasn't sorted and stowed, opting instead to move straight on to our next destination, hoping it would give us more attractive surroundings.

The journey was so short (5.6km) that as we pulled into the car park (which is, as hoped, much nicer than the one in Ulm), I recognised that I had run past this place yesterday morning, albeit on the opposite bank.

After great consideration of the position of the surrounding trees relative to the course of the sun, Bertie was settled into a spot so close to the river that it wasn't a stone's throw away, but spitting distance.

Bertie is just visible in this snap, if you know where to look. He's on the left bank, just beyond tall tree.

Walking a circuit later in the day, out along our side of the river, then back along the other bank, we took a slight detour to wander through the woods, checking out the access to the adjacent lake. Having seen a few people with towels, swimsuits and inflatables arrive and leave, we suspected there were swimming opportunities to be had, and so there were, in the form of lots of little side-trails leading to tiny grassy clearings at the lakeside.

Thus, as it started getting uncomfortably warm this afternoon, we went and spent a little time doing this...

...although it wasn't particularly cooling, as the water varied in pockets between 'swimming pool' and 'bath' in its temperature.