Wednesday 12 October - Hattingen

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Stellplatz at Hattingen.
Weather: Sunny. Cool start, but by afternoon warm enough to be jacketless when in the sun.

The river was steaming when I took a trot along it this morning, and as I was on the shaded side, it was a chilly-fingered outing.

That was a good reason not to go back out until after lunch: to give the day time to warm up. By the time we headed into town just before 1pm, it was perfectly warm in t-shirt and fleece, provided you weren't in the shade for too long.

Steaming river

Our trip into town turned out to be one of our best sightseeing endeavours on record, which was entirely thanks to the efforts made by the town council/tourist information board. We started by heading to the Allt Rathaus...

See the wonky spire behind the Allt Rathaus? They'd like you to believe that it was intentionally built this way to withstand the prevailing winds.

...where we found an information board that I (well, Google) duly translated.

Not the Allt Rathaus board, but by way of an example, one I snapped later.

At the bottom of that board, directions were given to get to the next point of interest, and thus our unexectedly comprehensive tour started.

There was just one place where we couldn't find the next board, which caused a slight hitch in that we were relying on each one to tell us the location of the next. We worked out in which direction it was likely located and sure enough, we were soon back on track.

Sightseeing is hungry and thirsty work. As we sat down and I surveyed the size of the cakes we'd just bought, I suggested that maybe one between the two of us would have been adequate. I'll not disclose quite how soon after the first the second photo was taken.

I didn't keep count of how many points of interest we visited, but it was enough to fill over two hours, and I think we walked pretty well every street in the town centre in the process. What I particularly liked (aside from the fact that the signs were all succinct) was that they hadn't ignored the modern, ugly (achitectural mistakes) buildings, but had highlighted them and explained how they came about, along with the dates when the attitude to redevelopment changed.

Here's a selection of snaps to try to convey what we saw:

It was a 2km walk from Bertie to the Allt Rathaus, taking us through a park where the variety of colours were striking. I hope they come across in this snap.

A badly composed snap of the Church Square

Delightful wonkiness in evidence behind the church.

Narrow streets one row back, behind the church square

The house on the left was deconstructed in another town and reconstructed here, with the information board noting that it doesn't fit in with the style of the town as it's too wide and agricultural looking. The house on the right is originally from the town, but from a few streets away; it wasn't clear why it was deconstructed and moved to this spot. The middle house is recent, but has tried to mimic the dimensions and style of the historic half-timbered houses.

Adjacent to the houses in the snap above was this flat-roofed monstrosity, dating from 1968. The information board told the story as to how the tendering process and policy at the time allowed something so out-of-keeping to get built in the heart of the old town, with the clear message of 'We'd never allow this now'.

Foundations smaller than the house you want and don't have a neighbour on one side? Just build out further on that side!

What a shape! Unsurprisingly, this building has protected status and is now owned by the town.

Smallest half-timbered house in the town, made that way as it needed to fit on the foundations of one of the defensive towers of the old town wall.

The retained part of a commemorative exhibition (from 1997...maybe?) related to the end of the iron and steel industry in the town.

A strong contender for Fountain of the Trip

No pissing in our street or we'll cut off your balls?!

Such an opportunity for Gayle Imitates Art, but Mick vetoed due to the number of people around.

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.)}

Monday 10 October - Velbert

Where's Bertie? He's spending a second night at the Stellplatz at Velbert.
Weather: Some high level cloud. Mid teens.

This Stellplatz has eight huge spaces, twice the width of those found in the more sardine-esque motorhome parking areas, and yesterday evening a new arrival mistook the spare space to the left of us as being a free pitch. I have no objection to sharing (even after the bad experience in Skipton), but they'd mistaken the marker on the left edge of our pitch as being the edge of a spare pitch, and thus rather than parking centrally in the space between us and our neighbour they snuggled up unreasonably close to Bertie. We wouldn't have said anything (at least not to them!), but they soon realised their error and left. A few minutes later a North Macedonian van pulled in next to us in a far more reasonable position. He's our neighbour again tonight. From some gesticulation I saw earlier, I'm not sure the woman on our neighbouring pitch, upon which he's also encroaching, is quite as relaxed as we are about sharing.

As for today, there's not an awful lot to tell.

Remember the viaduct under which Bertie is sitting, as shown in this photo from yesterday:

This morning we took a walk over it, from where we looked down onto Bertie and contemplated how many more solar panels we could fit on his roof...

...and in the other direction noted that the trees are starting to change colour:

Continuing a distance along the old-railway-leisure-route as it headed towards town, from another bridge we spotted a bakers so we found our way down to it. The lady therein was uncommonly pleased to be able to speak English to us, and we came away with both bread and cake.

Bienenstich, as recommended by my friend Maike

Back at Bertie, an email caused me to become very vexed with our letting agent, necessitating spending time researching and penning a response to apprise them of my feelings. With that done, we headed out for a nice calming walk around the local cemetary (just the other side of the viaduct) and then to the local park.

The latter was more diverting than expected, being not just another nice mature German park, but also containing a Tierpark (small animal zoo)...

Sheep, goats and rabbits all in together

Li'l oddies

...and some educational sculptures with explanatory information panels:

I gave passing thought to playing a round on their mini-golf too, as it feels like an omission to have spent this long in Germany and not have had a go on one of these popular amenities, but opted instead to just continue around the perimeter of the park.

Sunday 9 October - Velbert

Where's Bertie? He's in the Stellplatz at Velbert, where there was no room for him yesterday. It costs €5 per day to stay here, including electricity. Water is available for a small fee. Exact location: 51.34088, 7.03038.
Weather: wall-to-wall sunshine, but only getting to the mid-teens.

A silent night was had in last night's visually unappealing car park. Surprising on a Saturday night with good weather, but a surprise I was happy to take.

Thus we sprang out of bed this morning* to go and run/walk the undulating route I'd plotted following tracks and paths marked on the map, hoping they were public rights of way (which, it seems, most are in Germany). It worked out well, taking us through woodland...

... and along the trackbed of an old mining railway, with the occasional glimpse of views through the trees...

...before we looped back, temporarily finding ourselves out in the open before re-entering the trees:

Arriving back at Bertie at 1030, we paused only long enough for me to take some rubbish to a bin (I'd tried last night, but hadn't taken a torch and couldn't find the bin in the pitch dark), before driving the 2km back to this Stellplatz that had been full when we tried to park here yesterday. Mid-morning is generally a good time to find a space available, and so it was today.

Snap taken as I returned from buying Bertie's ticket, just after we arrived. It wasn't long before the sun reached us.

Second breakfast, showers then lunch fell one after the other, so it was afternoon before we walked into town for a look around. I'd seen some photos online that made the town look old and interesting. I'm now not sure if I was looking at the wrong town, or if we just didn't explore the right location today. There was nothing wrong with the place; it was just ordinary.

The main square, where some of the older-looking buildings were situated.

This church caught my eye for not being of classical design.

When walking through towns mid-week we often wonder when people buy things, as the streets are usually all but deserted, and the shops are generally closed on Saturday afternoons and Sundays so it's not as if people can spread their buying across the weekend. Today, even though the only things open were eateries, a newsagent and a florist, there was a minor bustle around the place - and especially around the 'museum for locks and metal fittings' where kids' activities were taking place. Apparently, Velbert is world renowned for being a producer of locks, a fact that had until today completely passed me by.

Spot the theme running through the sculptures

We arrived back to Bertie to find the car park, in which the Wohnmobile Stellplatz is situated, full to bursting. As well as various walking routes and a park immediately nearby, the car park also serves the swimming baths, and it seems that mid to late afternoon on a Sunday is peak time. With the sun dipping low in the sky as I type this, I'm sure there will soon be an exodus.

Fountain of the day (the serpentine creature popped up through the pavement a couple of times behind me too)

^{(*I may have used a little poetic licence here as to the timeliness and enthusiasm with which we peeled ourselves from the bed.)}

Saturday 8 October - Velbert

Where's Bertie? He's in the old car park of an abandoned football ground on the edge of the town of Velbert. Approximate location: 51.33053, 7.01983.
Weather: Soon clearing to give a mainly sunny day, climbing up to the high teens.

Jogging across the park just after 8.30 this morning, we joined a gaggle of people at the parkrun start/finish area. This is a parkrun that tends to get anywhere between 20-40 participants, but their numbers were boosted this week by an abnormal number of tourists, including a group of eight from the NE of England, bringing us up to a field of 45.

I felt like I set out at a keen pace and having done so I thought I may as well see how long I could keep it up. It made for a hard run, such that I was expecting a significant gain on my times of the last few weeks. Alas, it seems my perception of effort was a step away from reality, and I knocked just 2 seconds off my best time of the trip. To boost my ego, no fast women turned up today, so I managed my fourth 'first female' of the trip.

No pastries at the post-parkrun coffee location, so I had to have bananenbrot, which was served more fancily than it needed to be..

Back at Bertie, there was a lengthy period of consideration: where were we going to go, and how were we going to fill 6 days between Düsseldorf and Maastrict (a distance of 100km). I duly came up with a good plan, but we were aware that we would be left with a whole week and a Saturday without a parkrun once we left Maastrict. So, I had a look at the parkrun event map in case there was another run locally in Germany that had magically appeared.

What timing! There on the map was a new location, whose inaugural event is next Saturday. Sixty kilometres away (and yep, we have headed east again) but as attending inaugural events as a non-local is not frowned upon in Germany, it seemed like an excellent plan to head there instead. So, 6 days to cover 60km. Another significant period of perusing maps and resources, and I'd come up with a new plan.

Alas, the plan started to fray at the edges when we got to the first stop (out of three earmarked to see us through to Friday) and found it full. A shame, as: a) it's a good location, in the shadow of a towering viaduct and only a 10 minute walk from town; b) simply going on to the next location wasn't a good option, considering the time/distance stats of the week ahead of us.

We have thus found ourselves 2km away from the Stellplatz, in a car park with no apparent merit other than its existence. We're too far away from town for a simple stroll in and the amount of litter (and particularly the pattern of that litter) tells us that yoofs gather here in cars at night. There's fly tipping in the bushes too. And the old football stadium has been extensively vandalised. We've tucked ourselves away between a caravan and a motorhome that are clearly in storage here, to prevent anyone from being able to park too close to us. We'll hope not to have too bad a night, and will return to the Stellplatz tomorrow in the hope of a space having opened up.

With the benefit of hindsight, we would have been better staying in Düsseldorf for a second night, where at least there were green spaces we could have ambled around this afternoon, but having not struggled to find available parking all trip, we hadn't expected it to be an issue today.

Friday 7 October - Düsseldorf

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park sandwiched between the cemetary and Volksgarten (part of the Süd Park) in Düsseldorf. Exact location: 51.20546, 6.79476
Weather: wall-to-wall sunshine and warm by afternoon.

Having successfully spent five days travelling 50km up the road, we drove the final leg up to Düsseldorf this morning, popping Bertie into this car park that sits within 30m of tomorrow's parkrun course, albeit it's about 700m across the park to the start/finish area.

The park was the first excursion of the day, walking a lap of tomorrow's course. It's another good park, but with such a network of paths that, even after a recce, we will be relying on the course being well marked.

One of the ponds in the park

With that lap complete, we crossed the car park and took a little look at the cemetary, which wasn't wow-worthy like the one we visited in Köln, but this memorial caught our eyes:

Seeing the pillars listing names we assumed it was a war memorial, but no - it's the 'grave field' (per Google Translate) of the bodies given to medical research at the local university.

Lunch back at Bertie and a bit of admin, then it was off out again, for an adventure. Being 4km or so from the sights of the city, there wasn't time left in the day, even if there had been the inclination, to go on foot. Thus, it was finally time to try electric scooters as a form of transport.

The App for one of the providers was downloaded onto both of our phones, payment details entered and we scrutinized the map to find where the nearest scooters were located. That's where we ran into a problem, as there wasn't anywhere nearby where two were parked together. Divide and conquer it was and we met up on a street corner for me to navigate us into the city.

A little nerve-wracking, especially when we got onto a road without a bike path and, in my Britishness, I felt like it was wrong to ride on the pavement. We dithered and observed others, then proceded, albeit at a walking pace due to the pedestrians around.

Finding a designated parking space we ditched the scooters about 400m from our first port of call in the city: Königsallee. It's a stretch of 'canal' (officially so; I'd say it was a long, thin, rectangular lake) sited prettily between an avenue of chestnut trees, and spanned by a couple of picturesque iron bridges. Wikipedia tells me it was renamed as 'Königsallee' in 1848 as a concilliatory move after an incident involving horse manure being lobbed at the King.

Königsallee

Having walked its length, then veered off towards the Rhein, we didn't have to go very far before I declared that Düsseldorf is a much more visually interesting city than Köln. Köln may win on museums (if we were inclined to visit any at the moment), but Düsseldorf wins hands-down on outdoor wandering.

Old Rathaus (largely rebuilt post-war)

Telecom tower - I could see this from the Obstweg route I did a couple of days ago. It's possible to visit an observation deck on this one.

Eye-catching twisted spire on the Basilica

View along the two-level riverside promenades

With rush-hour rapidly approaching, we navigated our way back to a scooter parking area that said it had two scooters available (it did, albeing one was up the road a little way). Our route back was better than the outward one, allowing us to whizz along a bike lane in the road (rather than one on a pavement) at top speed (20km/h). Unfortunately, not all went smoothly as in the middle of a major road junction, my phone (with which I was navigating) launched itself out of the scooter's phone holder, and crashed onto the carriageway. Mick managed to avoid going over it, and I quickly backtracked to retrieve it. Incredibly, it survived with only some cosmetic marks to the bezel and a damaged screen protector (at least that did its job!). I have to assume I didn't insert the phone properly, as the built-in mounts are so grippy that I can't see how it could come out if properly inserted.

Anyhoo, we got back to Bertie having spent more on the scooters than we would have on public transport*, but it added an element of novelty and fun (with a modicum of scared) into the afternoon (and didn't require FFP2 masks, of which we still have none). We now rather wish we'd bitten the e-scooter bullet back in Hannover.

Sculpture of the day (excuse the light - nowt I could do about it) 

(*We each accepted the introductory offer of a month's 'unlocks' for €1, rather than paying €1 per unlock. There's a slim chance we may use scooters elsewhere next week, but even if we don't, it still saved €2 today. The charge was then 22c per minute, although I got some sort of a credit for dropping off/picking up at a designated space. All in, it came to around €8 each, return.)

Thursday 6 October - Monheim am Rhein

Where's Bertie? He's in a large car park in parkland that sits between the Rhein and the Alltstadt at Monheim am Rhein. Exact location: 51.09168, 6.87928.
Weather: wall-to-wall sunshine. Cooler than the last couple of days but still pleasantly warm when in the sun.

By our usual standards, a busy day. It started with a run along the river; a short one today but with some speed intervals on which I failed to hit any of the required paces. Hey ho. I enjoyed it anyway (maybe because I failed to hit the paces...).

Next was a trip to the sculpture park at Sindelwald, only 2.4km distant from Bertie, but we were too lazy to walk that in both directions, particularly when we were going to be driving in that direction today anyway, so we parked 1.2km away and walked from there.

The location of the 'park' was a lovely bit of forest on one side of a small, steep-sided valley, at the bottom of which was an old mill. The walk through the forest was worthwhile, but many a 'hmm' and a 'well' was uttered in response to the 'sculptures'.

Art in the forest

Pond next to the mill race

A quick trip to Lidl, where I finally found some chia seeds (for future reference, they were somewhat illogically next to the instant mash and pasta), then onwards to Monheim am Rhein. Once here a late elevenses was immediately followed by lunch, before we headed out to look at the old town (Alltstadt), finding at its entrance an information board describing a walking tour taking in all the key points of interest, with blue goose foot prints painted on the pavements showing us the way.

It is a nice place, but the street through the old town is mainly modern buildings, and even the historic ones looked too new. It wasn't until we got to the church that we found a plaque telling us it had been bombed in 1945 and subsequently rebuilt, thus making it seem highly likely that the other 'historic' buildings share the same history. I should clarify, I have no problem with destroyed buildings having been rebuilt to their original design, as it does preserve a level of heritage, although I prefer if we're told that's the case.

Looking along the main street of the old town to the tower

I translated the sign telling us about this building and can now remember nothing about it other than that the chap who had it built was a lawyer from Düsseldorf.

The stained glass in the rebuilt church was modern and, I thought, cartoonish.

Another nice warm day, so why not indulge in more ice cream before it turns cold again?

We'd spotted in the corner of Bertie's car park a garage (docking station?) for four driverless electric buses, and whilst out and about we encountered one a couple of times. Whilst driverless, it seemed to have a conductor aboard (perhaps they're still undergoing trials?), and he tooted his horn at us, as we were holding his bus up. The thing was, we were walking along a pavement, and it was the fault of the bus that it was seeing us as an obstacle or danger. We duly stopped, and the bus went past, but there's clearly a flaw in their operation if they can't drive by a pedestrian who is walking in a straight line along a narrow pavement, and it's clearly not reasonable to expect pedestrians on pavements to stop in order for the bus to continue. It's the first time we've encounterd driverless vehicles and on that performance, we're not impressed.

Driverless bus, as it left the bus station.

Having completed the walking tour of all of the points of interest within the town centre, we crossed the road into the park and took a walk onto the flood defence to look down onto the Rhein...

Not the mature parkland we usually come across in Germany, but still attractive

A barge passing on the Rhein.

Sculpture of the Day

Multiple attempts at Gayle Imitates Art, but I just couldn't get this one right.