We drove to a campsite near Frankfurt yesterday and took today off as we have another long haul tomorrow to make the Netherlands and find an overnight lay-by stop so we are within 100 miles of the port and Saturday's late afternoon ferry home.
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| Fond memories of Ironman success (Roth) |
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| A large Schloss spotted from the road |
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| 235 miles to add to the running total |
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| 340 miles, we'll aim to get beyond Essen tomorrow |
Hard to believe that our epic is finally coming to an end.
During our 7 days at Bad Feilnbach we noticed the lights in Elly weren't as bright as we thought they normally were. We thought it must be due to the differing power here (110 rather than 220), the night before last though was seriously dim and we couldn't work out what was going on. Then the pump for the water stopped working. Mmm, we checked fuses, power connections and the like until we suddenly noticed the battery setting was to Vehicle, not Auxilliary; we had been running the lights and pumps from Elly's engine battery, not the mains power. This resulted in a humiliating jump start requirement from the Campsite staff yesterday morning before we could be on our way. They were most obliging but we were really cross with ourselves especially as it's triggered a warning light on the dashboard which will have to be reset on our return. So frustrating. We've had battery issues before and know it's 50-50 whether you get the light triggered, typically it did happen on this occasion. At least we were able to continue our journey though! When we took a break at our usual 2 hour mark we didn't dare switch off not knowing how long we needed for a full charge, so we sat with the engine running whilst we had a coffee! All appears OK now and we successfully stopped and started for a re-fuel some time later before arriving here. No idea how the battery switch was changed, we have now tapped it down!
The site here is right by the river Main one of Germany's wide slow flowing rivers which are used for transporting bulk goods and for river cruising. We walked along the edge for a while this morning and spotted one barge loading grain, they are huge vessels, as are the cruisers.
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| A la Viking River Cruises! |
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| A commercial barge |
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| Floating hotels! |
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| Emerald Sky |
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| A dutch barge loading grain - the barge had sleeping quarters and two cars on its deck |
The last two days the weather has begun to turn, still warm in the day but we've had two nights of torrential rain which makes a tremendous noise in Elly and sleeping is somewhat difficult, even with earplugs! So I'm now super-tired alas which drains my spirits I have to say. We've spent part of today looking at various houses for sale in the Yorkshire area to see roughly what area to take a look around on Sunday when we get off the ferry. This has proved somewhat depressing to be honest and has brought to the fore the enormity of the task ahead of us. We are hoping to be able to look around one house on Sunday afternoon before heading back to Scotland first thing on Monday. I guess if the area generally doesn't speak to us we'll have to get the Atlas back out and see where else to try and call home.
Next internet connection will be on Sunday in Scarborough when I'll update again before a final update with all the statistics once we get back to Forres.
Auf wiedersehen
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