At the risk of begining to sound dull (or duller), the stopover last night was another grand affair and as peaceful as they come. We also captured fallow deer and fox on the trail cam.
Today was originally intended to be just a really steady potter to put us within striking distance of Leipzig where, tomorrow, we hope to not only parkrun, but to add a much-needed K to our parkrun alphabeteer challenge.
Well, we started pottering quite seriously but about an hour and a half in, and quite by chance, spotted a road sign for Colditz. Game on! What British citizen could possibly responsibly miss an opportunity to visit such a notorious site of their former countrymen's derring do?
And so, we cranked a left and headed for the infamous castle / prison. Upon arriving at the advised (and very unprepossessing) larger-vehicles' parking spot, I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing. There was a self-built panel van conversion tucked away in a corner of the almost-empty and dismally ugly parking area that I immediately recognised as a lookie-likey overlanding-style, van-lifey type van that I've seen on countless occasions parked in a residential area in a town only a few miles from where we live. You couldn't make it up! The occupants were within and were unsurprisingly surprised when I approached them and told them where they were from. I'm not sure they were convinced of my assurance that I wasn't stalking them. It turns out they're now full-timing, or at least 'producing content' full-time from places like dismal German car parks.
The Colditz experience itself was a good one. Copious information and a language-specific electronic-guide device meant the story of the purportedly inescapable prison, plus its infamous planned and successful escapes, were well communicated. The spectacularly ambitious glider-plot was the icing on the cake.
After the castle we resumed the bumble towards Leipzig and to the coordinates shown. It's a bit of an odd place but quiet, serviceable, and close enough to the parkrun venue without seeing us tangled in urban sprawl and the dreaded reach of Umweltzones.
It looks like the area may once have been mined, and perhaps since used as landfill or similar, but has now been reclaimed and returned to a combination of arable monoculture and mixed-industrial use. Whatever the provenance, nature has well and truly re-established over vast tracts of it and we've spotted quite a few bird species and many brown hares. Most unexpected birds have been hundreds of greylags that gathered towards dusk in the centre of a huge recently tilled arable field, plus around 50 common cranes mooching amongst them foraging for food.
An assault on the sprawl of Leipzig begins at dawn...
Post composed at 21:30 on Friday 22nd August from our intended overnighting spot N 51.22826°, E 12.42326° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:51.22826%2C12.42326