Last night's camp proved good, there was neither sight nor sound of any human activity at all overnight. Regarding the spot generally, I forgot to mention yesterday that the whole area is also criss-crossed with extensive cycleways and were it not for today's parkrun we'd have been keen to check these out.
A swift breakfast was immediately followed by the dreaded drive up to Leipzig, which was indeed as awkward as anticipated involving, as it did, closed-roads re-routing, dodging people / cars / trams, and trying to adhere to weight restrictions and umweltzones (we occasionally failed). It was all rather stressful but we eventually made it to the huge urban green space area that hosted the run and, fortunately, found a free parking spot big enough to swallow the truck. Our vehicle is desperately Ill-suited to such capers. As am I.
The park itself is rather lovely. It's absolutely enormous, and once around a hundred metres in, you'd have no clue you were in a massive sprawling city. We even saw a red squirrel and signs of badger.
The parkrun was rather more enjoyable than the last two we've done, thanks mostly to the temperature. In contrast to the 30 deg C we've consistently endured, today was much cooler and far more suited to your average north-of-Englander. Organisation was splendid, the event friendly, and participants mainly locals. There were a few travelling visitors, though, and Emma found herself on memorialising duty (pic). We did OK (again given our current travel-weary and malnourished state). I was 6th overall and Emma 2nd female.
After the run, we skittled out of the sprawl as quickly as possible and - as the mainly-rural replaced the mainly-urban - all three of us felt able to breathe again.
A couple of easy hours trundling generally west followed until the time for begining to look for a stopover spot approached. At this point we left the autobahn and wound around some increasingly tight and twisty roads before chancing upon a sign indicating that a radio-controlled model aircraft display was taking place down an inviting looking track. Well, it would have been rude not to...
Half way along the track we found a high point where we could park up and watch the action without taking up excessive room in the alloted event car park, or being in the way of the formal toings and froings.
The RC aircraft being flown were genuinely awesome and the skill of the 'pilots' just incredible. There were all manner of aircraft from small to huge, fixed wing to rotor, and prop to turbine.
How such aerobatics are possible simply beggars belief. Of all the aircraft on display the turbine powered ones were - to my mind, anyway - the most impressive. Some were probably as huge as 4 metres in length and looked, flew and sounded exactly like the real thing. There was no sense of the 'jitter' or artificiality of disproportionate speed associated with the prop driven models, the turbines instead were exactly like the real thing, just appearing more distant than they actually were. The whole thing was a genuinely impressive experience. It even held Emma's attention for a full six minutes. Maybe five. This was the event.
We didn't stray far from the show before chancing upon another handy track where we've decided to try to live for the night (coordinates). There are good vistas from here overlooking mainly harvested arable land and - surprisingly - this landscape has thrown up another new-to-the-trip bird in the form of lesser kestrel. There were many in the area all interacting and their obvious sociability threw me. It was only when I went to my reference texts that I learned such behaviour is normal when this species is on migration. Every day's a school day!
Post composed at 22:00 on Saturday 23rd August from our intended overnighting spot N 51.43260°, E 10.74401° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:51.43260%2C10.74401