Wuppertal.

Last night on TV news they showed pictures of the damage that had taken place through a winter storm in the north of New Zealand, flooded roads and blown down trees and damage to buildings. Now talking about freak weather situations we have had our share of them over the last week, luckily to say none of them affected us directly. The city of Dortmund is about 50 odd km from us as the sparrow fly’s, and in a matter of two hours it rained 200 litres per square meter. They showed on TV a part of the city were a small stream is situated near some houses. In a matter of no time the street and the houses were flooded and people were shown wading up to their waist’s in water. In the south a hailstorm beat the hell out of the area around Augsburg ruining the harvest there.

The whole week has been weather wise very humid with high temperatures and lots of thunderstorms causing a lot of damage were they hit, with the exception of one they all passed by us, so we can call ourselves very lucky.

Glad to hear that my brother no1broadstreet. has recovered from the flu and I hope his wife has also fully recovered by now. I’ve got a good tip for curing the flu according to my boss, Schnapps laced with ground black pepper; don’t know if it works because personally I’ve never tried it, but he swears by it and I have never seen him miss work when the flu was doing it’s rounds.

Personally my wife and I prefer our prevention flu jab which we have every year in October, it costs us nothing (the state pays for it) and it seems to work.

On Tuesday I did a trip to Wuppertal, (on the bike) which is about the same distance as Düsseldorf is from were we live but in the opposite direction. Were one is nearly on the flat all the way to Düsseldorf the ride to Wuppertal is all hill climbing and very strenuous. While I was there I made a couple of photos of the Schwebebahn.

Schwebebahn Wuppertal

On my way home I did a detour through a small village called Gruiten. In this small village church my daughter was married.

I intended to cycle along the banks of the river Düssel through into Neandertal but the weather turned bad on me and I was forced to end my trip long before I reached the end of the valley.

I was out picking Blackberry’s this afternoon on my own this time, I think we should have enough now. If we manage to make 10 glasses of jam with this lot that I have picked and the 15 that we have already made then that should see us through till this time next year.

The photos are of the Schwebahn taken in the outskirts of Wuppertal a placed called Vorwinkel. The Poppy’s I took on the way to Gruiten.

Take care out there were ever you are. Tshüss