Onwards to Germany today and Essen was our first stop. According to the guidebook if you just had one day in Essen you should go to Zollverein to the Museum and see the Panoramic view, so that’s what we did. The aire was in a kids park so we had a good walk round that, annoyed the lamas and then set off on the 2.5km walk to the Zollverein site. All in all in the mid 30s heat we managed to walk about 10km with very very little shade to visit what… a coal washing site.

We never knew coal was washed, given how dirty we’ve always found it and after a very interesting afternoon at the museum we still don’t. The site and factory was just like you would expect a disused site to be and the museum was all about the Ruhr area and it’s traditions. To be honest it was very like looking back on Scunthorpe in our childhoods, and probably a lot of other towns in the Uk.