Since leaving London and the Olympics on Tuesday evening, I’ve been in Nuremberg, Germany for work (though in German it’s spelled Nürnberg) . It’s a relatively small little town, but it’s plenty cute and old world. The whole center of the town is surrounded by a wall on virtually all sides, which you can easily see on maps online:
In order to really check out the town though, I decided to do what I usually do: Go for a run.
Lacking a specific plan or route, I simply reached out to the world of Twitter with suggestions. In a few minutes, I was flooded with ideas – all of which were essentially the same: Run along the river/pond/lake that cuts through the center of town.
So that I did.
It would take me a little over a mile to reach the river from my little hotel. However, the main wall around the city has a nice bike/run path surrounding it, so I just followed that. In fact, the below photo was taken almost exactly at the center of the above aerial image.
Once down along the river/lake/pond (it was sorta all three), I jumped on a different trail – which was quite busy with walkers, runners and cyclists. Off to the sides the fields were filled with folks playing various sports. Just a nice weekday evening.
About a kilometer later, I passed a giant…aerobics…session? It wasn’t super-clear what they were doing, but it did look fun. And I was impressed with just how fit almost everybody was:
Onwards I went though – determined to find the end of the river/lake/pond thing. The path was mostly in the shade, which would have made it ideal on hot summer days. But at 7PM on a rather mild day, it was almost like fall running…which I love.
As I checked one trail sign near what I thought was end of the water feature (and thus the path would loop around) – an odd smell caught my nose. That of farm animals. Sure enough, just off in the distance as the running path changed to dirt and then to single track – there was a vast allotment of sheep:
Clearly, I couldn’t have run this far and not gone and checked out the sheep. I figured they were fenced off in a field or something. Turns out – not so much. In fact, they were just hanging out on the running path. Check out this woman who was running, trying to get through the flock (btw, it’s technically correct to call it either a flock or herd…but using the word flock is more fun):
Or this bike commuter pushing aside a little baby sheep:
And then there’s me…yup, me:
Really, I can’t make this stuff up. I just sorta run into things like this on my workouts. Be it sheep, camels, donkeys, giant pigs or submerged WWII tanks. It just happens. Thankfully there wasn’t anywhere near as many sheep as was back in January in New Zealand – that would have been a tough flock to cross.
All in all, about a 8.2 mile run. Perfect hour length before grabbing dinner.
With that, back to Paris I go – ready to enjoy a week at home! Thanks for reading all, and have a great weekend ahead!
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You need to go running in Wales to see more sheep.
nice report! When will you switch from miles to km’s? It would be the ultimate sign of assimilation 🙂
I did a half and half in this post – I mixed it up with half of the references in kilometers, and half in miles. Roughly representing half of my readers are from the US, and half from outside the US. 🙂
Yours may be the only post I’ve read about Nurburg that doesn’t discuss this:
http://www.nuerburgring.de
or is that tomorrow 😉
Funny. Nah, not tomorrow, I’m sitting at the airport now – so not on my travel plans. Looks cool!
@Active Lisa.
I fear Ray didn’t even get close to the Nürburgring – Nürnberg is a good 400 kilometers to the East of the Ring 😉
Cheers,
SR
You’re never going to leave Europe and return to the states.
@Rainmaker:
Luckily you did not run later at night along the wall, as this is the workplace for most prostitutes in Nuremberg (Legall in Germany).
In regard tot eh sheep:
In Germany they often hire a sheperd with a herd of sheep to “mow” the grass. It is eco-friendlier than any lawnmower, less noise and just darn cute.
You will find flocks in many mayor cities on big grass areas.
Also Nuremberg is one of the bigger cities in Germany!
Timster wrote: Also Nuremberg is one of the bigger cities in Germany!
That’s right. But through an US-American’s eyes… 😉
Hey Ray, I can’t believe that you’ve been to my home town. Just to clarify you notion of “small town” – Nuremberg is among the 10-15 biggest cities in Germany with a pop of more than 500.000 (city region pop >1.5 mio) and even more noteworthy in the context of your blog probably the most famous triathlon region in Germany with lots of triathlon events including the Challenge of Roth (former Ironman Europe). Surely an endurance sports mekka 😉
Such a pity that we didn’t catch up on track since you were following my regular training route passing the pond (Wöhrder See) and along the river of Pegnitz … Otherwise kudos to your blog! It’s always a good and entertaining read! Hope you had a convenient trip back to paris with (most likely) air france. Mostly kind of an adventure 😉