Tuesday 25th June

I say my goodbye’s to Saskia, Malte has already left for Hamburg (at 4am!) and the children have gone to school and I’m off into my hire car with google maps to head for the Autobahn.

A lovely drive in my air conditioned hire car out of the Harz Mountains region and on to the Autobahn to Gottingen. I drop the car off, walk to the Bahnhof for what should be my easiest train journey, no need to worry about changing trains just stay on the high speed train for 4.5 hours to get to Basel SBB.

At this point I should mention that since I arrived into Switzerland and then moved on to Germany, the temperature hasn’t dropped below the low twenties, mostly its been high twenties early thirties Celsius. However, today it’s 36C and it’s causing train chaos. My first train breaks down at Karlsruhe, my next train gives up at Basel Badischer Bahnhof after threatening several times over to stop before this point, painfully close to Basel SBB. At this point, I give up and hop in a taxi to the hotel. Two and a half hours later than I should have arrived, I check in, relieved if not rather hot, having spent several hours on trains with broken air conditioning, hence the problems. I’m so glad I put in a contingency day ahead of my flight back just in case of any problems.

Wednesday 26th June

The day was spent roughly writing out part of this blog and sorting associated photo’s ahead of typing it all up.

Thursday 27th June

I leave my hotel in Basel, catch the bus to the Airport, get on to my EasyJet flight to Manchester and via a train and a Taxi I’m back home.

However, this part of the blog is really for my new German friends. I could never have expected to have seen all that I’ve seen, been given so much time by people who have their own jobs to get on with, who are incredibly knowledgeable, generous and kind. I’ve learnt so much about both species, which would have been simply impossible to comprehend by reading reports and papers. I’ve felt thoroughly welcomed and I’ve enjoyed every single minute. Thank you one and all.

Thanks to all at;

• The SNU and FORST
• The BUND
• Senckenberg Research Institute
• The FRV
• All at the Bonn Conference
• The Harz Mountains National Park
• Malte Gotz and Saskia Jerosch – Harz Mountains

All of your wonderful dogs and children. I leave you with my favourite German word – Genau!

Next stop, Switzerland in January.