Tuesday 4th July - Volklingen

Nice little ride over the border in to Germany today to visit the Volklingen UNESCO world heritage site steel blast furnaces.

Huge site. The last steel was 'tapped' here 4th July 1986. Exactly 31 years ago. A lot of the site is being made visitor friendly with walkways installed and weeds and pigeons​ banished. Part of the site though has been left to become your typical brown field industrial wasteland with budlea​ thriving.

All very interesting and the scale of the works is incredible, but there is no real explanation to tell you what you are looking at or how the various parts of the site worrked together as one to take the raw materials in, feed the blast furnace and output steel. Some simple labels would help. Instead we were left trying to work stuff out from our limited schoolboy knowledge of how steel is made and looking at the machinery to imagine what it may have done. In an odd way that actually kept the interest up trying to puzzle it out for yourself. One thing is for certain though, no matter where you worked in that place it must have been  like hell on earth. That's certainly the vision you get. Hard physical work in a harsh environment, something trying to harm you - either dust or heat, or great chunks of machinery flying around.  This may be why they named the over grown part' paradise'. 

With no shade in the car park, the land rovers all had interiors like a blast furnaces​ when people returned. Temperature has definitely risen today.

A run back in to France for the night at St. Avoid. All this area is very industrial,-part of the Saar valley. Campsite is green though, up on a little hill, Felsburg, away from the town.  John went for a short walk in the evening in to the town and back via a shall commonwealth cemetery. Mostly ww1, but some from ww2 and memorials for forces occupying post ww2.

First curry of the trip. Made with 'Chuck Masala'. Went down very well.