Ingelheim-am-Rhein - Sinsheim - Breitungen
Distance: 256 Miles.
Back in the car and straight on to the Autobahn, heading south and east towards "Sinsheim Auto-Tecknik Museum" . After many days overdosing on historical buildings, vinyards and so on, I needed something more techinical, and as the Nurburgrings opening times didn't fit at all this seemed like the perfect thing!
What can I say, an incredible collection, 5 or more aricraft on the roof, all of which you could go in and including, as you can see over, not only Concord but also the Russian attempt, the Tupolov TU-144, "Concordski" which first flew on the 31st of December 1968, two months before Concord. It was the first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2, and the fastest commercial airliner ever (Source of information Wikipedia, so it should be correct!!!!).
In addition to the aircraft there is a huge collection of war machines, cars, bikes, farming equipment and rather bizarly cinema and theatre organs. Sorry about the poor photo quality below, I had the camera on the wrong setting and most of the things I wanted to show you didn't come out. There was a very smart Triumph TR6, btw.
Anyway, well worth a visit. If I get the chance I want to go back. Maybe next time we visit the vets in Ingelheim, I can sneak off for the day..... We had a good 4-5 hours at the museum, but between the energy sapping heat and the enormity of the museum there was plenty we didn't get to see.
Just 40Km from Sinsheim is the sister musuem "Speyer Tecknik Museum", where they have no less than a Jumbo Jet on the roof. That's also now high on my list of places to visit....
Leaving Sinsheim marked the turning point, now we were more or less on our way home, heading Northwards through Germany, ultimately towards the ferry in Kiel, although we still had a short diversion a 100 or so miles into Denmark planned to visit "the wedding helpers" (Mrs VL's Bridemaid, Husband and their recent addition, a 1 month old boy).
The car performed faultlessly in the blistering heat on the way up through what used to be the East German countryside. We desided to stop early evening, and after a little to-ing and fro-ing found a pleasent and cheap hotel in Breitungen.
After a large portion of traditional fair and a couple of local beers we took a walk around the village before retiring, with a long drive ahead of us the next day.
1 comment:
Odd thing about Concordski . . it was also the first commercial scheduled service - it apprently flew a couple of flights from Moscow to somewhere in Siberia in the early 70s before being withdrawn from service for, erm, 'technical reasons', the exact nature of which remain mysterious (but probably nothing to do with the Paris airshow debacle, blame for which probably lies with the French airforce . . .)
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