Another Walk in the Rain... (some of it)

The last time I went walking in the rain (not deliberately) was on Jersey, when most of our cliff path walk was accompanied by a steady but mild drizzle.

Yesterday, my Mum and I decided to brave the rather changeable conditions - it had rained during the night and early morning, but then kept changing between sun and clouds all the time - and finally go for "our" walk, from Marbach train station to my parents' allotment. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you have accompanied us on that walk many times, and I won't hold it against you if you skip this post :-)

Still, although our route is always pretty much the same one, it never really looks the same - nature does not stand still for a moment, and there are other changes, too.

My Mum was so sure we'd already been for this walk together this year, but I knew we had not done this in a while, and checked both my diary and my blog for it. The last time we walked this way was really last year in September.

This time, one of the first things that happened was that my camera's battery went flat - I could not take one single picture. Luckily, my Mum had her camera, too, and she kindly lent it to me for the rest of the day. My cable fits, too, so that I had no problems transferring the pictures to my computer this morning.

You've seen this view from the early stage of the 2-hour-walk before, but never so cloudy, I believe:

We were wondering where a certain path we always walk past (but never on it) was leading, and while my Mum was resting on the bench at the top of the hill, I had a quick look. The path turned very wet and muddy pretty soon, though, and so I gave up exploring until another time and only took this picture:
 

There were a few tiny patches of blue in the sky, leaving us in hope that we'd be reaching the allotment before the next shower:
 

But then the rain started in earnest, and for nearly all of the second half of the route we had to move on and could not sit on any bench for a short break. A lot of the walk is uphill, which is very tiring for my Mum, so a break would have been most welcome.  We had umbrellas, of course, and it was neither cold nor windy, but you simply could not sit anywhere.

I wish I could transmit the wonderful scents of this walk along with the pictures! Dog roses, elderflowers, yasmin, roses, privet hedges - some of the scents were so strong and heady, not even the rain could wash them out of the air.
 
We arrived at the allotment almost exactly two hours after we'd set off, and found that my Dad had prepared everything for coffee and Brezeln inside the little hut:
 

But who was nowhere to be seen was Dad! He'd left his mobile in the hut, too, so we couldn't ring him. My Mum rang home to see whether he'd gone home, but it was unlikely, and only the answering machine took her call.

About 15 minutes later, Dad arrived - he had taken the car to drive along the route he thought we would take, intending to pick us up and get us out of the rain. How sweet of him! Unfortunately, he had not thought of ringing my Mum on her mobile first, to check which way we were walking, and we had taken the other one of the two most likely routes, so he never saw us.

Never mind! We enjoyed our coffee and the brezeln, followed by strawberry pastries. The rain had stopped already by the time we had reached the allotment, and later, the sun came out - and stayed for the rest of the afternoon.

Before I went on another walk (on my own - my Mum really needed to rest now; and you know I HAD to go and visit my favourite place, the Grassy Path!), I took these pictures at the allotment:  

Can you see the mysterious figure in the glass bauble? :-)

I'll take you along for my walk to Grassy Path in my next post.