After a 2.5hr drive last night we parked in a remote motorhome parking spot, these things are great. They don't cost anything to use, you can refill water, empty waste and so in return Al and the kids took a walk into the village to get fresh bread from the bakery. Apparently there was a local speciality, Pfälzer Kartoffel, a donut filled with vanilla cream, which they just all had to get. Robert and Al had to help Liliya with hers as it was just too much.

As I was doing a bit of tidying the kids met the dog in the van next door and became friends with the owner.

Today we're returning to the Volklingen ironworks and have about an hours drive left to go. We need to fill up with petrol before we do and that's where our first bit of bad luck strikes. The height of the moho is 3.1m and Al has been very good at ensuring we keep under any height restrictions. Unfortunately there was a section of the petrol station that stuck out from the building which was lower than our moho and we hit it. Thankfully at a very slow speed and not enough to cause any lasting damage to us but the building had a slight dint.

The garage owners were fairly reasonable though and said going through our insurance would be too much of an overhead so if we just gave them €100 they would get a local person to heat the plastic and pop it back out. Whether they will or not I'm not sure as there looks to be damage to it from before we hit it. Our next piece of bad luck was driving along the dual carriageway when the speed limit changed but Al didn't notice and we got flashed by a camera. At some point in the future we may get sent a fine, it's not quite clear since brexit whether they can get our details, at least if they do I've since learnt that Germany has some of the lowest speeding fines in the EU.

We finally make it and notice the car park is a lot busier than when we came last year. Turns out today is a public holiday in this area of Germany so maybe that's why. The place is so huge though that throughout the visit there are many times we are the only people around.

The ironworks is the location for an annual urban art exhibition and is the reason we decided it was worth revisiting. Throughout the vast area there were around 60 pieces of urban and street art. Some were very interesting, others outright bizarre. It's the sort of art that mostly needs a written piece to accompany it to express what the artist was thinking.

The first was rather funny, a piece of card that blocked out a shopping centre however it only worked if you were of a certain height!

Artist view

My view

On the other hand I really liked this one of aladdin's lamp where if you took the picture at the right angle it looked like smoke was coming from it due to the chimney from a nearby factory.

One that stood out the most to me was called dead man. A guy takes a lump of coal, chews on it then uses the black spit to draw on his face! Here's the corresponding description.

I asked everyone else to name either their favourite piece or the one that sprung to mind first. For Liliya it was a little tree house we found on a walk through the area named paradise.

The tree house itself wasn't part of the annual exhibition but was a permanent feature.

We didn't go through this section last year. It was really fascinating to see how much nature is taking over. The plant shut down in 1986 and in just my lifetime you can see how trees have grown through metal structures and ponds have started to form.

Robert chose Codex Urbanus as he liked the different creatures within the picture.

Al went for Perpetual Ending, this was a video piece with the words The End and a video loop displaying news footage from disasters across the world.

It was certainly very thought provoking and the kids were really taking it all in. It was a worthwhile visit even though we'd been before as this time we didn't really spend time reading about the ironworks itself, instead we enjoyed hunting for the pieces of art, some of which were extremely well hidden!

For one we had to creep through a narrow passage, others weren't new this year and the elements had already started to wear them down.

For Al to get this view he had to go into a large tube and lay on the floor.

Here are some other pieces we thought worthy to take pictures of.

The kids remembered the park so we took a little time out for them to have a play.

It was the first day I've really felt the cold, we didn't wear coats as we'd been spoilt up until now and I hadn't realised how much was outside. Al really wanted to go climbing along the upper parts once we'd found most of the pieces of art but Liliya and I decided to go back to the moho, get tea cooking and warm up.

Thankfully the drive this evening is only an hour and we're not far from the border with Luxembourg. Our plan had been to find a supermarket to restock lunch supplies but unfortunately it's also a public holiday here so everything is closed. Tonight we're sleeping in the park and ride. Public transport here is free and we get to park for 24hrs for free so another cheap night which is good considering our unexpected cost first thing this morning.