A coolish overcast day with rain threatening.

Monika took us out to Cloppenburg Museum Village where Peter had a stall to sell his ironmongery. Peter, Monika's partner, makes & sells decorative iron works for the garden ranging from pot stands to small rotundas fabricated from steel bars & tubes. He also makes iron statuary & in Monika’s garden is a metre high dinosaur of his.

The museum village has example of old farmsteads, barns & houses set in a treed ground with a windmill & workshops & annually a fair is held there for crafts with stalls selling a wide range of products. We wandered through some of the buildings & the stalls & it was fascinating to see the construction techniques used in the barns etc.

From there we moved on to another fair at Stickhausen, where Peter had another stall & here he was very busy selling mainly the pot holders & smaller items. Apparently the people see his display & often come back to commission works & he has quite a full order book.

Finally we moved on to Bad Zwischenahahn where there is a 5.5sq km lake with yachts & pleasure boats set in very fine parkland gardens & here again were example of local farm buildings. Here we had a coffee served by a waiter in traditional dress of knee breeches & short coat over a collared shirt. We then walked through the gardens & back past some lovely small bronze statues, all for sale.

One of the most noticeable features here is the extensive use of bicycles which all look rather old fashioned as they have deep frames & the riders sit up very tall in the saddle. Most of the pavements are divided for cycles & pedestrians & one has to look very carefully for cyclists as they bowl along on their paths. Helmets are the exception rather than the rule but it all seems to work very well.

Peter came home very happy as he had good sales at the fair & after we ate we saw the end of a football international between Germany & the Camerouns.