international 4 days marches

july 20 2007

Today will be the last day of the international 4 days marches.

It's a huge walking event with 37.505 participants.
They walk either 30, 40 or 50 km a day.
More info here.

The saturday before many festivities start and they also last untill friday(night). Open air concerts, dancing, sing alongs. You name it.

The event is the largest of it's kind in Europe with about a million visitors.

In case you're interested and you want to have a look, there are several webcams on air.

Via Gladiola

wedren and other places.

The first three days were the best ever, people said.
The weather was not too hot, not too cold. It was a bit humid, but there was no rain, and a little breeze kept it pleasant.

The last day started with a weatherforecast of tremendous rain, thunder and lightning at the end of the afternoon. But there was sun, and it looked great.

I'd seen the news at TV, where it was told the bad weather was drifitng out of the country, and then suddenly thunder and lightning started.

I ran with the girls to check the house of friends who are on vacation, and when we came outside we saw a thick beam of lightning come straight down not too far from here.
It's just a few hundred metres to our house. We were just in time to keep dry from the rain.
Then we got a call from a friend nearby the centre of town that lightning had struck near of them.

Rain was splashing down not by buckets but by whole pools. The lightning was right above town.

Musicbands at the marches were told not to play, the endtime of the marches was delayed half an hour to give people the chance to stay out of the rain.
Two of the three trainroutes out of town were dwon because of lightning.

But people had a tremendous time and soon after the rain stopped the marchingsbands were making music again.

The rain made it all even more festive, as all people tried not te feel down because of the weather.

That's the true spirit of the 4 days marches.
Going on, going on...