Before we began our running this morning we said goodbye to Colm who heads back to Dublin. His abundant energy, enthusiasm and cheerfulness will be sorely missed. I shall also lose him as a co-writer who brilliantly assisted me with some of the daily reports whilst he was on the Team.

We headed back to Luneburg where we finished yesterday and commenced running from the beautiful square.

Many German runners joined us to swell the number of runners to nearly twenty. We gladly welcomed Daniel from Germany who joins the International Team until Vienna. We all ran through the picturesque city of Luneburg in the hot summer sunshine and headed to the town of Uelzen, 39 km away. There we met a very nice lady with a good heart, Mrs Bauch from the Evangelical Church.

We ran through some peaceful countryside with large fields of wheat and wind turbines towering above them.

We discovered some beautiful summer images of nature.

Since we have been in Germany we have found that there are usually cycle paths along most of the roads which are ideal for running. Along these paths we have met many cyclists who smiled and greeted us.

At Salzwedel we visited Jenny Marx School where some of the children ran with us to the school. There we met one of their teachers, Mrs Klupsch and the mayor, Mr E Kaiser.

The children presented each runner with a Harmony Run picture they had drawn. There were some wonderful colourful drawings. On the wall of their school they had placed hand drawn flags where we had a group photograph.

They eagerly ran around the school with the torch.

The children and some local runners from Salzwedel running club ran with us a few kilometres. One local runner was 70 years old but he certainly didn't look it.

Along the route one of the vans met a restaurant owner who wanted to know about the Run. He kindly and generously treated them all to huge ice creams!

Five kilometres outside our final destination Gardelegen we sent Daniel our new Team member on to run to the city border. A few minutes later some runners turned up wanting to run with us and they informed us that more runners and children from PSV Gardelegen Athletics Club would arrive soon. We sent a car to bring Daniel back. When the car returned with Daniel they had also picked up another runner wanting to run with us. By the time we were ready to run the final 5 km we had a group of 15 runners, mainly made up of children. We found out later that the Town's mayor had arranged the runners to join us. They ran at a brisk pace, and 1 km from the centre we were joined by younger children who were so eager to run with the torch.

In the town's square we received a rousing welcome a large crowd of smiley people, and we met our new German regional co-ordinators for the next few days - Klaus and Roberto. It was great to see Roberto again after he spent time four weeks with the International Team earlier in the year.

The mayor of Gardelegen, Mr Fuchs, was so friendly and we could instantly feel that he had a big heart and with it a big smile.

Later our German hosts prepared us a tasty evening meal of salads and delicious food cooked outside on the grill.

We settled down to watch the World Cup Final, France versus Italy. But, 25 minutes into the game the television lost the signal of the channel! We frantically tried to get it back but to no avail. Some resigned themselves to missing such an exciting game and got on with doing their usual end of the day chores, while the Germans went to an Italian restaurant to watch the match.

Later in desperation Mark and Ondrej tried the television again and on CNN news found out that Italy had beaten France 5-3 on penalties. We were a bit disappointed that we hadn't watched the match, but it did mean though that time not spent watching the match was well spent catching up on work and getting an early night.

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Distance: 124km

Team Members:
Daniel Schenke (Germany), Jadranka Grbic (Serbia & Montenegro), Janos Derekas (Hungary), Mark Collinson (England), Marlen Bernhard (Germany), Olesya Ilyasova (Russia), Ondrej Vesely (Czech Republic), Petar Mihaylov (Bulgaria), Petr Machacek (Czech Republic), Svetlana Gorshkova (Russia), Valentine Bebik (Ukraine).

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