We gladly welcomed back Sara from Italy who rejoined the International Team for the duration of the run in Switzerland.

From Baden bridge we commenced our day's running and ran on the cycle path alongside the River Aare.

We ran over the many bridges that spanned the River Aare, and people who we met ran with us.

It was wonderful running on the cycle paths for the runners, but proved a headache for the support vehicles, as the roads didn't necessarily follow the river so closely. It also didn't help that we hadn't any maps at the start of the day, but experience and intuition helped considerably as somehow we always found our way, and located the runners.

At Brugg the mayor came out of a meeting to meet us specially and then run with us.

As we were running on the cycle path we met many people, and one young lady thought we were running with the Olympic torch, but we stopped and explained and she happily held the torch. As you can imagine we met many cyclists and one African man coming towards us on his bike shouted, "Peace Africa!" with a big smile. At certain points we came off the cycle path and ran more closely to the river on small trail paths. It was so peaceful, running upstream with the water steadily passing us by, and the sunlight streaming through the overhanging branches of the trees that lined the path.

Slightly behind schedule we arrived in Olten where the mayor and former Director of Olten schools received us.

We went to the top floor (11th) of the town hall where we had great views over the city.

The mayor use to run 400m at national level, and he jokingly said that he had missed his run today to meet us. We said he should join us, but unfortunately he had a prior engagement.

The afternoon was a quiet one, with no further ceremonies other than at our final destination in Burgdorf. The sun shone brightly for us as we rapidly ran the 40 km for the rest of the afternoon. Nature glowed all around with some bright yellow flowers.

Along the road we passed many farms and we stopped to find some piglets.

As we approached Burgdorf we could see the castle.

Running adjacent to the river many young triathletes on their bikes wearing swimming costumes speedily passed us - the Swiss have a great tradition in triathelon.

We arrived at our accommodation in a scout hall next to the peaceful meandering river. The manager of the local fitness centre and swimming pool generously invited us to the swimming pool, where we had great fun somersaulting (some less successful than others) off the diving board.

To complete our day we visited the castle nearby, and had a brief tour.

We climbed up to the tower where we could the whole city.

There was also a knight's room and like the knights of Camelot we sat around the table (there were the exact number of chairs for all of us) and a local journalist took photographs.

In the parking lot nearby we came across a balloon ready for take off.

The pilot let us in the basket and turned the burner full on.

Afterwards he took off in the evening's clear blue sky.

Later in the evening some of us explored the local caves along the river. As you can see from the photograph it was like Raiders of the Lost Ark.

At the end of the evening we said goodbye to Prafulla and Subarnamala after their short stay on the International Team. Wherever they could they ran.

They both said they wished they had planned to stay longer. All runners who join the Team tend to wish to stay longer.

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Distance: 87km

Team Members:
Anete Klavina (Latvia), Anne Schulze (Germany), Doris Cott (Switzerland), Lachezar Rusev (Bulgaria), Mark Collinson (England), Prafulla Nocker (Austria), Ondrej Vesely (Czech Republic), Petar Mihaylov (Bulgaria), Petr Machacek (Czech Republic), Sandro Zincarini (Italy), Sara Cusmano (Italy), Spas Cholakov (Bulgaria), Subarnamala Riedel (Germany), Terezia Hammel (Hungary), Veronika Kuliskova (Slovakia).

Harmonemail:
You can send a message to the runners or read the messages.

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