Wolfsburg; Sunday, 07 September, 2025

I had a bit of a lie-in and a late breakfast before checking out of the hotel and heading down to the edge of the Mittellandkanal to take in some more views of the Volkswagen site from a lower perspective before walking along the tow path and then over the bridge and onto the city’s castle

The Schloß Wolfsburg dates back to at least the 14th century and gave it’s name to the city in 1945 when it was renamed shortly after the war from the name the Nazi party had bestowed upon it when they set the city up as a home base for the peoples car manufacturer.

Today the castle is home to a number of galleries and one of the buildings in the grounds is home to the city museum which does a good job of telling the history of a city that’s less than 90 years old!

After looking round the museum and the castle I had a wander around the castle park which is now a public open space and open 24/7 and then headed into the Baroque garden which is a baroque style formal garden based around an old tea house which is only open during daylight hours.

From the castle I took the long route back into town through the castle gardens and across some of the smaller islands that sit in the Aller river before crossing over the canal on a bridge quite a bit further down from the station and VW works. I then wandered back on the other bank before cutting into town to visit the Kunstmuseum.

Having taken in the art museum I headed back through town to the hotel to grab my luggage and start the long journey back home, though the first couple of legs all went smoothly until I got to the airport to find that the flight was going to be delayed by at least 50 minutes and it was now a bit of a question as to whether we’d be allowed to depart if we couldn’t make it back to Heathrow before it closed for the night.

The plane was further delayed leaving London on it’s way over, landing nearly an hour late, but the fact it made it to Hannover was a relatively positive sign, and with a very quick off-load and clean we were all boarding the plane and were ready to go 50 minutes adrift of the schedule, but crucially ahead of the airport restrictions back in London, which the pilot was obviously conscious off as we had a very rapid taxi, turn and immediate take-off roll so that we were airborne less than 10 minutes after having the jet bridge detached.

Of course, when it’s late at night, the flight’s been heavily delayed and you just want to get home that’s the point where the schedulers decide a random C gate at Terminal 5, so a 10 minute transit ride back to the main terminal is in order, and just to spice things up the jet bridge decided to break just before it reached the plane and had to be restarted leaving us sitting on the plane for a good 5 minutes longer than needed.