We were very fortunate to visit and meet the International legend Raymund Hermes in December 2018 before he passed away in 2019. Raymund Hermes achieved 17 International victories and 25 German National victories. We organised a visit with the help of a translator, a family member who now lives in Germany. We had ordered two hens from the ‘The 270’ lines. Jan Mathe the marathon loft manager was there to greet us, show us round the lofts, talk marathon pigeons and had already selected 28 hens for us to look through.

From the 28 hens we picked two hens the most closely related to Stoffel’s 270 Golden Barcelona. Four years later one of these hens DV01063.18.1358 is the mother to our ‘Jubilee Barcelona’ 1st National Barcelona 2022 (UK).