German Avenue Road, 11 September

Rheinsberg, it turns out it's such a pretty little holiday town; we had been too anxious to notice this last night. But we liked it.

First stop today, though was a little town called Gransee - we didn't  see the eponymous lake - which had spent the first 20 years of reunification in restoring itself and was very proud of the result. With good reason! The heart of the town was a tiny grid of streets, with a tower to guard the entrance, city walls (we didn't have time to walk round them, alas) and a very pretty church, with a former Franciscan monastery, in the throes of being restored but with an exhibition about the building. While in the town we scored some plums (now plum compote) and some local honey which the woman who sold it to me said came from her father's bees and was linden blossom honey. Also delicious Federweiße, the young wine which you mustn't tighten the top of. Love that stuff!

After visiting Aldi for more prosaic groceries, we drove down to a town called Neuruppen, simply because it was en route, and then set sail for Brandenburg, stopping a couple of times. We had heard that the aire here - which is lovely - only took EC cards, and the emergency button we pressed answered with a long string of numbers - obviously a number to call but my German really isn't up to phone calls. But the SW's card used to be an EC one, so we tried it and, to our surprise, it worked!

He went for a walk while I dealt with the plums, and tomorrow we will explore the town together.

German Avenue Road, 10 September

The Swan Whisperer announced that we were going to retrace our steps this morning to visit the Hanseatic Town of Greifwald, so after stopping at Demain to shop and to catch up once we had decent phone signals, we headed there and I'm glad we did as it was very pretty. We had lunch there, and then a walk and visited the Cathedral of St Nicholas. The guidebook said it was disappointing inside, but we loved it. Very plain and grey, and beautiful. I didn't take a photo as you had to pay to do that.

Then I stopped off at the local pound shop (euro shop, really) and bought a couple of egg spoons, and by the time I got back to the motor home, the Swan Whisperer has programmed the satnav, but I am not sure what had gone wrong but it kept on not going where he thought it was going and madpanicarrgh, and it took forever to arrive at where we thought we were going to spend the night, but no sign of the place, and we were very nearly out of diesel, so we had to retrace our steps and it was very expensive when we finally found some. But we did, and then we found a camp site by a lake, which is lovely. Rheinberg, that's the name of the place.

German Avenue Road, 9 September

We have very little signal here, so although I'm writing this on the date stated, it won't be posted until I have 4G again.

The weather here is lovely now; we hope we've seen the last of the rain for the time being. The Swan Whisperer went for a run this morning, and after a rather late breakfast, we went for a walk around Lauterbach. We had discovered last night that there was a narrow-gauge steam railway - we had both heard the train although neither of us had seen it - but when we got to the station we found there was a special service running because of an Iron Man event based at Binz, and the dreaded words "replacement bus service" were used. So we came away and walked a little further round the harbour, wishing (at least I was) that we had had breakfast somewhat earlier so we could have enjoyed coffee and/or an ice cream at one of the many cafés dotted about the place.

We had hoped to drive up to one of the official starts of the Avenue Road - there are three on Rügen Island - but the Iron Man put paid to that, so instead we drove to the little village of Wreechen which seemed to be all thatched houses, and then back to Putbus, where we saw some of the cyclists in the Iron Man, and then drive down to Stralsund. Unfortunately, the Sat-nav took us on the main road, but it didn't really matter. It is a gorgeous bridge - I'd been asleep when we crossed it yesterday. Into Stralsund where we found a parking place and had lunch, and then we drove on down the Avenue Road, so pretty, until we got to our current overnight place, by a lake in a hamlet called Meesiger.

German Avenue Road, 7and 8 September

Friday 7 September

I had a feeling all wasn't quite right when I went to the little supermarket near where we had  been staying, and couldn't see anything I fancied to eat. I knew we had enough food to do us, so came away without buying anything but by the time we got to Hamburg, all I wanted was my bed! No excursions no visiting the city, no photos, no lunch, no dinner.... Just sleep and horrid fever-dreams. The Swan Whisperer went out, of course, but oh, what a waste of a day!

Saturday 8 September

Felt a lot better this morning, and was able to eat some breakfast and go round a supermarket, but that was about as much as I was able for. Fortunately, it was a "driving day", so I didn't have to!  We made a detour into Lübeck, such a pretty town, and found a parking-place to have lunch in, and then headed on for the Baltic Coast and the start of the Deutsches Alleenstraße. Unfortunately, we chose not to believe the Sat-nav when it wanted to route us off the motorway and got held up for a couple of hours by a series of accidents and road works. But we got here in the end - rather a lovely place called Putbus - including a short drive along the Avenue Route, which looks as though it is going to be very pretty. Then the SW went for an explore - he says that we and the motor home next to ours are the only two without satellite dishes. I had been thinking, in Hamburg, that I hadn't seen so many so far this holiday.

German Avenue Road, 6 September

We were woken up a couple of times by mosquitos in the night, and at 06:00 decided we were thirsty so made tea and turned the hot water on. So we were up at 07:00 and, despite doing a little washing and using the services again, we were away just after 09:00. We decided to drive over the Afsluitdijk that separates the North Sea from the Ijselmeer, although it was too wet, gloomy and misty to see much. You can't see the North Sea at all as the dyke is too high. Half way over, or windscreen wiper decided to break again, so we had to stop to make running repairs with a bit of duct tape. 

We were fortunate that the first auto parts repair place we found was able to fit new wipers on the spot - it took longer to pay for them than the repair itself took, so we were not badly held up. We enjoyed our drive across the Netherlands, a land where field are bordered with wide ditches/narrow canals instead of fences. There were few crops - a few fields of maize and we saw one of sunflowers, but mostly animals - cattle, sheep, goats, a few horses and once, improbably, camels!

I dozed off and missed the crossing into Germany, but we are parked up in a small and rather popular aire in the village of Jade. The SW has spent most of the time hunting mosquitos, although he did go out for a short run. I have new books on my Kindle and have been reading and knitting.

German Avenue Road, 5 September

In the night it started to rain. And rain. And rain.  We spent most of the morning reading and dozing, waiting for the train to stop, and as it didn't, we went out about noon.

We decided to go via bus and metro across the Ij, and while we were at it, to go one stop further to Rokin, in the city centre. But hang on, which city are we in? Here we have a Body Shop, a Waterstones, a Primark, H&M, Hema.... We could have been in Clapham Junction! 

However, w there was also a specialist cheese shop which we obstacle and bought cheese at. - probably a tourist rip-off, but you know what? I don't care! 

And then we found a Dutch restaurant in a side street that fed us croquettes and chips; the latter were lovely, the former a bit meh! It came with some apple sauce, which I kept 2/3 of to eat as pudding, but the SW had apple pie and ice cream. He drank hot chocolate, and I had a beer and then coffee, but the place to take care of the inevitable consequences was up three flights of incredibly steep stairs - proof that it was an authentic old house, said the SW. 

After lunch we caught a tram to the Dam, and looked at the royal Palace and then walked back tu the Centraal station. We had vaguely meant to go to the Red light district, but seem to have missed it. Oh well. Anyway it was going on raining and raining and the rain got heavier and heavier, so we went down and exchanged our canal trip vouchers for real tickets and went on a canal trip. Which would have been lovely, had one actually been able to see! However, the rain stopped about half way through and we could open the windows and see out. 

We had hoped that the tour would take us past the Anne Frank House but that particular tour didn't go that way. So when it was over, we took a tram to the Westernmarkt and had a look. No possibility of going in, of course, and we didn't plan to, but we walked up to the next bridge across the canal and back the other side. A quick stop at a convenient supermarket, and then it was back in the tram to Centraal. We were going to catch a ferry back to the so nearest the campsite, but had just missed one, but I remembered that one of "our" buses card at where the next ferry was going, so we went on it. We were right about the buses, but what we didn't realise was that buses going in both directions used the same stop, so the inevitable happened and we got on one going the wrong way.

Once we realised this, we got off and, of course, just missed one going the right way. The next one wasn't for 15 minutes, but there was a supermarket across the road and the one thing we hadn't bought was beer, so we went into the attached offie and bought 2 bottles of Amstel and 2 of Heineken, incredibly cheap. And then the bus came, although it was on diversion due to building works, it dropped us where we expected to be dropped. Back to the motor home, used the services and supper is ready.

German Avenue Road, 4 September

Google told me there was a supermarket only a few yards from where we had parked up last night, so after breakfast I popped in, following Google.'s directions to get there. What Google didn't tell me, and I only found out when I'd finished my shopping and had left the supermarket, was that we were parked just opposite  the rear exit of the car park and I needn't have walked all round the houses at all! Ah well.

We set off about  09:30 and, apart from one stop for coffee and a detour for diesel before we reached the border - a mistake, as although we knew petrol was more expensive in the Netherlands, we didn't realise diesel was actually cheaper. Oh well.

The motor home park isn't the nicest, or the cheapest, but is secure and has services, although no sanitaires. We paid for 48 hours, and I wish we hadn't, as I find the city not at all to my taste. Just walking to the ferry, it was all hippyish and really rather hideous. Then we caught the wrong ferry and had to walk miles to a bus stop. Meanwhile, I had tried to buy transport tickets on line, but what we didn't realise was that what they sent me wasn't a ticket but a voucher to exchange for a ticket. So when service after service turned us away, we quite thought we'd been scammed.  Which I suppose wasn't the city's fault, but it didn't help. 

We eventually ended up in the Nieuwmarkt, where we had a beer, but even that was silly, because the waitress insisted in bringing us 250 mls when we had asked for 330, and even when we showed her on the menu she swore they didn't sell that size of beer.

We walked back to the Central Station and got the ferry back, and it was during the crossing we realised the problem with the tickets. So back we went and then queued for half an hour in the ticket office before finally getting our tickets!  So we went back to the motor home and the Swan Whisperer cooked eggs and bacon and now I am going to bed.