Where’s Bertie? He’s at a free Stellplatz in Kaltenkirchen. The service point is off site (but only a few hundred metres away).
Friday night had been delightfully quiet at the Stellplatz at Dülmen and we expected the same last night. That expectation began to fade when loud music started up at the sports club across the road at about 7.30pm. With a thumping beat it didn't seem to be compatible with sleep, but I figured that it would likely stop around midnight and, looking for the silver lining, thought I would get in a good listen to my audiobook - something I seldom manage at night as I always fall asleep within minutes.
Finally putting my paper book down at 11pm, on went my audiobook and I skipped back a couple of minutes to remind myself where I was. I woke up briefly at just gone 11.30pm realising: a) the music had stopped; and b) I'd not heard anything new in my book. Yep, despite the banging music, I had been asleep within two minutes!
I was therefore nicely refreshed when I awoke soon after 7am and after a quick breakfast I was on my way to the bakery, leaving Mick to get Bertie prepared to travel. By 9am we were on the road.
About 300km later we overtook a vehicle, which wouldn't be worth a mention except that it was the only vehicle we overtook all day. About 335 of the 340km we drove today were on motorway, but being Sunday (no lorries) and tootling along at just over 50mph, we were down there with the slowest of the slow*. Other observations made during the journey were that approximately 10% of cars had bikes on the back and that we were glad to have got past Hamburg on a Sunday. In spite of many sets of roadworks, we only met congestion in getting to the 2km-long tunnel under the Elbe; I suspect the going would have been much slower on a weekday.
Finding the Stellplatz on leaving the motorway was easy, as I had lat/long coordinates for it. Finding the service point was more tricky as the information sign at the Stellplatz has gone walkabout. Having drawn attention to ourselves by trying out four parking spots on arrival before settling on one, we didn't want to move again to go and use it once we had been out on foot and finally located it (turn right out of the Stellplatz, go past the thermal baths and take the first road on the left, noting that it's such a small road, it looks like a cycleway).
As the day is marching on, and as threatening clouds are gathering, I think we will defer taking a look around the town until tomorrow.
(*The roads are no longer as flat and smooth as they were in Belgium and NL, but our tootling along achieved an increase in our average mpg to 36.4. Not bad considering we were running the air con for part of the journey too.)
Friday night had been delightfully quiet at the Stellplatz at Dülmen and we expected the same last night. That expectation began to fade when loud music started up at the sports club across the road at about 7.30pm. With a thumping beat it didn't seem to be compatible with sleep, but I figured that it would likely stop around midnight and, looking for the silver lining, thought I would get in a good listen to my audiobook - something I seldom manage at night as I always fall asleep within minutes.
Finally putting my paper book down at 11pm, on went my audiobook and I skipped back a couple of minutes to remind myself where I was. I woke up briefly at just gone 11.30pm realising: a) the music had stopped; and b) I'd not heard anything new in my book. Yep, despite the banging music, I had been asleep within two minutes!
I was therefore nicely refreshed when I awoke soon after 7am and after a quick breakfast I was on my way to the bakery, leaving Mick to get Bertie prepared to travel. By 9am we were on the road.
About 300km later we overtook a vehicle, which wouldn't be worth a mention except that it was the only vehicle we overtook all day. About 335 of the 340km we drove today were on motorway, but being Sunday (no lorries) and tootling along at just over 50mph, we were down there with the slowest of the slow*. Other observations made during the journey were that approximately 10% of cars had bikes on the back and that we were glad to have got past Hamburg on a Sunday. In spite of many sets of roadworks, we only met congestion in getting to the 2km-long tunnel under the Elbe; I suspect the going would have been much slower on a weekday.
Finding the Stellplatz on leaving the motorway was easy, as I had lat/long coordinates for it. Finding the service point was more tricky as the information sign at the Stellplatz has gone walkabout. Having drawn attention to ourselves by trying out four parking spots on arrival before settling on one, we didn't want to move again to go and use it once we had been out on foot and finally located it (turn right out of the Stellplatz, go past the thermal baths and take the first road on the left, noting that it's such a small road, it looks like a cycleway).
As the day is marching on, and as threatening clouds are gathering, I think we will defer taking a look around the town until tomorrow.
(*The roads are no longer as flat and smooth as they were in Belgium and NL, but our tootling along achieved an increase in our average mpg to 36.4. Not bad considering we were running the air con for part of the journey too.)
Fascinating stuff, some lovely photos too!
ReplyDeleteThank you! Hopefully the photos will get better as we move into Scandinavia.
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