Where’s Bertie? He’s at the municipal Stellplatz in Hesel, where it costs €4 for 24 hours. Electricity is extra, at €1 per 8 hours. (Exact location: 53.30474, 7.59162)
After I posted yesterday’s blog, a cycle tourist appeared and set up his tent next to Bertie. Considering the amount of grass nearby, he was amusingly close, but we’ve been closer to other motorhomes on busy Aires, and a cyclist in a tent (in the rain) was never going to be any bother. Offering him a cup of tea, we got a very British ‘Yes please!’ back as it turned out that, having encountered just five sets of Brits over the last three months, and in a country absolutely heaving with bicycles, the cyclist next to us was a Brit*. His name was Simon, on tour from the Hook of Holland to Copenhagen, and we chatted for about an hour before he took advantage of a pause in the rain to go and sort his stuff out. By the time we surfaced this morning, he was gone.
Having not ventured out on arrival yesterday, on account of the rain, this morning I acquainted myself with the path that goes around Sander See (note: where you see ‘See’ in a German name, it denotes a lake), by walking around it once with Mick and then running around it three times. I would probably then have taken a dip off one of the beaches, but on close inspection the water was unpleasantly murky.
If that Stellplatz hadn’t been just the other side of a field from a motorway, with the constant noise of traffic that goes with such close proximity, we would have stayed another night. As it was, we left after lunch, visited a supermarket, then made our way all of 16km to the town of Friedeburg.
There, we pulled into the free Stellplatz, but a fair was in the early stages of being set up on the land and over a cup of tea (which coincided with the arrival of another big fairground ride) we decided to move on. It was only as we were leaving that I saw a notice pinned to a tree nearby that started ‘Dear Motorhomers’ in German – I didn’t get to read the rest, but presume that it said the Stellplatz was closed).
Wondering where to go instead, I belatedly dug the German Stellplatz book out from the bottom of a locker. It’s 3 years out of date, but I wish I’d thought of it days ago, as it’s much more comprehensive than the App I’ve been using. Better late than never, as it told us of a place at Hesel (26km further towards the Dutch border) that we hadn’t known about.
It’s a very nicely designed Stellplatz we are on here, all block-paved, with individual bays separated by wild rose bushes (which must have smelt divine about a month ago), but perhaps it hasn’t proved as popular as the town would have liked, as it’s clearly lacking in TLC. There are four slots of the ten taken tonight.
At just €4 for a night’s stay (although we’re not sure how we go about paying that), we thought we’d splash out an extra €1 on electricity. We thus have power until midnight, and are making the most of it by getting everything fully charged up. We probably could have managed without mains power for the rest of the trip, but now everything that we can’t charge from the solar panel/leisure battery should definitely last for the final 12 days … which almost certainly means we’ll have the option for electricity on a daily basis from now on.
(*Of course, he was at an advantage in knowing our nationality, by virtue of our number plate. We fully expected him to be German.)
After I posted yesterday’s blog, a cycle tourist appeared and set up his tent next to Bertie. Considering the amount of grass nearby, he was amusingly close, but we’ve been closer to other motorhomes on busy Aires, and a cyclist in a tent (in the rain) was never going to be any bother. Offering him a cup of tea, we got a very British ‘Yes please!’ back as it turned out that, having encountered just five sets of Brits over the last three months, and in a country absolutely heaving with bicycles, the cyclist next to us was a Brit*. His name was Simon, on tour from the Hook of Holland to Copenhagen, and we chatted for about an hour before he took advantage of a pause in the rain to go and sort his stuff out. By the time we surfaced this morning, he was gone.
Having not ventured out on arrival yesterday, on account of the rain, this morning I acquainted myself with the path that goes around Sander See (note: where you see ‘See’ in a German name, it denotes a lake), by walking around it once with Mick and then running around it three times. I would probably then have taken a dip off one of the beaches, but on close inspection the water was unpleasantly murky.
If that Stellplatz hadn’t been just the other side of a field from a motorway, with the constant noise of traffic that goes with such close proximity, we would have stayed another night. As it was, we left after lunch, visited a supermarket, then made our way all of 16km to the town of Friedeburg.
There, we pulled into the free Stellplatz, but a fair was in the early stages of being set up on the land and over a cup of tea (which coincided with the arrival of another big fairground ride) we decided to move on. It was only as we were leaving that I saw a notice pinned to a tree nearby that started ‘Dear Motorhomers’ in German – I didn’t get to read the rest, but presume that it said the Stellplatz was closed).
Wondering where to go instead, I belatedly dug the German Stellplatz book out from the bottom of a locker. It’s 3 years out of date, but I wish I’d thought of it days ago, as it’s much more comprehensive than the App I’ve been using. Better late than never, as it told us of a place at Hesel (26km further towards the Dutch border) that we hadn’t known about.
It’s a very nicely designed Stellplatz we are on here, all block-paved, with individual bays separated by wild rose bushes (which must have smelt divine about a month ago), but perhaps it hasn’t proved as popular as the town would have liked, as it’s clearly lacking in TLC. There are four slots of the ten taken tonight.
At just €4 for a night’s stay (although we’re not sure how we go about paying that), we thought we’d splash out an extra €1 on electricity. We thus have power until midnight, and are making the most of it by getting everything fully charged up. We probably could have managed without mains power for the rest of the trip, but now everything that we can’t charge from the solar panel/leisure battery should definitely last for the final 12 days … which almost certainly means we’ll have the option for electricity on a daily basis from now on.
(*Of course, he was at an advantage in knowing our nationality, by virtue of our number plate. We fully expected him to be German.)
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