Thursday 14 August 2014

Border Crossing

We've continued to make progress through the Netherlands and are now in the German town of Gluckstadt on the river Elbe. We are having a rest day here to visit Hamburg. There's no campsite so we had to find a hotel. The only one available with a family room was what can only be described as a museum. Our room is decorated with very expensive and very delicate furniture and we spend our time following in the wake of Sebby's inquisitive and destructive hands. 

Our last post was sent from a town called Grou. From there we cycled to Groningen, a big University town in northern Netherlands. It has a reputation for very high cycling levels - even for the Netherlands. We enjoyed a bit of cafe culture here and said hello to a parrot.



The following day we crossed into Germany. I find crossing borders very exciting, but this one was a bit if an anti-climax. It was nothing more than a bridge over a canal and a man gave us a very strange look as we stopped and took a photo


I'm always surprised how different things are immediately after you cross a border. The scenery was the same (flat and agricultural) but everything else was completely different. In the Netherlands most villages have a playground, whereas in Germany it is rare to find one. The campsites have a very different feel to them as well. In NL they are a place to spend a family holiday, but the German ones are very quiet and run down. We stayed in one that was closing down permanently at the end of September. It was like a ghost town and full of empty caravans. The few people who were still there were very kind and said we could use an abandoned caravan when it started raining. We had a look in but opted to stay in the tent. 

Our first night in Germany was spent in Leer, a pretty town on the river Ems. We had a day off to do laundry and had a good lunch of pickled fish, a local speciality. Over the next couple if days we headed towards the ferry over the river Weser near the town of Brake. Having never heard of the Weser it was a surprise to encounter such a large river.  

Cycling away from the ferry Seb was in the bike seat. He managed to remove a shoe and throw into a bush. Luckily Tania noticed we were one shoe down so we turned round and found it quite quickly. If we hadn't noticed it could have been a long cycle back with much cursing. Seb has over the course of this trip swapped crawling for walking as his preferred mode of getting about so his shoes are essential and from the photo below it's not a good idea to camp in a site with lots of mole hills. 


From the Weser we headed towards our next river crossing over the Elbe at Gluckstadt. This is very busy with both cyclists and cars, and the river is so wide at this point the crossing takes about 20 minutes.
On the ferry. Seb with food in each hand and some some in his mouth. 

The kids appetites have increased 10 fold on this trip and they are now eating virtually adult sized portions. 

The weather has changed in the last week. It has cooled down and we often get thunder storms in the evenings. 
Emily and Seb in their wet-weather gear.

Seb gets very nervous when we start to pack up in the morning. He worries that he will be forgotten so we have to put him in the sling to assure him he won't be left behind.

At Gluckstadt we will start to head north into Denmark so is quite a milestone in our trip. We are looking forward to our day off the bikes to look round Hamburg. After that it will all guns blazing to Denmark. 

My bike fully loaded



Story time in the tent. 



No comments:

Post a Comment