Windy500 - Germany to Belgium

After steaming up the car, and then not finding the camp site, we eventually got to where we needed.  It was a lovely camp site in Flensburg with pool, chalets and shops.  As Raquel had flown to Spain in the morning Steve, Sarah and I rented a 3 room chalet for the evening.  After a BBQ we had an early night in preparation for a long drive.

Getting up early we packed the car and van then headed off,  the sat-nav said it would take 4 hours but it was lying.

Steve has to get home a day early so he had a 6 hour drive.  It all started ok but we hit a massive set of road works and traffic jam at Hamburg.  That was followed by another 3 sets of road works. We eventually made it to Groningen after 6 and a half hour drive.

Steve was not so lucky with the van as he had a throttle that stayed fully open when he stopped pressing the accelerator and to top it off he could not open the bonnet! Eventually he got sorted enough to make it to the Channel Tunnel last night.

In the evening it looked like it was going to rain so I decided to sleep in the car again and not risk the tent.  My decision was correct as at 3:30 am the heavens opened and it rained very heavily, closely followed by a thunder storm that passed right over our camp I was counting the flash to rumble time and one strike was instantaneous and it shook all the cars!

In the morning we packed all the damp stuff up and headed west.  Our next destination was Ghent in Belgium and I elected to drive via the A7 to Den Oever this road passes over a huge dyke that separates the sea from the inland water ways.  The dyke is over 30 km long.

After stopping at the viewing tower on the dyke we headed past Amsterdam towards Ghent.  For a change the sat-nav had found the camp site so we thought what could possibly go wrong!

As we approached the camp site there seemed like a lot of parked cars about,  both sides of the road for the last kilometre there were literally thousands of cars jammed in every space.   We made it to the entrance of the camp site to find there was yet another massive football tournament on for 3 days and there was no room.  A few frantic texts later and we were heading towards Bruges.  The camp site is big but they have lots of chalets so after last night in the car I will treat myself.

We met up with Spooky at the camp site who had limped here from Copenhagen on three cylinders as he had a suspected broken valve!  It turns out his breakdown cover did not include repatriation and the repair could not be assessed until Monday so limping home was the only option.

– John –