Cologne

After a good day of riding and another night at the same stopping place it was time to carry on. My aim for the night was Cologne - it would be my last big stop before the (still unbooked) ferry.

The drive was slow going, roadworks, traffic and the tricky part of not having enough power to overtake lorries on the dual carriageway motorways when you’ve got cars screaming past at 90mph, so I just plodded along. I stopped for a shower and a lunch break at a services, bit the bullet and booked a ferry home, and put in a drop of extortionately priced fuel as I hadn’t seen anywhere to top up at before I’d got onto the motorway, and eventually made it to the outskirts of Cologne.

Cologne has an Umwelt zone, a low emission dirty diesels unwelcome zone. An exception is made if you go straight to the Wohnmobilplatz (campervan park up) via a specific route and straight out again. I’m not sure how they police the zone but I had exact instructions of which route was allowed and I would be following it. I came to the motorway exit I needed – closed. I went past it and looked to see whether it was open in the other direction – also closed. After 5hrs of driving this isn’t what I particularly needed. I took the next junction and pulled in as soon as I could, it happened to be a Lidl car park so I went and got some food before deciding what to do. I’ve learnt a lot about calculated risks this year and I decided I’d just follow the route the satnav wanted to take me on and hope I didn’t get caught. Anyway, I think it was a justified reason to be deviating from the route (clearly my German language skills meant I'd be able explain this if needed)

With some slightly hairy driving through Cologne I made it to the Wohnmobilplaz. Even if you have a green light pedestrians have right of way, as do bikes and so do trams. Add in driving on the right, unfamiliar junctions and trying to look out for turnings when it’s starting to get dark, I find driving in cities here takes a huge amount of concentration.

I’d arrived later than planned and it didn’t wholly surprise me to find the wohnmobilplaz was full. The book said it had 60 places and it was the only one in the city. On a Saturday night with the campervan obsessed Germans that's probably not enough space. There was a car park by the entrance to it which had a no campervans sign, but there were a couple of vans parked up there. I took another calculated risk and decided I’d spend the night in the car park. A few more vans arrived to find the same problem as me and also parked up, with safety in numbers I stealth cooked my dinner and went to bed.

I woke up to noise outside, I looked at my clock – 0453. Are these people heading home or heading into the city at this time of night? Then I could hear an engine running behind my van, I could see flashing lights so I got up and looked out the window. There was a police van and two police cars! A bit extreme just for people who have overflowed from the wohnmobilplatz I thought. Then I looked out the other window, 3 fire engines. Phew, probably not campervan related then. After a while, not before my bike rack had been walked into a couple of times which always makes me jump a mile, they packed up and left and I went back to sleep, glad of the extra hour in bed.

Things like this would have used to have bothered me but I’ve realised it’s just part of the adventure and find it annoying rather than anything to get too worried about. Having a day of wandering and riding round Cologne was worth it, so much so that me and Bertha are flouting the rules again tonight and staying put, hoping for no more dramas.

Almost hometime

My finger hovers over the 'book now' button on the DFDS ferry website.

I'd had a great few days in the Czech Republic, sightseeing in Prague and then a day in Kutna Hora a sleepy town with an even sleepier chapel. I'd then driven back into Germany to Nuremburg, a beautiful medieval town. But then I got stuck - so many places to go and potential routes, but which one to take? I had no idea, nothing really grabbed me. Was I just trying to drag out the last 10 days of my trip? The 7th is an absolute insurance deadline, the 8th is Mums birthday, there's nothing to stop me booking a ferry for before that.

Maybe I was travelled out and it was time to go home. I Googled the shortest route and decided I'd head that way, having overnight stops where needed, and found somewhere an hour or so up the route for that night.

After a quick trip to the supermarket I got on the motorway and stopped at the first services I came to - I needed a shower. A long, untimed shower in the closest to a proper bathroom I've been in for 3 months, it was bliss.

I got to the campervan park up, and after some confusion with the man over whether they had much needed chemical waste disposal or not (the book said yes, he said nein, I said are you sure - chemikal? Nein he said, I walked away, then I went back to try again, he said he didn't understand, I played charades, ahhh chemikal he said...ja we have)  I paid for the night.

The park up was on a river and cycle paths so before it got dark I went out for a ride. I got back to my van with a renewed energy, suddenly I definitely wasn't travelled out and wanted to do some more exploring. I decided I'd stay there for the next day too so I could go out for a longer ride.

It turns out that all I needed was a shower and a bike ride. The 'book now' button is still unclicked,  I know it's got to be done, I just can't bring myself to do it quite yet.

Northern Lights photos

For the first time in a long time I have some wifi - a few more pictures from Iceland.

Saxon Switzerland

This is my fourth night in the same place, Saxon Switzerland. No, I haven't done a mammoth drive, Saxon Switzerland is actually nowhere near Switzerland but a national park which spans the German/Czech border, recommended by Paul and Linda who I met in Iceland as it's where Linda comes from.

I've done some brilliant walking and biking whilst I've been here but have had one problem. Insects in the van. There are these little flying bugs, I have no idea what they are but it turns out they bite. I can tell which bits of me have been peeping out from the duvet in the night as I've been bitten on my forehead, hand and the soles of my feet.

Today my feet were really sore and itchy so I decided to go to the spa in the nearby town to have a soak.

The first issue was one that I've found over the last few days - the locals don't speak any English. My pigeon German is improving but at a very slow rate, and most questions asked of me are met with a completely blank look. Eventually I had managed to pay for entry and had been given a little yellow token which I had no idea what to do with. I tried to put it in a slot by the entry turnstile, it got returned to me and nothing happened. Tried again, nothing. I pushed the turnstile without putting the token in and it opened.

On to the changing rooms. Just a bank of closed doors. After a bit of confusion it turns out they were Narnia changing cubicles, in the front and out the back. Essential to remember to lock both the in and out doors. Then through to the lockers where it now became apparent what the yellow token was for - you put it into a slot, turn the dial and it locks the token into a wrist band, which then looks like a watch - the strangest lockers I've ever come across.

The pools were nice, but they were no Icelandic hot pots, all of them needed to be a bit hotter. The darkened salt water floating room with mood lighting, under water music and people being dragged around the pool by others, then flapping and spluttering when they've drifted off to sleep was just weird.

And then there was the sauna and spa zone. Linda had joked on the ferry about how Germans get naked far too readily which is why there were signs by the sauna on the ferry telling you to keep your towel on. No such signs here!

Getting dressed was uneventful and I went to catch the last vintage tram of the night back to the campsite, with the tram driver convinced that if he kept repeating himself I'd understand him (he'd carry on past the stop to drop me at the campsite gate...that had me worried for a few seconds) my mind well and truly distracted from my bites.

Berlin

Having finally got to Berlin I found that I didn’t know where to start, so on Monday lunchtime I caught the U-bahn into the city and decided to walk around without visiting anywhere, I’d pick up plenty of tourist leaflets and see what I might want to do for the rest of the week. I did crack and visit one attraction – the Berlin wall 360 exhibition but only because on Monday afternoons they do a ‘pay as you feel’ entry fee. The logic behind pay as you feel is that you pay what you think something is worth – this place was a pay on entry though, without seeing it how do you know what you think it’s worth? It wouldn’t have been worth the full entry fee but it was interesting so I’m pleased I’d seen the Monday offer. I needed to get back to my van at a decent time as on Sunday I’d failed to find the campsite I’d been looking for and things are so much easier to spot in the light – turned out I had been one wrong-turn away from it. The site was worth the hunt though – cheap, un-timed showers and not far from a U-bahn stop. I spent Monday evening putting a plan together for the rest of the week.

Tuesday’s itinerary was to go to the Topographie de Terror museum and the Checkpoint Charlie museum. Both would now make it onto my essentials list for visiting Berlin, although the Checkpoint Charlie one was a jumbled maze so hard work.

Wednesday’s culture was the DDR museum, showing how life in East Germany was before 1989. Probably my favourite museum that I visited. Then some more walking round the city, it’s quite a small city and apart from getting the U-bahn in and out each day, I didn’t catch any other transport.

Thursday – I decided to cycle in from the campsite. I’d been told there was a cycle path alongside the canal right into the city centre. 6 miles of very quiet riding and even when you get into the city centre its proper cycle lanes or you can just ride on the path. One place I wanted to visit which is away from the centre is the East Side gallery where there is an almost mile long section of the Wall, all painted, still standing. Over this side of the city there is the Computerspeile museum – the history of computer games with plenty of old consoles to play on. A perfect way to spend a rather chilly afternoon, and something a bit lighter than some of the other museums. By the time I’d dragged myself away from there it was starting to get late. I’d wanted to see the city lit up as there’s a festival of light on at the moment but getting home in the dark would be an issue. End up at a U-bahn station towards the end of the line, deserted and then walk out and along to wherever I might have parked Bertha earlier in the day wasn’t an attractive option. The ride in that morning had been straightforward though and I had proper lights with me so I took a calculated risk and decided that I’d rather cycle in the dark than do the U-bahn option another night.  I’m glad I did, I only saw the light display at the Brandenburg gate but it had been worth staying for. Considering I was in a capital city centre the ride out wasn’t too bad, although my memory of the route backwards had to be jogged by my GPS trail a couple of times and I don’t think I’ve ever ridden my mountain bike that fast before.

Friday. On Monday morning I’d finally got some tyres ordered for my van, knowing I’d be there for the 3 day lead time made it make sense to get them in Berlin rather than anywhere else. Friday morning they had arrived but by the time they’d fitted them it was 3pm, so not really long enough to do anything. I’d thought I’d spend one more day in the city but as the campsite was fully booked from Saturday onwards, rather than find somewhere else in Berlin to stay I decided to move on – Dresden was calling me.

Some Icelandic photos

I realise I'm way behind in adding photos to my blog and have deleted lots of them from my phone as it was full. Here are a few taken on my phone from the last week in Iceland - I shall upload some from my camera when I can.

Ich bin ein Berliner

In late 2005 or early 2006 I read about a round Europe train ticket that you could buy to cover all train travel for 30 days.
I can clearly remember sitting in my damp room with the slugs in Telephone Road whilst on placement in Portsmouth and sending a link to the ticket to my friend Mel. I got an almost instant reply "When are we going?"

And so it was in June 2006 that we set off on our interrailing trip, my first holiday abroad without my parents. We each had a huge backpack and for anyone who has seen the film "Wild" with Recce Witherspoon - that was us. We had grand ideas, we were starting in Brussels, going to Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, through Austria and Switzerland and to Geneva for the mid point of our trip. A few days in we realised we might have been over ambitious and cancelled our plan for Berlin and Prague, instead heading straight from Amsterdam to Salzburg - we decided we could go to Berlin and Prague on future trips.

It took a while but early in 2010 we both marked a weekend in our diaries when we could go to Berlin together. When it came to it, we hadn't been organised enough to book flights and instead had a lovely weekend in York. But it did prompt us into booking a weekend in Berlin for the end of the year. Christmas markets, a sprinkling of snow it would be perfect.

We met at Gatwick to check in and just as we handed over our passports... our flight was cancelled. Berlin airport had run out of de-icer. With no alternative flights we went back to Mel's house and were tourists in London for the weekend.

Failed by train, failed by plane. What's left? Bertha!

Having spent a couple of days on the outskirts of Berlin visiting the Sachenhausen concentration camp and museum and the old royal palaces in Potsdam, today I parked up by a U-bahn stop and headed into the centre of Berlin. That was as far as Bertha can go, she's counted as a dirty diesel in the low emission zone.

It was worth the wait, I loved my day walking round and deciding where I want to see and which museums to visit. I think I'll be spending a good few days here. There's just one thing missing - my Euro-city partner in crime.

Tourists

There is one thing I haven’t enjoyed about Iceland and that is the number of tourists, a large number of them being completely inconsiderate.

Most people only have a week or two for a holiday so try and pack in as much as possible. If they have decided to go around the ring road then there's a lot of travelling to be done in a short space of time. Early starts and late finishes, quick visits to sites and quick photo stops to try tick the next item off the list. I’ve covered this before – I’m not a huge fan of people. Even less so of the type of people I’ve just described above.

Campsites in Iceland are nice and cheap and generally with good facilities but don’t expect much sleep if you visit one. I have used them when it’s convenient or too dark to go and look for somewhere else but out of choice – I’d not use Icelandic campsites, purely down to the other people who use them. The vast majority are in rental vans and have no idea about being considerate to other travellers. Of course, you also get the ones who are too tight to pay for the campsite so will spend the night in any layby or other place they can find before walking onto the site in the morning to use the facilities and leave without paying. Most campsites rely on some honesty when it comes to paying. I’ll admit I didn’t pay on 2 sites. One because I’d managed to get very little sleep due to the demon diesel heaters running all night and van doors opening, closing, opening, slamming, opening….you get the idea, up until about 1am and restarting at 5am. The only facility I used was the toilet in the morning so I left without paying. The other was in a prime tourist area. It was far more expensive than other sites, was on the roadside, they wanted extra for a shower (I didn’t bother) and when I went to wash up there was only cold water and it drained out of the sink straight onto my dry trainers. I decided if no one made an effort to come and collect my money, I wouldn’t make an effort to pay.

The tourist sites are generally free with free parking but are also poorly maintained. With the number of visitors these places have, there needs to be some investment in them. At the icebergs there were parts of 2 bumpers in the car park which had been caught on the huge underwater pot holes in the ground as you go in. Tracks up to waterfalls were mudbaths and there were rarely toilets at these sites so anywhere a little out of sight was best avoided. I’m not suggesting there should be charges everywhere but the number of visitors is so huge that these places look trampled over and are suffering – even gravel paths in places would help this. Having marked car parks would also help to control some of the aforementioned people from making it nigh on impossible to get out of where you’ve parked when you return to your van.

Aside from the iceberg lagoon where I spent an afternoon, night and morning, I spent very little time at the main tourist sites.  Iceland is huge and beautiful, there is no need to be surrounded by hoards of tourists in the bubbles, or even one or two other people.  I have had days where I’ve been out walking and not seen anyone at all, those are the best kind of days.

Fellow vanners

This blog starts 5 weeks ago – the day that I arrived in Iceland. As I was sitting in my van ready to drive off the ferry I had mixed feelings of excitement and nerves. There’s a perfect Swedish word for this feeling “Resfeber”. If there’s one thing that was making me nervous it would be something going really wrong with Bertha.

I looked in my wing mirror and in the lane next to me could see a green T4 with its bonnet up, and it was British. I did what I hoped would happen to me in that situation – I got out of my van and went over and asked if I could help. I know very little about engines and the most help I could have actually practically offered would have been to lend him my Haynes manual but I went over all the same. He seemed to know what he was doing and said he thought his clutch had gone. To see someone with a similar van having problems added to my nerves a bit.
We both got off the ferry and an hour or so later in the town he came over and introduced himself properly – Ben. He was going to drive to the next town and find a garage, he reckoned it could be in there for a week.

I often wondered how he’d got on but 3 weeks on I hadn’t seen him (and his trip was due to last 3 weeks). One evening I was speaking to a Canadian man and his young son who were on a boys camping trip and he told me of a natural hot pool in the middle of a lava field which they’d come from and recommended I go there. I asked what the road was like and he asked what I was driving. “We saw a green one of them with a British guy in yesterday” he said. I was genuinely pleased to hear that Ben was back on the road.

As I drove to the hot pool through the lava field I saw a green T4 driving in my direction. When we met we stopped and had a chat, it was nice to see a familiar face even if we had only met for 10 minutes before. It’s the same when I’ve bumped into anyone for a second time on my travels. The weather was awful so I stayed at the hot pool all day and decided to spend the night there – probably having the worst weather battering I’d ever had in my van.  I woke up to see that Ben had made it back there for the night, being far braver than me to drive roads like that in the dark!
Another soak in the hot pool and I got on my way, the sun was out and there was a glacier I wanted to see.

Another week passed and at Pingvellir national park I saw a white British van parked up with bikes on but no one around.

 It was a couple of days later that I saw that van parked up again at a waterfall. I went for a walk and when I got back to the car park I saw Ben’s van again. British van convention!  We caught up on where we’d been since we last saw each other and then carried on. Now we were in the south there are less detours to make so we were on a bit of a tourist trail, stopping at the same places. Also, being this far round the country at this point in time it was fairly clear we were all getting the same ferry back to Denmark as there is only one a week. After a swim in a geothermal pool in the mountains I decided I was going to head up to a glacier to see if there was anywhere to park up for the night. I pinged Ben a message to say it was clear to park up there and an hour later he appeared, along with a bike rack full of firewood he’d collected on his travels.

Parking up next to a glacier was cool, having a campfire under the stars next to a glacier with company was even cooler.

 By the next evening I’d bumped into the other british van again, Paul and Linda. We were both having issues putting fuel in whilst being blown away in the wind and rain, we spoke very briefly but it was starting to get dark and I wanted to go and find somewhere for the night.

Mine and Ben’s paths crossed a few more times and his crossed with the white van. On the penultimate evening I noticed a hot pool and went down to investigate – I will never get tired of dips in geothermal pools. Not long after, a green van pulled in. Not long after that a white van pulled in. We had ourselves a convoy! The northern lights forecast was good for the evening so after hot pooling and dinner the 4 of us watched the lights together and then headed to bed before getting up again when the sky came alive in a way I’d never seen before.

After a lazy morning hot pooling we went on our ways, knowing we all wanted to get close to the ferry that day. I realised that I hadn’t used my bbq in Iceland so a plan was put in place – we’d all meet up for the evening, bbq and watch the lights again. Having been to the supermarket I went on a recce to try and find somewhere suitable for the 3 vans for the night before sending coordinates to the others.  They took their time – turns out they’d all been for showers first! We set up camp in a forest clearing and bbq’d and then kept it going with wood whilst watching the best northern lights showing of the trip.

 I like travelling alone but to share a couple of evenings like that with fellow van travellers was fantastic and a brilliant end to my Icelandic adventure.