France 2008

I had a fantastic week in France in September with the Ninja's. Organised by GixerJ, my companions for the week included Kris, Superkev, Daz, Sax and Big Al.

(Partial) group shots.

(Sax, me, Superkev, Kris, Daz, GixerJ)

Big Al secured his bum bag on his rear seat (badly). The result...

The bar...

The scenic shot...

I won't bore you with detail. We had a long slog down there; Le Havre to Les Cabannes circa 600 miles in a day. Then every day until the last we got up, had croissants and pain au chocolat for breakfast, rode circa 200+ miles a day (Spain if the day started overcast, France if not) back to the restuarant for pizza/past/steak and then thr bar for St Omer, the 'magic beer'. Then we rode home via Ibis Rouen and a steak supper.

The video sums it up...



You had to be there. Great fun/guys/roads/weather etc.

Numbers, Thoughts and Must Haves.....

I'll start with numbers:-

We have travelled 4229 miles, Chris has driven for approximately 80 hours, we have used 11 full tanks of LPG and 3 tanks of petrol. We have driven through 8 countries (2 of them twice) and visited places in 7 of those countries. We have changed our clocks 4 times and our currency 7 times. We have crossed country borders 11 times. We have slept 4 nights in cabins (2 nice, 1 average and 1 really crap), 2 nights on board ferries, 3 nights in hotels and 15 nights in the tent (13 wet and 2 dry!). The kids took 24 DVDs with them for the journeys and they have watched quite a few of them twice!

It has been a really enjoyable trip overall and if we had had a decent tent even the weather wouldn't have worried us.

My thoughts on the countries we visited:-

Denmark - It was lovely scenery and lovely friendly people. It wasn't as expensive as we had thought it would be. the campsites were clean and tidy and the roads where good. Copenhagen was lovely and I'd definitely go again.

Sweden - The scenery was very similar to the UK (at least in the area we drove through). We all really loved the camp at Tivenden despite it being bad weather. Gothenburg and Stockholm were both nice cities but it was just so wet we didn't really appreciate them to the full. The people in Sweden have to be the most friendly and helpful we have met throughout the trip. They went out of their way to help us, even making phone calls for us to arrange Internet access etc. It was expensive there for pretty much everything.

Estonia - No comments really. We had a really bad day that day, the weather was appalling and we didn't stop to visit anywhere in Estonia. Very, very bad roads!

Latvia - Lovely rural/rustic countryside with huge concrete factories and workers blocks every few miles showing the counties soviet ruled past. All the places we visited were lovely and the people where polite, friendly and helpful (many don't speak any English but would find someone who did to help us). Very, very bad roads!

Lithuania - We felt that Lithuania looked much more Western European. There were lots of modern buildings going up - many of the new housing estate we saw had huge detached houses. Nearly everyone we spoke to was able to speak English and were friendly towards tourists. The Lithuanians don't smile very much - apparently this isn't because they are unhappy but just the way they are. Very, very bad roads!

Poland - Northern Poland was GRIM. They have EXTREMELY bad roads, loads of advertising hoardings everywhere, concrete and graffiti being the most common sights. To be fair we had a bad introduction what with the weather, tiredness and food poisoning. Southern Poland will be having another visit from the Ford Family though. It was beautiful (still crap roads) with lovely villages, lots of nice scenic places and very friendly people.

Germany - I've always liked visiting Germany and this time was no exception. Berlin was fabulous and I'd love to go back. Goslar was a real find - not in our original plan at all. Well done to Chris for suggesting we go there as it was beautiful and another place we will plan to visit again. They need to put some cash machines at service stations though - it is a real pain when you arrive in a country and can't find a cash machine.

Holland - this wasn't on our original itinerary but I'm glad we went. I think we may spend some more time in Holland travelling round all the little towns as they are very picturesque.

Must Haves......

• A decent tent!
• Waterproof clothing that actually keeps the water out
• Sat Nav - we love you! Alex asked us about 2 weeks in, where we would be if we didn't have the sat nav, in the same breath we both said "home"!
• Portable DVD - cuts down the family arguments no end.
• Our electric cool box - well worth the money and I'd never camp without it again.
• A good sense of humour - essential to counteract the bad weather.
• .....and one that I'd forgotten - microfibre towels. Whoever invented them should get a medal!

Cars and bikes

We saw some cool cars and bikes on our travels.

A lifted Hilux in Helsingor, Denmark.

An expedition prepared Patrol, from Norway, in Copenhagen.

A PV444 Volvo in Stockholm. There really are more Volvo's on the road than any other car in Sweden, with Saabs a slow second.


And another one, in the museum.

And hat trick for Stockholm, a Trabant.

We also saw many bikes, but not too many out of the ordinary ones. In Poland we saw some monkey bikes fitted with tent and luggage, fair play to the guy for having the balls to tour on so tiny and underpowered a machine. We saw a gaggle of classic BMW bikes in Germany.

Homeward bound

We had allowed planty of time to get to the ferry, but the motorway was shut outside Delft which we tried to avoid but were redirected back to it a couple of times. Turning off the crap nav we tried to follow the road sides, but they were intermittent at best. After nearly an hour tempers were rising and anxiety levels were up.

Helpfully though someone (mention no names) had programmed in Hoek and not Hoek van Holland, which are two separate places and by the time we found helpful road signs we were only 20km away and bang on time! I even had time to fill up with LPG at the fabntastic rate of .675 Euros (about 46p a litre). We would even have had time to stock up at a supermarket, except they were shut.

The crossing was long and boring, broken by a visit to the on board cinema and the new Will Smith movie, Hancock.

As we neared England the sun was shining over the Badlands of Essex. Home again.

Cheese and pottery

We left a drizzly Germany for sunshine and fluffy blue clouds in Holland....only joking, it was pissing it down. Gouda was the destination, famous for its cheese and smoking pipes and its 15th century city hall.


We parked up canal side, Vanessa having kittens as her door was 1' away from the edge.

We had a coffee in the market square, it was Saturday and market day. Helpfully we missed the Tourist Information shop by minutes. In order to squeeze both Eastern and Western European maps onto the crap nav I had to delete the Western Europe points of interest; ok if you know the address of the campsite or hotel beforehand, not if you want to find something nearby. We managed to find a town map, but hotels were not marked and the camp site it was showing wasn't there when we got there. After an hour of searching and the best the locals could suggest was try the town centre, which we had, we decided to head for Delft instead and look for hotels on the way in. Having just entered the motorway we saw the Campanile Hotel as we left Gouda.

We found another Campanile hotel in Delft and settled in for the night. Delft is primarily known for its typically Dutch town centre and Delft Blue pottery. We explored in the morning.


The Oude Kerk (Old Church), nicknamed Oude Jan ("Old John"), is a Gothic church in the old city center. Its most recognizable feature is a 75-meter-high brick tower that leans about two meters from the vertical.


City Hall.

At 9.30 in the morning the place was almost deserted, but we found one cafe on the square open and settled in for coffe and toasted sandwiches. It wasn't until we had ordered that we realised it was called the Willem van Oranje, who was the great-great-grandfather of William III of Orange who ousted Charles I at the battle of the Boyne in 1690.

Deflt was a pretty place to wander around before it was time to head off.

Pfennig plucker

We headed to the town of Goslar, situated at the northwestern foot of the Lower-Saxon highlands: the Harz mountains. And so did the rain so our plastic sheet was installed.

The former Free Imperial Town of Goslar has an over-1000-year history. Probably the discovery of silver and copper ore deposits induced the Saxon and Salic emperors to establish their largest and most secure palatinate here in the 11th century. For centuries it was the favoured seat of government in northern Germany and at the same time a centre of Christianity. The spires of the 47 churches, chapels and monasteries delineated the town’s unique silhouette. It was referred to as the “Rome of the North”.


And this little chappy had a unique party trick; those are coins coming out of the cr@#k of his @r$e.

The town is also littered with statues.


Despite the rains we had a very enjoyable day wandering around the town. One for the list to come back to. We didn't fancy cooking so found a Chinese restaurant for generous helpings of bami goreng washed down with plum schnapps and a large glass of Warsteiner.

The plastic kept the worst of the rain off, except the rear compartment where Alex sleeps so he had to share with Shannon.

Onto Berlin!

First stop, Reichstag. Completed in 1894 it was the seat of parliament in the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic. The little tourist card I've got mentions the fire that destroyed it in 1933, but fails to mention (IIRC) that the Nazi party torched it and blamed it on the Jews which then allowed them to sweep to power. The Allies helped to raze it some more, it was reconstructed in the 1970's and then remodeled by Sir Norman Foster in 1999. The queue to enter the building, and view from the glass dome, was immense so we didn't bother.

The Brandenberg Gate was built in 1794 and is crowned with the Godess of Victory. It was marooned in no-mans-land when the Berlin Wall divided the city, but was reopened in December 1989.

After WW2 the Allies divied up Berlin. East Berlin went to the Soviets and became part of the German Democratic Republic. West Berlin was split between France, Britain and America. Checkpoint Charlie separates the American and Soviet sectors. The original was dismantled long ago, this copy was reconstructed in 2000.

At the height of the cold war the GDR were a bit miffed at all the people crossing to West Berlin to flee the socialist dream, so they built a wall in 1961. Initially just breeze blocks at the end of streets, and using building facades with blocked doors and windows to form barriers, the wall developed over the years to the graffiti'ed concrete and razorwire strip overseen by watchtowers. It stretched over 155km and contained over 200 towers, and at least 234 people lost their lives on it, the documents are a bit sketchy. At every souvenir shop you can buy your own original piece of concrete wall, each one with bright, fresh paint on it as if it was only made yesterday. Hmm.

Gendarmenmarkt is supposedly one of the most beautiful squares in Europe. One one side lies the Deutsche Dom (German Cathedral), another the Schausoielhaus (a theater) and on the third side the Franzosisiche Dom (French Cathedral) seen here.

Our route then took us to the eastern side of the Under den Linden (beneath the limetrees) looking back along to the Brandenburg Gate. There are famous theatres, libraries, museums and university building as well as the usual shops located along the mile length.

Back on the bus and Alex's choice for the afternoon, the Aquarium. It might be called the Aquarium, but it's no Sealife Centre, belonging to Berlin Zoo. The zoo is a separate ticket, but in the aquarium we also saw reptiles.

There were tame carp to stroke.

Some single cell lifeforms.

We found Nemo.

And jellyfish.

Lionfish.

And this little eel, with his 2 (or more, not sure how many) friends who were hilarious. They'd pop out of the sand and rise vertically like a periscope, look at us, and then lower themselves down again for another to do the same 6' away.

We headed back to camp and decided to eat at the camp restaurant.

Camp Kladow

We arrived at our camp in the dark and erected the tent by headlights. We were at Alt Kladow of the outskirts of Berlin.

We had 2 loads of washing to do, so the next day was spent around camp getting ourselves straight again. We had a wander round, most of the camp was for permanent caravans with very little tent areas. The Germans certainly take their camping very seriously, even the birds had caravans!

In the afternoon we made our way to one of the many lakes surrounding Berlin, and the kids had a swim in Sadener See.

Our companion, the rain, was about to show so I didn't bother though in the end it blew over quite quickly.

Going underground

We headed west from Oswiecim and into the night, finally stopping at a nice hotel at nearly 9pm. Thankfully this one took visa and had a restaurant so we settled in for the night.

Next morning we headed for the town of Gluszyca and into the Sowie Mountains to visit the one of the largest underground structures of the Third Reich. On the way we meandered through beatuful wooded glades and wound up the into the hills, passing a huge dam on the way.


The subterranean complex was started in November 1943, unfortunately no documents exist as to its purpose; maybe to house secret laboratories, for industry, experimental new weapons, or maybe underground headquarters for Hitler and his staff? Whatever the purpose it was not finished, but the scale of what was constructed is impressive. Many of the slave labourers from the nearby concentration camp at Gross-Rosen gave their lives in its construction.


They drilled parallel tunnels, one over the other, then break out the floor between them, and then broaden to the required width. A reinforced concrete lining was then cast for support. The biggest halls were 12m high by 10m wide, linked by corridors 4x4m. In total there are 8.5km of galleries (halls) and 60km of narrow gauge railway line to remove spoil. The complex included sewage systems, dams and locks and it is suspected that what has been discovered is only a small part of what was constructed and planned.



This information was gleaned from a small leaflet. Our guide did not speak any English, though he talked at great length in Polish, and the kids and I got a bit bored in places while he lectured the group before moving on to the next tunnel (Vanessa had chickened out, after I'd bought the tickets!).

One of the halls had electrical switch boxes on the wall and a pair of copper covered tables with ankle and wrist manacles and a quartet of electrodes where the head would be. Eeeek!


We had wanted to stay longer in Poland, and had found a site in the mountains which was next to the town Lido, the outside swimming pool. We found this big beastie.


Unfortunately we had threaded the regulator and jettisoned the Campingaz bottle at crap camp,and this camp had no cooking facilities, so we headed towards Germany. Shame, as southern Poland was very beautiful with helpful and friendly people and we didn't want to leave so soon.