Bremerhaven or bust

After a fairly leisurely day cleaning the house and finishing packing the rest of the stuff, it was suddenly later than we thought and the car had to be packed. We set off slightly later than planned but arrived at Harwich 15 minutes earlier than we expected but were allowed straight on board and into our cabin. Just before bed Alex said he had a rash – he was absolutely covered in red itchy spots. We did all the usual tests to make sure it was nothing untoward and packed everyone off to bed. We all had a reasonable nights sleep but Shannon insisted that she could hear 3 lots of snoring!

Thursday morning dawned and we set off on our long route to Bremerhaven. The Dutch are well equipped if you want LPG but not so good for cash machines as they had the former in all the petrol stations we stopped at while looking for the latter. A lunchtime pit stop at the first petrol station over the German border was a success on the cash front, and we got out the table, chairs and stove and cooked up bacon and egg rolls by the roadside.

The 'crap nav' was fab and we breezed through all the towns and had a good journey until about 2 hours away from our destination. We were stuck in queues of traffic and finally pulled off for a quick drink. The traffic quickly started moving again (typical) so we jumped back in the car and sped off. It wasn't until we reached Bremerhaven that we realised that Chris' camera had fallen out of the door at our pit stop and was lost forever.

We parked underneath the arches in Bremerhaven, where the road crossed the large canal, and had a short walk in 30+ degrees heat to the Maritime Museum. After the drive, the heat and losing my camera we didn't fancy the museum but found what we came for....Das Boot.

U-Boat Wilhelm Bauer was an operational submarine of the Third Reich. It may look big on the outside, but this was no Tardis. The sleeping quarters were tiny, 12 bunks in maybe 5' by 30'. The corridors were literally shoulder width, and snaked through the wood veneer paneling of the living quarters. This was spacious compared to the operational areas where pipes ran along both walls and the ceiling with flanges and valves positioned to clonk the unwary on the head. From the conning tower two periscopes protrude, and also air intake and exhaust snorkels for the diesel engines. These predators of the North Atlantic used massive batteries the size of a fridge; 62 of them x3 battery rooms which allowed them to run 1 hour 8 minutes at power and 50 hours 'silent running'. When they emerged from the depths the snorkels allowed them to remain submerged while the diesel engines recharged the batteries. Maybe this was the inspiration for the Toyota Pious? But more amazing is this vessel of 58 men had only 2 toilets, and the galley 2 sinks, 2 hobs and 1 oven in a space 5' by 6'.

A quick trip around the town centre found an electronics shop and €180 I had replaced camera, case and a couple of 2Gb SD cards.

Only 8 clicks from Bremerhaven was our campsite, Erholungspark Spadener See. Arranged around a lake it was typically teutonic; well sited pitches, vans parked away from tents and a huge ablutions complex made of brick and tile. After we'd made camp we all jumped in the lake to cool down, Vanessa then went off to try out the showers and the kids played in the water while I decided to swim to the other end of the lake and back. After a tea of bacon, hotdog sausages, beans and toast the mozzies drove us inside for the night.