Our next stop along the coast was at PFCC 265, Horyzont, at Wladyslawowo, a pleasant but expensive site, high up on the cliff  tops and the first we’d used which had a regimented layout; the wind blew up on high and reminded us of trips to the Norfolk coast along the cliff tops near Cromer. 

We took just

a short drive next day, by now 4^th June, heading for PFCC 83 at Bialogora which we did find but a holiday complex had been built on it.

  We settled for 3 nights though on (unlisted) Bryza, a great site with adequate facilities and friendly owners, who charged 40zl per night with hook-up.  When ambling around Bialogora we had a déjà-vu sense of being at a French coastal resort.  Incidentally, some of the Baltic coast road along here is the worst for driving we encountered on the trip, with long stretches of it laid in granite sets!   We did an overnight stop at PFCC 41, Ambre, at Leba, which is an extremely busy resort town, in fact it has 8 PFCC listings, compared with only 4 in Krakow, 3 in Gdansk and just 2 for Warsaw.  

In the evening we spotted a cyclist, well laden down, riding past our ‘van, looking for a pitch for his tent.  Hello Marcus!  On leaving Leba we visited the nearby famous “Shifting Sands”, safeguarded within a National Park.  We had to park up on the outskirts of the park and small shuttle buses are used to complete the journeyb ut if you have a bike you can cycle.  The sands are another must if you venture to these parts.  I took loads of photos, but it’s really difficult to capture the sands blowing gently in the wind at ground level; the bare, damaged trees though show that the winter winds must be quite fierce.

A night at Ustka followed before a couple of nights at Kolobrzeg, at PFCC 78 “Baltic”; we paid 56zl (£14) per night and facilities were very good. 

The highlight of our stay there was a guided trip round the town and harbour, in what looked very much like a covered milk float!  Next up was Wolin, staying for a couple of days at Camperstop Fam. Lafrentz; a friendly family whose site is on the water’s edge with fantastic views. 

Take a short walk back up the road and you’ll find Wolin’s Slavian and Viking settlement. Entry costs pennies and we spent most of the morning there; we loved the flatbread, straight off the hot ashes, spread with their homemade jam!  We were there in mid June, but if you visit in August there’s a festival.

  A 15 miles trip from Wolin and we were on the ferry, for a river (mouth)  crossing to the island of Uznam, where we were heading for Swinoujscie and the PFCC 44 campsite Relax.  At check in the young chap on reception was delighted with the opportunity to practice his English, saying he’d been there a year and we were the first English speaking visitors he had met!  The site was quite well placed for a walk down to the spectacular promenade area, but we were tightly packed in and moved next day onto the camping area at the harbour (N53.91031, E 014.26828), which we’d discovered on a walk.  We had a pub meal there and, as with the campsite receptionist, the barman was amazed to be speaking English, saying he’d been there four years and we were the first he’d met!  

The harbour was a great base for a couple of days, parked out by the water and loads of walking in green spaces, including a trip through the woods and along the shore line to the old lighthouse.

Swinoujscie is the very northwest point of Poland and, as we didn’t want to retrace our steps,  we carried on driving across the small island and were immediately in Germany, where the island is named Usedom.  Our final Polish destination of the trip was Szczecin, a slightly longer trip by driving on the German side of the river Oder which, except for a  small area where Szczecin itself stands, has actually formed the Polish/German boundary since Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill carved up eastern Europe at the end of W WII; they applied the same logic when dividing east and west Germany, by using the river Elbe to split the country in half.  We stayed on Camping Marina, PFCC 25; it was dreadful weather so we didn’t even bother to go out and find the town because by this stage of the trip we felt that we’d trodden enough concrete and cobblestones without getting wet to do it again!  We chatted over cups of tea with an English chap who has his boat moored up there and he told us that one of the conditions for Poland to be accepted into the EU was that they disband their shipbuilding industry, for which they were offered shopping centres to compensate!  We were shocked; we’d obviously noticed the abandoned shipyards all along the Baltic, but had no idea that this was the cause of their demise and it’s inconceivable what possible use anyone thought that shopping centres could be for thousands of unemployed ship builders!

 The next morning, on 17^th June, we left Poland, after five and a half weeks and 1400 miles.  We loved the country and the people and would happily go back for another visit.

We didn’t travel far that day, just to the Camperstop on the harbour at Schwedt-Oder, then about 30 miles further south the next day because John wanted to see the boatlift at Niederfinow; overnight parking is allowed in the carpark so our pitch was sorted.

  It was fascinating to see the lift in action and a new one is currently under construction at the side of it. 

It’s a pretty little village and there’s a choice of places to eat.

All of the Camperstop listings for Berlin are about 10 miles from the centre and we picked Marina Wendenschloss, fooled by the photo; don’t go there on any account, it’s a dirty, overcrowded, tiny space behind an industrial building and some of the “motorhomes” there looked as if they had hadn’t moved for years!  We ended up going quite a way round the ring road to Campingplatz Krossinsee, an ACSI site in the Schmockwitz area.

  We were both very underwhelmed by Berlin; the highlight for me, which made the visit worthwhile, was seeing some remains of the infamous Berlin Wall and getting some photos. It’s said that everyone can remember what they were doing in Nov 1963 when they heard the news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination;

that’s true for me too, but I will always remember the joy I felt for the eastern Europeans on 9^th Nov 1989 when I heard that that odious wall had been breached! 

We were much happier with our next stop, beautiful Magdeburg, where we parked on Camperstop listed Stellplatz Petriforde for €8 per night.  We were parked on the west bank of the Oder and, looking across the river to Cracau, it was plain to see the relics of the Communist regime’s “architecture”. 

Walking around the town that evening it dawned on us that it was 21^st June because, unusual for anywhere outside of France, the whole town had pulled out all the stops for “La Fete de la Musique”! 

Outdoor opera is staged there each summer too but, of course, it was fully booked and I had to miss out so book in advance if you are going to be passing through. 

The next day was so hot that we took our chairs onto the grass bank behind the parking area and sat under the trees, where we also ate a picnic lunch, but it all changed very fast when a tornado blew up and barely left us enough time to get everything back inside before a torrential downpour which lasted all afternoon.  Hello here to Roswirtha, who arrived during the downpour!  We next put our heads down for a night on Camperstop Stadthalle at Heiligenstadt, a lovely old small town. We ate a superb meal that evening at the Hotel Norddeutscher Bund to celebrate my birthday.

 

Next up was a night on Camperstop Strandbad at Mohnesee, prior to our visit the next morning to the Mohne Dam, famous since the Dambusters breached it in their daring raid during WWII. As the photos show, it was rebuilt!

On leaving the dam we pointed ourselves in the general direction of the Moselle valley and after a hard drive, sticking to the east of Dusseldorf, Koln and Bonn, we arrived at a Camperstop at Konigswinter.  I had (mistakenly) thought that we’d been told it was a beautiful town, not to be missed.  However, we did meet new friends there, Vic and Joyce from Grimsby, so it was worthwhile! 

We moved with them to Linz am Rhein next day to the listed Camperstop on the river, but it was such a noisy stop, with the road and the railway very close behind us, that we all stayed only one night. Linz itself though was well worth the visit and before we left we had lunch in town; we tend to get bored with Schnitzel always on the menus, but we both settled

for one that day and were delighted, they were the best we’ve ever eaten; unfortunately I’ve lost the restaurant’s card and we must have paid in cash because there’s nothing on our card statements either!  Just down the road from Linz we pulled onto Camperstop listed Yachthafen Neuwied, but it was a dreadful place so we carried on for a few more miles to Koblenz, where the Moselle branches off from the Rhine, and stayed 3 nights on the Camperstop listed Busparkplatz at €5 per night.  It’s a good spot, about a mile walk along the river into the town and we were amongst a lot of fellow campers. 

Down on the quayside next morning we went in search of the Koln-Dusseldorfer (KD Lines) booking office.

I had been looking online for something a bit special to mark our 50^th wedding anniversary and found info about a full day Rhine cruise that KD operate from Koblenz to Rudesheim and, what’s more, the vessel used is RMS Goethe, a paddle steamer built in 1913!

The only downside is that our anniversary was still more than a week away, but we would be way down the Moselle by then, so we booked it for the next day, 29^th June.  The 11 hour round trip began at 9.15 a.m. and it was a fabulous experience, the stuff of fairytales to sail along taking in the awe inspiring scenery of that section of the Rhine, which is a UNESCO site.  

My photography skills are dreadful, but that didn’t stop me snapping away all day!  There is a bar and a good restaurant onboard, serving everything from croissants to a blow-out champagne breakfast and, later in the day, a choice of hot lunches and evening meals.

We were able to leave the ship for an hour to explore beautiful Rudesheim, before the return to Koblenz, where we disembarked again, taking with us lasting memories of the day.

On leaving Koblenz the next morning our trip along the Moselle began, where every site we used is a Camperstop listing, the first one at Ediger/Eller.  There we met Susanna and Bent, from Odense, which was the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, as we had learned 3 years ago during our trip to Denmark. 

We didn’t meet any fellow campers at our next pitch, at a vineyard in Punderich, because the rain only stopped once and we took that opportunity to have a walk around the village; we did, however, notice a Rialta sporting an Ontario registration plate.  After a couple of relaxing days by the river at Kinheim we spent a night on the harbour at Neumagen-Dhron, because there’s always a washing machine at a harbour!

  It was a busy site, but we found a pitch by the water’s edge with grass and shade too, which was necessary that day.  Our Dutch next door neighbours had a lovely old Citroen motorhome, about 40 years old, which he had converted himself, including lengthening it and adding a raised roof level; with their permission it’s pictured below.

Whilst travelling along the Moselle we were just moving a few miles from stop to stop, to take in the all the valley scenery and not be away from the region too quickly, so our next pitch was at the Feiten vineyard.  We had only been on site about 10 mins when we saw the Rialto we’d spotted at Punderich, then got chatting to Jay and Bev, its proud owners.  We spent a lot of time over the next 2 days chatting over coffee and putting the world to rights!   They were going to ship their ‘van back to Canada at the end of their trip, before heading off in search of adventures in pastures new. (Bye the way Bev, the sunflowers lasted until after our anniversary!)  Next was Reisemobilpark Klusserath, which sounds like a campsite but is a huge, grassy camperstop.  Our German neighbours there were Johann and Maria Schmatz, a very friendly couple, with whom we chatted the next morning over coffee and cake to celebrate our 50th anniversary.

  We had planned to have a celebratory meal that evening at a Michelin restaurant, but I made a complete hash of the online booking so that didn’t materialise; we did, however, find our way to the Bescheider Muhle hotel and restaurant, where there was plenty room  to park and David, the new owner, made us very welcome.

  We chatted with him over coffee the next morning and when we said our goodbyes he was planning to open a camperstop area; I forgot to note down the co-ordinates, but the address is: Muhle, 54413 Bescheid. 

Bescheid was our last stop in Germany.  We drove for quite a while without seeing a decent place to park up and ended the journey a couple of hours later at the Jungerlinster Camperstop, about 15 miles over the border in Luxembourg. 

A couple of  days later we stopped off in Bastogne, southern Belgium, for lunch and to look around the town, which was under siege in Dec 1944 before being relieved by U.S. General Patton’s Third Army.  Then we headed into France and spent 3 nights on a harbour of the river Meuse at Camperstop Etape fluvial, Montherme.  We were there in Sep last year and I’m sure we’ll be back again; we arrived on 11^th Jul and were going to move on 13^th, but then I learned from the Capitaine that Montherme’s Bastille Day celebrations would be held that night and, what’s, more we lucky campers already had the ringside seats because the Feu d’Artifice display would be on the river bank opposite us!  I did take photos, which were rubbish as mine often are I’m afraid, but we all know what fireworks look like!

We headed a little north then, on our way towards Calais, via a night on the Camperstop at Stade Bollaert-Delelis P6 at Lens.

 

If you plan to use it BE AWARE that it is no longer possible to access the parking by the route your satnav may direct you, (through the park,)  as height barriers are now in place and, worse still, they’ve made it one way so you can only get back onto the main road by driving back via the cycleway (how do we know that, you may well ask!!).  Your best option would be to search for the McDonalds drive-in (which is right beside the designated camperstop) and follow that, but BE AWARE again, that there are major disruptions around the stop; the perimeter fence has been moved nearer to the pitches and it looks as though they have unearthed some WWII bunkers whilst ripping up the raised grass bank!

Onwards and westwards!  A couple of nights on the Camperstop at Grande-Fort-Phillippe, which is handy for the ferry, brought us very close to the end of our trip.  A 15 miles run to Calais ferry and we were on our way back to blighty; we were back on our driveway later that day, after an eleven and a half weeks trip, covering 3833 miles!