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Merv-IOM
Subscriber
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2011
- Messages
- 2,284
- Points
- 113
- Location
- Isle of Man
- Member No
- 2,034
- RV Type
- A Class
- Model
- Winnebago Journey DL 34 HD
- RV Experience
- Since 2011
A few kind folks on here asked me to post a blog of our adventures round Europe - so here goes (apologies in advance for boring the back teeth out of you) :001_smile:
Isle of Man to Denmark:
We left the island on 28th April (Sandra's birthday treat!), we stopped off at my friends truck repair garage in Nottingham, for a few days, to fully service our RV (Blackmore Commercials, who also fix & service RV's).
The real trundle began on 'Star Wars' day, May the 4th, with a lovely quiet run to Dover. DFDS were extremely good in shipping us on the 8pm boat instead of the midnight one we booked (£50 to Dunkirk, bargain!) so a welcome early arrival in Dunkirk. (We always go with DFDS 'cos they're cheap, they offer a great service and they let you park overnight at their terminal in Dunkirk for free). Next morning was a little jaunt to Adinkerk, Belgium to stock up with cheap diesel (1.29 euro per litre) and tobacco (Amber leaf £5.45 for 50gms instead of £17 in the UK) then onto a small camper stop at Lombardsijde just up the road for a couple of nights relaxing.
From there we headed for Aires at Sans-van-Gent and Hansweert, watching all the huge container ships float gently by – but the weather turned nasty so we dived into a campsite at Ellemeet for 2 nights and managed to get 6 loads of washing & drying done (on board) while there (we know how to get our money's worth lol). Back to Aires again up through Holland, stopping at Vianen (a car park in a lovely little town nr Utrecht) and Geithorn/Overjissel (small private aires on a farm.) Overjissel is a very interesting, picturesque spot – rather like Venice with the village of thatched houses built on a netowrk of little canals. Next on our list of Dutch stops was Musselkanaal, a gorgeous aires on a fork in the river – 12 euro a night including 10 amp elekky (yes more washing done lol)
We found that, although there are loads of aires in Holland, the ones with any type of service (water/dump/elekky) charged a fee, whereas in Belgium and other countries they are free.
Twas on a Sunday that we decided to leg it from Musselkanaal up past Hamburg in Germany in one go (330km) so that we avoided the traffic, especially as the Elbe tunnel was down to one 'pipe' due to roadworks (a good move as there was only 9km of traffic backed up...can you imagine how bad it would be on a Monday?). We found a nice enough aires at Kaltenkirchen for the night before trundling up to Flensburg (aires) for a couple of days. Lovely intersting harbour/waterfront, nice bars (yum, yum) and views of the Nazi castle that once housed the Hitlers naval training college before we flattened the place
)
Next stop, Denmark........
Isle of Man to Denmark:
We left the island on 28th April (Sandra's birthday treat!), we stopped off at my friends truck repair garage in Nottingham, for a few days, to fully service our RV (Blackmore Commercials, who also fix & service RV's).
The real trundle began on 'Star Wars' day, May the 4th, with a lovely quiet run to Dover. DFDS were extremely good in shipping us on the 8pm boat instead of the midnight one we booked (£50 to Dunkirk, bargain!) so a welcome early arrival in Dunkirk. (We always go with DFDS 'cos they're cheap, they offer a great service and they let you park overnight at their terminal in Dunkirk for free). Next morning was a little jaunt to Adinkerk, Belgium to stock up with cheap diesel (1.29 euro per litre) and tobacco (Amber leaf £5.45 for 50gms instead of £17 in the UK) then onto a small camper stop at Lombardsijde just up the road for a couple of nights relaxing.
From there we headed for Aires at Sans-van-Gent and Hansweert, watching all the huge container ships float gently by – but the weather turned nasty so we dived into a campsite at Ellemeet for 2 nights and managed to get 6 loads of washing & drying done (on board) while there (we know how to get our money's worth lol). Back to Aires again up through Holland, stopping at Vianen (a car park in a lovely little town nr Utrecht) and Geithorn/Overjissel (small private aires on a farm.) Overjissel is a very interesting, picturesque spot – rather like Venice with the village of thatched houses built on a netowrk of little canals. Next on our list of Dutch stops was Musselkanaal, a gorgeous aires on a fork in the river – 12 euro a night including 10 amp elekky (yes more washing done lol)
We found that, although there are loads of aires in Holland, the ones with any type of service (water/dump/elekky) charged a fee, whereas in Belgium and other countries they are free.
Twas on a Sunday that we decided to leg it from Musselkanaal up past Hamburg in Germany in one go (330km) so that we avoided the traffic, especially as the Elbe tunnel was down to one 'pipe' due to roadworks (a good move as there was only 9km of traffic backed up...can you imagine how bad it would be on a Monday?). We found a nice enough aires at Kaltenkirchen for the night before trundling up to Flensburg (aires) for a couple of days. Lovely intersting harbour/waterfront, nice bars (yum, yum) and views of the Nazi castle that once housed the Hitlers naval training college before we flattened the place
)Next stop, Denmark........
