27th August 2016. Hohenkirchen Beckerwitz, Germany.

We got up early, had a quick cup of tea and some breakfast then drove to the ferry port.

We’d decided the night before that we would make sandwiches for the trip and get washed while we were in the queue waiting to get on the ferry (we were not getting caught out again like the last time we were here).  We had a quick 5 minute detour into Trelleborg town centre but the roads were still closed so I didn’t get to look around the town.

At the ferry port the girl in the booth asked for our reference number but it turns out Direct Ferries don’t give you the ferry reference number they give you their own one so she needed our passports, it’s a good job Darren had anticipated that and got them out just in case!  She told us to follow the blue line for 2 km.

We seemed to be driving for a long time and were starting to worry about whether we’d gone the wrong way (it wouldn’t be the first time!) when we suddenly spied a queue of traffic waiting to go on a ferry.  Phew!

We joined queue no. 10 as we’d been told, I had a quick shower, put some clean clothes on and started making the picnic.

Darren took a chance and also had a quick shower.  That was all fine but unfortunately for me I then decided that I needed to use the toilet.  There were long queues and we were in the middle row with nothing moving.  It looked as though there was still quite a while to go before we would be embarking so there was plenty of time.  However, the moment I sat on the toilet Darren called back “Oh, oh, our row’s moving!”  I’m sure I detected a note of glee in his voice as he said it.

It’s not easy to reassemble your clothing and get back into the passengers seat while the van is moving I can tell you!  That’s a new experience I won’t ever be repeating.  We didn’t even move very far, which is just as well because although I’d assembled all the rolls earlier while Darren was showering I still had everything out all over the work surfaces and the cupboard doors open.  We know from bitter experience that if we’d travelled too far it would have all ended up on the floor.

Bye-bye Sweden.  We thoroughly enjoyed our adventures in Sweden and Norway.  We consider ourselves very lucky to have been able to tour around such beautiful (if expensive) countries.  We were very sad to leave.

We had a nice smooth journey across on the ferry.  We spent two hours sitting up on the sun deck then went inside to resize photos for the next five hours.

Our ferry sat outside Travemünde harbour for quite a while, we saw a pilot boat racing up towards us but he quickly disappeared.

Eventually our ferry started moving again.  We stood by the railings looking over, it was like being a film star, people on the shore were waving as the ferry went past, even people going past on boats waved.

It was a long way down the channel before we came to the area where the ferry finally docked.

When we got off the ferry we followed the SAT NAV to our next destination, Hohenkirchen Beckerwitz, at least we started to follow it until 15 minutes after we’d left the port it sent us down a dead end to a nature reserve, after that Darren followed the signs to Rostock and only listened to the SAT NAV when we got closer to our destination.  He was a little concerned when we started driving down a single track lane, until we saw a motorhome coming the other way (luckily we were just by a passing place) and realised that was the way to the stellplätze.

The stellplätze, Ostseecamping Beckerwitzer Strand, was a field in front of the gates to a small campsite.

It was quite lively when we arrived but suddenly around 9 p.m. everything went quiet and, thankfully, stayed that way until the morning. Perfect.

http://www.ostseecampingbeckerwitz.de/platz.html