2nd June 2016. Journey from Harsefeld to Boiensdorf, Germany.

It was beautiful looking out towards the ruins this morning.  After the heavy rain last night we opened the blinds to find there was mist laying over them, very atmospheric!  I tried to photograph it but unfortunately my photos didn’t do it justice.

We went for a walk to get some bread for breakfast, we walked through the monastery grounds and discovered a bakery that also did breakfast so we had two platters with two rolls, slices of Gouda cheese, sliced boiled egg, jam, butter, slices of salami and raw mince (fleischsalat).  Darren had the meat and I had the cheese and egg.  It was great fun trying to work out what the words on the menu meant, Honing=honey, koniture=jam, we think!

The lady behind the counter seemed to be speaking louder and louder as she tried to explain what she was asking us, I thought it was just us Brits that did that! She finally made herself understood, did we want our coffee first or with the food, aah!!

It’s been a lovely start to the day.  We saw the cutest little green and yellow bird this morning it was hopping around near us until Darren got his camera out to photograph him then it immediately flew away.  He was the size of a chaffinch but three times as round.  He looked like a little round ball or as Darren said perhaps he was the birdie version of a puffer fish, he’s been renamed fatus birdicus.

We’re on our way to Boiensdorf (or as Darren thought I said poison dwarf!) via Mölln and Ratzeburg now.  We’ve just seen a big red heart in the window of a parked caravan in a lay-by, we saw one yesterday in a parked up motorhome window.  I thought, “what a lovely idea perhaps we should do that” until Darren pointed out that there was also a sign on the caravan that said ‘Sexy girls’ and he therefore assumed it was actually a sign advertising a brothel!  Righty ho!  It’s a unanimous decision, no hearts adorning our van after all.

We had a long drive today.  We drove down the motorway to Mölln, we drove through it and the SAT NAV tried to take us down a road that was closed so we drove around the streets looking for somewhere  to park, we gave up eventually and decided to drive to Ratzeburg.  Trying to leave town was difficult (probably due to the closed road) we sat in traffic at some lights waiting to turn left for ages then decided that as nothing was moving we’d head back towards the town ignoring the continuous babble of the SAT NAV telling us to do a ‘U’ turn until if finally found a new route and took us out of town the way we came in.

We drove to Ratzeburg where again we drove around looking for somewhere to park. We’ve come to the conclusion this is going to be a whistle stop tour if we don’t find a better way of visiting a town!   We eventually found a place but it was €8 and we were only staying for a quick  lunch so drove down to a car park by the water and parked across 4 parking bays, like the motorhome in front of us  (we seem to be making  a habit of this) and I made lunch.  We sat and ate it looking out over the lake.

We left pretty quickly because it was heading towards 4 pm by that time and we still had a couple of hours to go before we arrived in Boiensdorf.  Yet again, at the mercy of the SAT NAV Darren had to do a 3 point turn in a narrow road (and he did it very professionally) because the SAT NAV said the road ahead was closed AFTER it sent us that way, it was then trying to encourage us to do a ‘U’ turn in the main road which was definitely not an option.

We drove through Wismar on our way to Boiensdorf.  Wismar is a beautiful Hanseatic town, I hope we can go and explore it when we drive back from Denmark.  They had a market going on as we drove through, unfortunately we still had half an hour’s drive before we got to our destination so we carried on driving.

We drove past a windmill in the village next to the area we were staying, I’ve only seen four windmills on our trip so far, I was surprised because I’d assumed The Netherlands would have been bursting with them.

We had a slight problem when we arrived at the site, which turned out to be a large field with logs marking the front of each parking bay.  Darren parked the van and we went to buy a camping ticket from the machine.  I was lagging behind him because we’d had to jump over a ditch to get to the part of the field with the ticket machine in it and I’d been dithering about jumping or walking round, I was surprised that he just stood staring at the machine and not actually putting any money in.  I heard a German man come up to him and ask whether he could help.  When I looked at the front of the machine there was a LOAD of writing but none that was remotely familiar!  With the kind man’s help Darren bought the ticket and we went back to the van for a coffee and to put something cooler on, it had been chilly in the morning when we’d left Harsefeld so we were wearing warm clothes but here everyone was wearing either swimwear or shorts and a t-shirt.

When we were more suitably attired we had a walk along the beach which was quite narrow and then we sat on a bench and chilled out watching the boats bobbing on the water.  Back at the van I made dinner while Darren got the table and chairs out and realised with horror how revolting it looked.  We hadn’t looked at it in 10 years, everyone else had swanky tables whereas ours was rusty and wobbly, we were a little concerned that it was going to collapse as soon as we put a plate on it.

Nevertheless it served its purpose and we ate our dinner and drank wine whilst watching the swallows swooping over the reeds in front of the van.  After a while I happened to glance over at the van next to us and there sitting outside it was a black and tan Hovawart looking so much like our lovely dog Inke,who died in September, and I wandered over to say hello.

This Hovawart was beautiful, she was 5 years old and her name was Lucy, she gave me lots of kisses on my hands but that was probably because I tasted of the food I’d been preparing!  Her owners said they had had two other Hovawarts before her, first a female who was completely black, they said she was very clever, and then after a while they got a male who was a blonde Hovawart and according to his owners rather dense.  He used to follow the female round all day as though he was her puppy.   Apparently he cried for days after she died and he kept wandering around trying to find her, poor thing.

We had a nice peaceful evening  shut in the van because it was a midge fest outside, they kept trying to get into the van, thank goodness for the insect screens!