3rd June 2016. Ferry from Germany to Sweden.

In the morning we took our coffee and went for a walk beside the beach where ‘eagle eyed’ Darren took great pleasure in pointing out the lady who was sunbathing in the buff which was surprising as it wasn’t that sunny.

We saw people in the water so I went for a paddle and was pleasantly surprised at how warm the water was which may have been because it was very shallow for a long way out.

I took the opportunity to change into my swimsuit for the first time this year and attempted to swim but it was so shallow I could only lay in the water and pull myself along because my hands kept hitting the sand.

When I’d finished ‘swimming’ we packed the van ready to drive to the ferry and that’s when the nice relaxing start to the day came to an abrupt halt!

The previous evening Darren had checked the route to the ferry twice to see how long it would take and each time it said 35 mins, however THIS time, when he turned on the SAT NAV as we were about to leave, it said it would take an hour to get there, arrival time 14.02, which was two minutes AFTER the gate closed!  Aaaaaargh!

I was amazed at how fast Darren was able to make our van move.  We’d made up six minutes on the journey and were feeling rather pleased with that when we suddenly got stuck behind a tractor which lost us two minutes and just as we thought we were going to make it on time after all we came to an unmanned toll road which involved another panic as we had to find change.

As luck would have it Darren had sorted the money into different currencies and put them in separate pots so I had to rummage through the cupboard for the ‘Euro’ pot which Darren then dropped on the floor in his haste to throw the coins into the bucket to continue our race to the ferry terminal.

I’ve no idea how he managed it but somehow we arrived at the ferry booth at 13.59, that was definitely cutting it a bit fine.  We were VERY pleased to see a car waiting to pay at the booth which meant it was still open, phew!

We were ecstatic that we got there on time because we’d bought the cheap ‘tough luck if you’re late’ ticket.  While we were waiting in the queue we watched the queue next to us drive on to the ferry however when it came to our neighbour’s turn to go he didn’t move.  In fact he remained where he was for quite a few minutes which was when we noticed he’d fallen asleep (or possibly died) in his little white van.

I tried to open my window to call to him but it wouldn’t open so I banged on my window but there was so much noise he couldn’t hear me.  I was just about to get out and tap on his window when he woke with a start, suddenly noticed he had unwittingly become the front of the queue, and pulled away grinning from ear to ear!

I hadn’t realised how huge the ferry was going to be, I’ve never been on such a large ship.  I’m not good on boats so I’d got my Gin Gins (ginger chewy sweets, they were a great help on the ‘choppy’ journey when we travelled on the ferry from the Isles of Scilly) and sea sickness wrist bands in my bag in case it was a bumpy crossing but as it turned out I could barely tell the ship was moving, thank goodness!

After the ferry had travelled a LONG way from the harbour Darren pointed out a little dot in the water, when I zoomed in with my camera I eventually saw what he was looking at, a man paddling on a fishing ski.  We christened him Kevin after our daredevil brother-in-law who also fishes from a fishing ski off the coast of Durban.  The fisherman looked teeny beside the huge ferry.

We arrived at Trelleborg after a 5½ hour journey and got to the site where we were hoping to stay by 9 p.m.

We discovered that the places we’d stayed at in Germany were called stellplatz but in Sweden they are called ställplats.

The ställplats at Höllviken was a small grassy area in the grounds of the Viking museum and it overlooked the sea.  It was perfect, there were only three vans camping that night and all we could hear was the gentle lapping of the sea on the shore.