Blogging at 22:00 on Tuesday 20th August from intended overnighting spot N 53.62980°, E 08.87742° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:53.62980%2C08.87742
Last night's crossing was pan flat and we dutifully cracked into the ships breakfast buffet (avoiding around eighty tonnes of meatballs) before docking in Kiel sometime around 10.00am.
The Stena Line ship was alright, but was a markedly different experience from the amazing Finnlines archipelago sea crossing on Sunday. Germans and Dutch made up most of the (visible) passengers and the atmosphere aboard was just far more raucous and chaotic. I suppose, though, this will have ultimately served as a good softener for when we reboard the floating funfair / seafront that is the service back to Hull next Saturday.
So, we're back in Germany. The crops look riper, or have been harvested, but apart from that not much has changed from when we passed through about a month ago.
We retraced over the Elbe using the same ro-ro ferry service we'd used on the journey north and once again had to queue nose-to-tail for about an hour before our turn came round. It's hard to imagine the Norwegians would settle for this level of ferry service over such a busy route. At least I got to do a bit of birding as we queued and spotted avocet and black tern amongst the hundreds of geese, wildfowl, gulls and waders.
On the ferry, the truck was absolutely dwarfed by one of the poshest A-class motorhomes I've ever seen. It was a Concorde Centurion, a German registered behemoth of perhaps 10m in length and 4m in height (pic). The build quality seemed sublime. I'm sure there are circumstances where something like this would be the ideal motorhome choice, but can't imagine how restrictive the reality would be. Trunk roads and formal sites only, methinks. And perhaps staff to tend it.
Anyway, we've now bashed our way through trees to a space that a Concorde Centurion wouldn't physically fit and are about to turn in. There hasn't been much about except for a few brown hares, roe deer and a slack handful of the more expected butterfly and bird species. Spotted flycatcher has been the most notable.
In an illness update: we're both still very much on the ropey side with Emma in particular being totally out of beans.
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