The crossing to Rotterdam was really smooth and without anything of particular interest to report. Apart, maybe, from the genuinely unexpectedly high quality of the ship's buffet-style breakfast. It's around fifteen hours since we partook: I'm still full.
Border control took some clearing but such is the price these days of venturing to the EU from the UK. It's obviously much less fuss going by boat the other way, especially - it seems - if you chuck your passport into the sea before hitting the UK border.
Post immigration clearance, the morning was spent traversing the Netherlands and it was both great and humbling to yet again experience this well fettled and civilised country. All of the civil engineering just sits so well here; from water treatment plants, through solar farms, to the road, rail, and waterways infrastructure: absolutely nothing jars and everything is obviously done to a massively high standard. I'll spare more interminable NL-related waxing lyrical, because I've done it so many times before on this blog, but suffice to say the NL it's everything the de-developing UK is not. Notwithstanding similar internal and external pressures.
That said... just before we hit the German border we did come upon a bit of atypical NL weirdness. We stopped for a cup of tea and a rest in a totally random informal pull-off near a woodland and lake and then - for about an hour - were totally perplexed by a constant stream of single men aged between about 40 and 60 appearing alone in cars before parking up and disappearing off into the woodland, only to return about ten minutes later and then driving off again.
Now, we may be completely wide of the mark, but the dozen or so individuals we saw engaged in this caper were certainly not walking dogs, nor did they have anything at all outdoorsy with them... nor did they look like they were foraging for berries. We also judged that the likelihood of them all being into geo-caching or Pokémon Go seemed fairly slim. They just didn't look the type.
We left that place and went to Germany.
We only did about another hour after entering Deutschland before calling it a day and parking up at a functional-if-unspectacular spot to spend the night (coordinates). From here we've usefully come down a bit and generally got better sorted in order to get into the travelling groove proper (it always takes a little while).
Emma had a quick spin on the bike and only just got back in time to avoid a pretty heavy downpour following a sunny and sultry day (pic).
We've only done a bit of casual wildlife spotting today and not seen anything unusual or rare. Most notables have been brown hare, white stork, great-white egret and Egyptian geese.