Hello! I’m back! It’s been a long time since we’ve been abroad, at least 16 months, so forgive me if I’m a little rusty, I hope to improve!
We left the U.K. in mid August, sailing to the Hook of Holland, partly for a change but also because we’d decided to head into Central Europe; we also took the view that we could turn left to Scandinavia or right towards South Eastern Europe but in the end we went straight ahead. So first stop Holland, where we found that they are heavily into traffic calming and you have to be a skilful driver to drive a lorry in Holland: they put arcs of stone in the roundabouts to slow you down and keep you in the correct lane, very effective. You also have to be a skilful pedestrian to avoid the cyclists who seem to have the strongest right of way and bear down upon you at huge speeds, waving their arms and shouting, especially when on electric bikes, though I must say I think electric bikes are a bit of a cheat! So after some pleasant beers and waffles and an interesting time at the market in Gouda, we turned our back on Holland and headed off into Germany, rushing rapidly past the great conurbation around Dortmund and into the countryside at Wickede by the Ruhr.

This was the first of our swimming pool stops. The Germans love their outdoor pools, built like old lidos with plenty of grass where you can sit and picnic, usually more than one pool, slides and of course a small cafe selling drinks, wurste, chips and so on. For campers like ourselves, there is the added attraction of showers…..After a long hot day on the road, a German swimming pool is a wonderful place to be and you can quote me on that. An added bonus is that at night, they are lovely and quiet……Mind you that’s not to say you won’t be woken at some ungodly hour by a skip lorry squeezing its way past, down an extremely narrow road….

So we continued on into Germany, heading east and south. It’s such a huge place full of rolling fields and thick forests, there is so much space and it just seems so BIG! I was surprised to read it’s only 1.5 times bigger than the U.K. but then I suppose we have all that twiddly coastline, whereas this is just land with a very small coast…

We stopped at the curiously named Schenklengsfeld, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields and next to……the swimming pool. A very pleasant place to spend the weekend, surrounded by German families enjoying the last days of the school holidays and barely another foreigner in sight. I dredged the depths of my memory to come up with my best 50 year old ‘O’ level German, bobbing up with a few words to ask whether there were any hot dogs, only to be swept along in a deluge of German as they delightedly told me what flavours were available, the prices, the sizes in huge detail. Langsam  bitte!

A day of Umleitungs followed, this is German for ‘diversion’ which frequently if not always, means a diversion with very few signs, leading you in a huge circle to somewhere you don’t really want to be. Beware of crosses in red tape and a U sign, for you will then start to drive round in circles and get Very Hot, Bothered and Bad Tempered. By the time we got to Saalfeld, it just felt too late for our swim at the lovely pool across the road. Grrr!

However onwards and upwards, we found ourselves the following afternoon in deepest former GDR, not far from the Czech border at a campsite at Heidelheim. It felt like being in an old spy film, all I needed was for George Smiley to appear through the birches and I’d have been back in the 1960s. The site was what estate agents would call ‘charming’, meaning it was slightly tatty but everything worked, there was loads of grassy space under the trees, it was quiet and there were hot showers (hooray!) and we could get our washing done (double hooray!) and dry in the sunshine (huzza huzza huzza!) There were even homemade knitted children’s bootees for sale in reception, a Corbyn-in-cap lookalike as the symbol for the ‘Gents’ and an antiquated coin operated hot plate . Who could ask for more? Well…..the showers ran on a coin operated timer and 10 did not mean minutes as I found to my cost. Mind you, I was treading out my knickers in true grape picking style at the time! And the swimming pool was actually a deep pond and being the end of the season it was a bit green….it was also full of fish. So we didn’t swim, which was a pity in 30+ degrees……
Travelling eastwards, across the plains still gold from the recent harvest, through dark woods with deep rivers, the architecture changed: we saw more and more onion domed churches and tall houses covered with shiny gray tiles like fish scales and steeply pitched roofs, sometimes with an upturned tilt at each corner. And so it continued, into Czechia and to our current campsite on the outskirts of Prague where we arrived on a day of sweltering heat. So yes, we are parked right next to the site swimming pool! The site has  possibly the best showers yet: hot, tick,;no draughts, tick; hooks, tick;not on a timer: tick; stool, tick. 5/5!
After a refreshing swim, relax by the pool and huge thunderstorm, we headed off into the city on the next day, umbrella to hand.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many lost looking tourists, as I have in Prague. Coming out of the station, we were completely flummoxed about which way to go: the signs were in Czech, our map was in Czech and it was all very well looking for the Old Square but Czech is the strangest language. It has no similarity to anything else I’ve seen and very few English translations readily available (this is after the currency which leaves you completely floundering, divide by 3, take off a 0, add on a bit and you’ve got the sterling equivalent but try doing that in a hurry when presented with thousands of crowns. Is that £60? £600? Just don’t worry about it!) So we groped our way to a big square with a market, taking in an ATM on the way, bumping frequently into other tourists all armed with Google maps as they tripped up and down kerbs and we found ourselves walking through the beautiful Old Town. PS The big towers are a bit of a giveaway, though they frequently disappear behind the immensely tall buildings, often six stories high.

I loved Prague, it reminded me of Venice with its immensely tall buildings, narrow streets and lack of traffic but obviously no water…. It is a beautiful city and I could easily spend a lot of time here but August is not the month to visit. It’s heaving with people from all over the world, stopping to take selfies in the sunshine, ambling off at strange diagonals, stopping to check their phones and so on and on or usw as the Germans say.

So I’ll be back, to quote a big man…..
On which note, I’ll love you and leave you.