Well, the time has finally arrived for us to pack up our camp and then homewards. We both feel very sad about this as this has been an excellent trip which in spite of the difficult weather conditions earlier in the holiday we have both enjoyed greatly and have gained a lot from. It was particularly difficult this morning to pack away as the weather was so beautiful and it was sad to be leaving our good Dutch friends who have been so nice during our stay who kindly invited us for a coffee prior to our departure.

Packing away went smoothly and from start to finish took us about 2.5 hours which we didn't think was too bad considering that we have been here for 2 weeks, had been using a relatively large tunnel tent and had pretty much brought the kitchen sink with us :-) Once everything was packed away we enjoyed the coffee without Dutch friends before setting off on a journey stopping in a small town to check the tyre pressures before continuing north into Germany.

The journey went generally smoothly and uneventfully until we started to look for somewhere to stay for the night which we had planned to do with about 250 miles to go to the North Sea port. Finally accommodation proved more difficult than we had hoped but we eventually found a motel at a service station on the autobahn which involved crossing a footbridge to the other side of the autobahn. When we arrived at the place it was the most weird establishment and we decided to reject it and press on. Unfortunately as we were walking back to the car down a darkened path Lorena tripped and ended up on the floor. Having only relatively recently broken her wrist this could easily have been a disaster but fortunately no major harm seem to have been done and we made our way back to the vehicle, somewhat shaken.

Once everything has settled down we pressed on and eventually found another service area which had a motel attached to it. We had to check-in to a room in the service station so had no real idea what the accommodation would be like but as it turned out it was clean and comfortable and was certainly perfectly adequate for our needs, definitely an awful lot better than continuing to drive whilst tired and then trying to get some sleep sitting in the car which neither of us fancied very much at this stage.

So all in all, apart from the fall, a successful day. Because of the problems finding accommodation we now find that we have less than 200 miles to cover to the North Sea ferry port so there will be no great rush in the morning. The plan is to have a breakfast of some sort over at the autobahn service station before continuing north, we are due to check-in at 14:00 hours on Tuesday so as things stand we have plenty of time in hand.