All in all a beautiful country, and ended up stopping 2 days longer than planned, but driving from a to b is the most boring driving we have ever done; incredibly flat and straight, a lot of farmland and a speed limit of 80kph.

Our Denmark trip started on the coast of the Wadden sea its ‘the world’s largest unbroken intertidal mudflat system’. We got a beautiful spot in a small car park for two nights right on the waters edge, perfect for birdwatching. We visited Ribe which is Denmark’s oldest town and went for a walk on the flattest, widest and windiest beach, and watched a stunning sunset.

After two days of flat we already craved some hills so drove to an area to spend a day walking on undulating hills, in forests and around lakes. We visited Denmark’s second greatest peak Himmelbjerget which is a whopping 147m (just 23m short of being the tallest).

There are many islands around Denmark so we thought we should do some island hopping. We headed to Fur island because the description contained cliffs and fossil hunting. On arrival we picked up a map of the island and drove Scooby around the small dirt roads visiting the main attractions which were mainly burial grounds, gravel pits (diatomite used for cat litter!), beaches and fossil hunting. Found a lovely stop for the night at the end of the island on a spit, had the car park to ourselves, and watched a stunning sunset.

The next day we woke and had a relaxing morning yoga session in the sun and I cooled off with a swim in the clear but very cold Danish sea. It was such a lovely sunny day we decided to change our plan and just spend the day relaxing which was ideal! After 2 weeks of getting used to van life and the week before rushing around packing up our life and finishing work, having a day of doing absolutely nothing was very much needed. We spent the day lying down reading in the sun, had a bangin’ baguette for lunch (always the sign of a good day) and cycled half an hour into town to sample some local beer made on the island. That evening we relaxed with some wobble boarding and club juggling. A perfect day!

The yoga and swim session was so good I had to repeat it again the next day, then reluctantly leave the island. We then drove to our next island, the island of Funen and visited the main city of Odense. Nice for an afternoon wander. It’s the birth place of H.C. Andersen so there’s lots of sculptures around the city of his stories including this one of The Emperor’s New Clothes.  

The following day was my favourite so far. For Christmas Oli, Icky and Becca brought us an inflatable kayak “the explorerK2” which we took on its maiden voyage. The morning was initially a little stressful as we realised we had left the middle connecting piece of one of the paddles in Derby.   Thankfully we were staying on a campsite that day and the guy who ran it was a legend! – I went to ask him if he knew somewhere we could rent or even buy a paddle he told me ‘don’t be so negative I’m sure I can fix it’ he took the one piece we had and half hour later came back with a new piece he had cut from steel rod, drilled some holes in and found perfect sized screws. Problem solved. Genius!

We got on the K2 around lunch. Initially the idea for our first trip was to take it easy and just have a couple of hours messing around on the water. Ended up doing an 8.5 mile round trip of a nearby island. It was s gorgeous sunny day, the sea was largely very flat and the water crystal clear. A wonderfully knackering day.

Easter Sunday was a lazy one. Mum had packed us some vegan Easter eggs so the morning was largely spent relaxing eating chocolate. We then drove over to the island of Zealand and went to visit a Viking fortress (felt it rude not to do something vikingy). We spent the evening parked up by Lake Tystrup and walked through the woods and along the lake.

Easter Monday was spent in Copenhagen but that’s going to need a whole other blog!

We started our short tour of Northern Germany (we are coming back to Germany towards the end of our trip), with a visit to Bremen. There were some beautiful buildings centred around the market square including the town hall and cathedral, plus lots of people having their photograph with a statue – we did a bit of googling and it was the ‘Towns Musicians of Bremen’ seemingly Bremen’s most famous statue depicting a fairy-tale by the Brothers Grim. Apparently rubbing the donkey’s feet gives you good luck (would be rude not to have a rub). We visited the glockenspiel and the old streets of Schnoor. Most of the day was spent with Graham correcting me on my pronunciation of Bremen, still haven’t got a clue of the exact pronunciation. Personally, I found it an ok city with some nice old buildings whereas it was Graham’s favourite we visited.

One day in the city and we already craved some quiet. We happened to stay the night in a town called Sittensen which had a nature reserve right next to it. The reserve was an old peat mine which has been restored and was a beautiful nature reserve. I geeked out on the very good interpretation, well managed paths, great sculptures and lovely hides. It was a freezing day and even snowed while we were there! The hides looked out on several very large pools with waterfowl and we saw 3 cranes which I was overly excited about as it’s the first standing (rather than flying over) wild cranes I’d ever seen.

That evening we visited and stayed the evening in Luneburg. Really beautiful place, so many beautiful traditional buildings all very triangular in shape. Nice river with big willow trees, lots of churches and we went sampled our first German beer.

The next day we went to visit Hamburg. I didn’t know much about Hamburg but I really liked it as a city. It was busy but didn’t feel claustrophobic as it had lots of open spaces and nice wide streets. TOP FACT Hamburg has more bridges than London, Amsterdam and Venice combined! There’s a few lakes, lost of canals and water ways and it’s a port town. There’s a nice mix of old and new architecture and it felt a little like Manchester.

Our last day in Northern Germany was spent in Lubeck because both guide books and general internet searching had recommended going. We went on a Sunday so it was quite quiet. It had a few very nice building but on the whole there wasn’t a lot of to see or keep you entertained for long. Saw everting in a couple of hours ambling. The buildings reminded me a little of Duloc in Shriek. The absolute highlight though was the marzipan museum. It hosts the biggest ever artwork made from Marzipan, made in 1964 it took 3500 hours to create and depicts 12 important figures in Marzipan history. Its mental to think that the sculpture is still solid today 55 years on!

We started our tour of Europe with Rotterdam. It’s a city lots of people had said ‘’don’t bother going its not very nice’’ but I wanted to go for 2 reasons; someone had mentioned it had a good food market, but mainly because of the Beautiful South song. We arrived about 6pm on Friday evening and parked up in a campervan parking place on a cobbled street running alongside a canal next to a windmill in a suburb called Shiedam, it felt very Dutch. That evening we walked around the local park and main shopping street.

The next day we got the metro into Rotterdam and walked aimlessly around. I really liked the feel of the city and it was different to what I expected. Big open streets, huge river running through it, some exciting modern architecture, great markets, nice old cobbled streets and quiet for a city.  

About 4 pm we thought we had seen most of the city and our metro tickets gave us go anywhere  passes, so we decided to take the short trip to Den Hague. When you google Den Hague the same picture keeps coming up of their parliament building, our main impression of this was it looks nicer in photos than real life. The cobbled shopping area was nice.  We sampled some local delicacies (cone of chips and a beer) then went back to Rotterdam.

Our next Dutch city was Leiden which was a great recommendation to us. It’s a very pretty place, traditional old houses, nice churches, boats cruising up and down the river, windmills, lots of café and bars and lots of Dutch barrel organs / Draaiogrel (wind up giant music boxes). Leidens a University town and full of people cycling around, it also has lots of nice green spaces and a botanical gardens. As a small city it had a very nice vibe, probably helped by the fact we explored on a sunny and warm (20 deg) Sunday.

We explored Amsterdam in two parts. We had a friend who happened to be staying there a few nights so one evening we caught the train in from our campsite and had a night drinking in the city. It was great to meet up with people we knew, and to have a tour by friends who knew the city was even better. We had sunset drinks in a place called Hannekes Boom on the riverside and after a few there were taken to whats known as a Brown Café. They are traditional Dutch bars with a cosy feel, ours had wood everywhere you could see and brown walls (hence the names), it also bizarrely had rugs on top of each table. We then walked towards the east side of the city sampling some more Dutch beer.

Our second trip into Amsterdam was during the day, we walked through the main centre (managing to avoid the red light district area), we saw the floating (no longer really floating) flower market (that doesn’t sell many flowers), saw Amsterdam square, walked to Albert Cuyp market, Museumplein, nine streets and Jordan. Essentially most of the free touristy places we could do in one day. We also got a free ferry over to the industrial NDSM. The buildings were very pretty and lots of beautiful house boats too but I personally found our second trip not as enjoyable, not just because there was less beer consumed, but because its sooo insanely busy! So many tourists everywhere, so many cyclists in every direction, water everywhere (which is nice but the water is eerily still and makes me wonder how stagnant). I would happily go back to Amsterdam but with someone who knows the area better so that I could explore out of the touristy areas and discover what the rest of the city has to offer.  

Its been a busy week packing up our house in Plymouth and cleaning it head to toe for our tenants to move into. Then driving up to Derby to stay with our parents while we work on the van. As I drove it for its MOT noticed it was really struggling to get to speed, it initially failed its MOT and gave us a small heart attack but thankfully £16 worth of pipe later all was fixed! We then cleaned the van head to toe inside and out and packed lots of things into tiny spaces. We were slightly set back in our rushed time scale when we left the hose pipe going to fill the water tank and it leaked out all over the floor and soaked the contents of everything on the floor. Had to drag everything out and stick on radiators, while we were doing this it was pouring with rain and the mattress in the van got soaked while we had the doors open. #vanlife

Graham also had his first experience driving scooby. I wasn’t sacred at all!!

As well as getting the van sorted I also got myself travel ready with a drastic hair cut. I’ve been growing it for a year so I could donate to #littleprincesstrust feels so free to have short hair.

The hardest part of the week was saying goodbye to the family. Gran made us a wonderful vegan campervan cake to say Bon Voyage. Check out Grahams beard!

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