Four days into our trip to Denmark and Sweden we have clocked-up a little over 700 miles; earlier today we crossed our fourth international border, but sadly we still remain a few miles further south than our starting point in Buxton. When heading for Scandinavia this cannot be, by any stretch of the imagination, regarded as reasonable progress.
As with most minor setbacks in my life, I tend to rationalise them by blaming the Tory Party pointing the finger at Margaret Thatcher in particular. In the present case the reasoning goes like this: had Mrs. T. pursued a policy in the eighties of supporting British manufacturing while at the same time expanding the service sector rather than deliberately dismantling the former whilst inflating the latter then the UK would be quite different today. The regions would have flourished yet London and the Southeast still boomed; vibrant economies in the east of England, the North and Scotland would have traded with neighbouring countries across the North Sea and through re-vitalised regional ports we would now be able to choose to head to Bremerhaven, Esbjerg or Bergen using a fleet of inexpensive, regular ferries running from Immingham or Newcastle - as they used to, but don't anymore, - just another victim of the way the entire UK economy has become southeast-centric. (Rant over.)
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| For some mysterious reason the approach to the German border was enlivened by a large wooden sculpture of a giraffe. |
I realise you still can sail from Newcastle to Amsterdam or Hull to Zeebrugge, but the Amsterdam crossing fare with our motorhome was £537 whereas our Dover to Calais ticket cost £75. We saved even more by stocking up with wine and beer in France for the next two months to dodge Scandinavia's eye-watering alcohol prices. Undoubtedly the cheapest way to get to Scandinavia by road from the UK is to drive all the way to Dover then northwards through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany even if it takes a 700 mile journey before you manage to gain the same latitude as your starting point in the Peak District.
Day 1 - Buxton to Canterbury.
Mostly today was a re-run of our journey in early May last year, including a short detour to Milton Keynes railway station to deposit Laura on a London bound train. The differences were - the weather was worse, traffic better and once we got to Canterbury's New Dover Road motorhome stop our plans went somewhat awry.
It was my birthday. In all honesty the prospect of spending most of it trundling along the M1, M25 and M2 was hardly alluring, so we had planned a meal out at an Italian place we knew in Canterbury - 'Pinocchio's' - unassuming, but nice we recalled. On arrival at the park and ride we discovered the place was closed on Tuesdays - thankfully we had checked the opening times before we caught the bus into the city.
There was a pub next to the park and ride; its restaurant had reasonable reviews on-line. We decided to go there instead. It was ok I guess, but virtually empty at 7.30pm when we turned-up. Empty pubs are somewhat soulless, especially as 'The Hanging Gate' was a barn of a place with a series of interlinked rooms redecorated in a vaguely traditional style compete with sepia toned photos of bygone days on the wall. The food was typical pub grub; pies featured strongly - due to dietary concerns we have become occasional pie eaters these days, our verdict... my steak and ale was more delicious than Gill's chicken and mushroom and the overall experience had probably satisfied any urge we have towards pastry for the next year or two.
So not the most memorable of birthdays, but then, despite Lennon/McCartney's banal attempt to assert otherwise, being 64 is hardly a landmark moment, just another year gone.
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| Birthday boy |
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| Birthday pie |
I was woken later in the night by a mighty thunderclap and big raindrops drumming on the roof a couple of feet above my head. I was enmeshed in one of my tangled bureaucracy dreams, this particular variant involved Gill and I attempting to organise a conference in a hi-rise hotel where the floors did not join up properly, like something out of Escher or Hogwarts. By morning only the sketchiest details remained, though I was able to recall vividly a subsequent dream where the previous scenario had morphed into a noirish chase through the backstreets of a shadowy city with the pair of us on the run from a gang of North Korean secret service operatives. I blame the pie.
Onwards...
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| Blue skies in Calais |
This took far longer than we anticipated. Due to the VE day holiday most of the population of Department Nord had descended upon Dunkirk Auchun to celebrate 74 years of peace in Western Europe through retail therapy.
Over the decades we have visited many countries in what was once termed 'the developed world'. Nowhere comes even close to France so far as of rampant consumerism is concerned. Even medium sized towns support mega sized hypermarkets; the choice is bewildering - you want shallots? There are five different types on offer, three 'ordinaire' and two 'bio'. To complicate shopping further parts of the stadium sized emporium had been subdivided into zones - a bargain basement discount zone - to compete with Aldi presumably; an 'eco zone' - for Extinction Rebellion sympathisers intent on saving the planet by eating organic carrots and using vegan shampoo. Frequent trolley jams and Glastonbury toilet length checkout queues meant it took over two hours to complete our own exercise in over-consumption. We emerged with a laden trolley and a lighter wallet - the bill, €240! However, about €180 of that was accounted for by wine and beer. It seems like a lot, but over a two month trip that works out at €22.50 per week, or the equivalent of two bottles of wine per week at Swedish prices. "Well, what we don't drink while we are away we can always take home," Gill mused somewhat optimistically.
It was after 5pm by the time we escaped Auchun's clutches, too late to drive to Bruges we agreed. So we headed for the aire at Bergues, about a twenty minute drive. It has no facilities but is free and situated next to the ramparts of a fine old Flemish town.
We took an evening stroll to the central square. It features a humongous stone belfry that looks ancient but was re-built after the original was destroyed during WW1. Giganticism is clearly a local speciality as an enormous figurine - perhaps a disused carnival 'giant' - dominates the front of the Hotel de Ville.
It was after 5pm by the time we escaped Auchun's clutches, too late to drive to Bruges we agreed. So we headed for the aire at Bergues, about a twenty minute drive. It has no facilities but is free and situated next to the ramparts of a fine old Flemish town.
We took an evening stroll to the central square. It features a humongous stone belfry that looks ancient but was re-built after the original was destroyed during WW1. Giganticism is clearly a local speciality as an enormous figurine - perhaps a disused carnival 'giant' - dominates the front of the Hotel de Ville.
That night I slept soundly. No odd dreams, or at least none that I could recall. Such are the joys of a steak pie free day.
Day 3 - Bergues to Linden
Over breakfast we decided to ditch heading to Bruges. it is a beautiful city but we have visited on at least three previous occasions so it does not quite fit with our 'mission' to seek out unfamiliar places. We opted to head straight towards the place after next on our plan, an 'aire' by a lake a few kilometres south of Nijmegen.
This meant a long drive through Belgium and Holland towards the Rhine. Back in May 2015 as we headed through Wallonie - the French speaking area of Belgium - as we returned from a trip to the Moselle, I remember, half jokingly, suggesting that in relation to our European neighbours, the country that most resembled the UK was Belgium. Four years on this seems much less preposterous.... Belgian roads are in a terrible state, crumbling and potholed (like the UK's); the countryside is littered with the abandoned remnants of once thriving industry (sound familiar?); the motorways are jammed with trucks from all corners of Europe (Antwerp ring road - think the MI near Bedford); politically this small kingdom is socially and culturally divided and prone to political impasse.... The big difference of course is the Belgians are never likely to come to the bizarre conclusion that their national malaise is all the fault of a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.
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| The weather did little to improve our thoughts about Belgium. |
There was a young man from Antwerpen
Who could not speak without burpin'.
He said, "Belgian (hic) beer is a whizz
but it packs (hic) such a fizz,
that you hic all the (hic) time that you're slurpin'.
Ok, lame but it did stave off brain melt as we crawled towards the Dutch border a few kilometres south of Eindhoven. At which point the landscape changed markedly - perfectly smooth asphalt, litter free verges, a neat chequerboard of fields, crisscrossed by cycleways, dotted with red brick villages and towns. Even the factories and office blocks looked neat and tidy.
Gill is very long suffering. The sudden change in the scenery prompted me to share with her everything I could remember about the work of Tim Ingold, a social anthropologist I happened upon when I was working on my dissertation back in 2014. The thing he is famous for is his concept of 'taskscape' rather than 'landscape' - that human activity and our impact on the planet is the result of dynamic making and remaking and that this action is culturally driven. The effects are most obvious at national borders where suddenly not only does the vernacular architecture change, but the arrangement of fields and the layout of towns differ markedly. In a trice you know you have crossed from Belgium into Holland even without a sign telling you, because it looks different, just as the instant you drive off the ferry in France suddenly every thing looks French. How and why this happens is what Tim Ingold writes about. It's not merely a matter of academic interest, 'taskscapes' - our interaction with the earth - underlies the way humans impact on the environment; moving towards a more sustainable future is going to take more fundamental changes than simply using fe less plastic bags or agreeing that David Attenborough is a national treasure.
So moving beyond admiring the view and beginning to think about 'taskscapes' enriches travel I think. I have no idea if the Netherlands' actual carbon footprint is more or less that of Belgium, however the country does look better managed, achieving a balance between industry, agriculture and housing, with patches of uncultivated woodland beside its lakes and wetlands. There seem as many cycle ways as roads and traffic is well managed. Even in rural areas crossroads have lights, cars, bikes and pedestrians wait their turn. It feels well ordered, but not over controlled.
It was a pleasing drive across this fertile, well populated plain in bright sunlight, under a sky silver with big clouds like something out of a Ruisdael. Our stopping place - Jachthaven 't Loo at Linden - proved pleasant too, a welcoming kind of place. The aire was simply a field next to the marina restaurant, but the service point was well designed and the surrounding area within the country park had lovely lakeside walks.
A bit expensive at €17 euros per night, but still a nice spot and the receptionist in the next door campsite was very jolly as she relieved us of the requisite fee.
We decided we liked Holland, somewhere worthwhile exploring more in the future we agreed.
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| Linden village |
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| Not all the locals looked friendly |
We decided we liked Holland, somewhere worthwhile exploring more in the future we agreed.
Day 4 - Linden to Cloppenburg
Next day, goodbye Holland, hello the Bundersrepublik, though not before we had skirted the Nijmegen/Arhnem sprawl. Place names on the road signs reminded me of my dad - Helmond - he had been billeted there during WW2 with a Dutch family - they owned a printing business. They were brave people, ostracized by neighbours for the work they did for the occupying forces, it was only after the liberation that it became known that at weekends they had secretly printed newspapers and publicity for the Dutch resistance. For years my parents swapped Christmas cards with them. Later, in the autumn of 1944 as the allied forces pushed into Germany my father was badly wounded, it took him out of the fighting for the rest of the war. Another metre or two closer and the shell that exploded next to him would have proved fatal - no him, then no me! We are all products of unfathomable co-incidence, no wonder we struggle to make sense of things.
As we headed through Brabant towards the German border then crossed into Lower Saxony the landscape became more rural and sparsely populated. I don't know exactly what I had been anticipating, a continental version of Lincolnshire perhaps with prairie sized cornfields and patches of market gardens. However the area was more idyllic than that, some farmland but mixed among it tracts of beautiful broad leaved woods and open heathland. The rural architecture too was attractive - low red brick farms houses some with thatched roofs. Modernity asserted itself in in the form of giant wind turbines with red striped blades which rotated hypnotically above the forest clearings.
We reached our destination in the late afternoon. We had identified a free overnight spot in the car park of an open air museum on the outskirts of Cloppenburg. The museum was in the process of closing as we arrived, which was a shame as it housed a collection local vernacular buildings, over fifty in total, including their latest acquisition that was in the process of being rebuilt next to the car park. They seemed very pleased to have saved a mid-1970s youth club building from destruction. The museum website boasted that the original discotheque sound and lighting system was intact and would be fully restored - that would be strobe lights and Kraftwerk I presume.
Having missed the museum we headed down the road to the local Netto. Maybe in another half century it will be incorporated into the museum too. The museum had a large car park but only two vans were using the portion in the corner designated for motorhomes. Even so the place was not lacking in entertainment.
It was Friday night and the museum grounds seemed to provide an impromptu pubic space for the inhabitants of Cloppenburg who were at a loose end. There were the usual suspects, dog walkers, new parents trundling buggies, the elderly taking a slow walk, the young running, glancing at their fitbits as they sprinted by. More entertaining were the pupils from a local driving school. The empty car park provided the perfect spot to develop reversing skills. We almost got to the point of awarding points like in Strictly, though in this case points would be deducted rather than accumulated for waggling your rear end.
A somewhat 'pimped-up' black Golf hatchback drove by and parked a few places away from us. Down went the darkened front windows to reveal the occupants, a couple of young guys, they looked to be of Asian or Middle Eastern heritage. They lit cigarettes and opened a couple of cans of beers, I wondered if they were socialising in the car park because drinking alcohol would have been frowned upon at home. A second hot hatch drew-up next the first, another young man got out, exchanged a word or two with the others then walked off towards the woods. A young woman hopped out of the Golf's back door and followed him, a metre or two behind, he half turned his head as he talked to the girl over his shoulder. They disappeared from view . After a few minutes the first car drove off. Twenty minutes later the driver of the second car returned alone and departed too. All slightly intriguing.
Eventually we became bored with spying on the locals and went for a short stroll ourselves as evening fell. There were some magnificent big oak trees; they looked more symmetrical than those back home, perhaps they were a different variety, Gill suggested they were Holm oaks. We wandered back to the van. Gill settled down to read another chapter or two of Michelle Obama's 'Becoming' autobiography. I opened the notes app on my phone and wrote what you have just read.
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