11th June

11th June

Berlin to Braunschweig, Hannover and finally Coppenbrugge....
Arrival 53064km

Autobahn all the way to the city of Braunshweig, which was supposed to be the day's stop off point. I had absolutely no fresh water on board though, and the 'Stellplatz' had no services and was very small and on the edge of the city. I stopped and took a breather anyway, but decided that the lack of water would be a pain, so decided to press on the further 70km to Hannover instead. This proved to be another aborted stop, as the 3 Stellplatz listed in the guide book couldn't be found, and the GPS co-ordinates loaded into Maisy must have been completely wrong, as they were hundreds of KM off course. With no mention of street names in the guide book, I couldn't even try to get to them that way using Maisy, so I checked for the nearest actual Stellplatz on the GPS memory and decided on Coppenbrugge, which was listed as being next to the campsite, so if all else failed, that would at least give a back up plan!

The drive to Coppenbrugge was scenic, on country roads that were tree lined and super smooth. It's a real pleasure driving in Germany. They take such good care of their roads and the drivers have impeccable road manners on the whole. I arrived in the small village of Coppenbrugge and found the Stellplatz, which looked fine, but the services were behind a locked barrier, and my German isn't good enough to decipher where one was meant to go to get the key or whatever. I suspect that it was in the next door swimming pool, but since the campsite was literally next door, I decided to try there. In the end up, once I'd found the campsite owner, it was only 9 euro for a place there on the hardstanding and with electric and full use of the showers and services, so I decided to go for this option. I filled up with fresh water and dumped the grey and parked up for the evening, throwing open all the windows to try and get the van a bit cooler. Thankfully, by the early evening, the temparature had dropped to about 22c and things were nice as I sat out on my deck chair and drank my last beer (a remnant from Slovakia found lurking in the wardrobe the day before!) and started another book. I had a walk down to the village to see if I could find a supermarket, but the only place that I could find was more like a drug store and didn't sell any fresh food, so my plan for a nice salad went oot the windae. The village itself was nice, if a bit (a lot) too quiet for my liking. All 300 year old half timbered houses, leaning at various crazy angles as the timber frames have settled over the centuries.

I headed back to the campsite, made some dinner and settled down for a nice relaxed, chilled out evening. Tomorrow the plan is to head for Hamburg.