This was our last week and this is blog number 25. We started in Munster and went via Dusseldorf and Dordrecht to the Hook of Holland and Harwich. It’s been an extraordinary experience to be away for 6 months and it leaves a lot to digest. We had some amazing times and coincidences even in this last week so I’ll cover them first but will also reflect on what we’ve been up to.
In Munster as we sat in the square outside the St Lambert church on a sunny evening.
As we ate our dinner a group of musicians gathered with their instruments. So we followed them into the church and heard a stirring performance of Richard Strauss making a joyous sound on brass and organ.
The music moved on to something less compelling and since we didn’t have seats (the performance being free and the church packed) we left them to it and went back into the warm evening to have a drink.
I started to read about John Leiden who in the 16th century and the Anabaptists took over the city banning ownership of property, burning books, polygamy became compulsory and the people were required to go naked to wait for the day of judgment. A year later the three leaders were captured, executed and their bodies hung in cages high up the steeple of the church which, grimly, still hang there. It was dark by now and suddenly there were lights shining from the cages and for a moment we thought that this must be a night time tourist attraction but suddenly the glorious sound of trumpets came down from above and it turned out that the brass ensemble had climbed the spire to play. Hundreds of people gathered to listen in the streets below. First the band played a tune and then the carillon bells at the next church down the street played the same tune. Among other tunes they played Brahms’ lullaby which I used to sing to Kate when she was little. It was magical.
The next morning we visited the excellent art museum where we particularly liked the August Macke paintings.
Our final stop was Dusseldorf for the biggest campervan show in the world. There are at least 1,000 vans on show in 17 vast air hangar halls, from armed vehicles to cross the Sahara to vintage campervans to vans which cost £1million and are so big they contain a handy MX5 sportscar or Mini in the boot. And you can go inside all of them. We were there for 6 hours and walked over 5 miles. It was our hottest day in the entire trip (32 degrees) so one great advantage was the aircon.
Here we are after a hard day’s viewing by the Rhine.
We drove on to the Netherlands that evening through an extraordinary storm which was so fierce we had to take shelter under a bridge on the motorway. The next day we stopped in Dordrecht for breakfast before driving on to Hook of Holland. Dordrecht is a wonderful city of canals, boats,18th century houses, and a brilliant bakery which provided us with one of our very best breakfasts of the trip.
I love this stained glass window below in the Grote Kerk showing the artist gazing out at the boats as they go by. It captured our mood as it felt very much as if we were looking at our trip float by in the last hours before we sailed home.
And so onto the ferry from Hook of Holland to Harwich.
And onwards back to Preedys Farm in Oxfordshire. Her’s the Wildervan back at Preedys covered with a lot of new stickers (notice the new thatch on the bothy).
Our landing has been greatly helped by seeing some very good friends in rapid succession and also going to the Ironstone Festival in nearby Horley to hear incredibly beautiful music over the last two nights played by Lucy and Kate Gould (violin and cello) with friends from the European Chamber Orchestra. We’ve been many times before and know that the standard is exceptional so it was always our plan to be back in time for it. What we didn’t know was that we would find a link with our travels.
We found ourselves talking to two of the musicians at the interval and discovered the most amazing coincidence. We explained that in June on our trip we’d heard, quite by chance, the orchestra play in Eisenstadt castle in Austria conducted by Simon Rattle.It turned out that they’d both been there in the orchestra that evening and that the viola player came from Turku in Finland where we’d been in late July. It felt such a glorious coincidence but also very much what this whole trip has been about, happy chances, coincidences, and lovely music.
In the church in Horley where the concerts were taking place there is this wonderful huge wall painting of St Christopher depicted as a giant with staff carrying infant Jesus across the river. I love the little fishermen at his feet and the fish in the river. He’s the patron saint of travellers as well as the patron saint of Greece, Latvia, Riga, Lithuania (all places we’ve been). We do have a sense that he’s been a guiding force all this while.
So we’ve been gathering some facts and also some reflections about what we’ve been up to.
A few facts:
14: countries visited, some more than once, (Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark)
34: ferries taken
14: islands stayed on (Sicily, 8 in Greece, 2 in Estonia, and 3 in Denmark)
179: nights spent:
- 72 camping
- 56 in hotels
- 33 in rentals
- 9 back in England
- 5 on ferries (Livorno to Palermo, Brindisi to Igoumenitsa, Piraeus to Rhodes, Gdańsk to Kapelleskar, Klaipeida to Karlshamn)
- 4 with friends
15,466 kilometres driven
We reckon our best moment was dancing under the stars to flute and accordion in the back streets of Pennabilli during the busker’s festival in June.
Our best decision was to change tack and go round the Baltic instead of going North. Estonia and Latvia were both new countries to us and were both fascinating where we learned a lot about their complex histories. And the islands in Estonia and Denmark were real high points.
The countries we most enjoyed were Greece, Italy, Estonia, and Denmark for the beauty of the places we visited and the friendliness of the people. Sicily felt the most out of time place we visited, Denmark the happiest, and Estonia the most bravely optimistic.
What was best about this trip? It was all a special time but we both agree that the best thing was how much we lived in the present tense. We rarely knew where we were going to spend the next night. We made huge last minute decisions such as catching the boat to Sicily instead of driving East; heading North through Italy instead of driving to 38 degrees heat in Albania, Bulgaria and Romania; and going round the Baltic instead of heading North. We could always decide to stop somewhere we liked and hang around or keep moving onwards.
We only went to 9 places we’d been to before (Sexten in the Dolomites, Verona, Lucca, Palermo, Athens, Florence, Ekernäs, Gdańsk and Krakow). Everywhere else was new to us and so much of it was a happy surprise. Places which we hadn’t expected to be as very enjoyable as they turned out to be include Catania in Sicily (messy but beautiful), Athens (much younger and more fun than we’d thought it would be), Riga, and Dordrecht.
We had so many happy chances and coincidences such as: the Good Friday crucifix procession with gloomy brass bands in Pietraperzia in Sicily; the foxtrot dance group on the roof of our small hotel in Athens; tango dancing in the loggia in Udine in Italy; finding that the buskers’ festival was happening in Pennabilli where we landed up entirely by chance; arriving on the west coast of the island of Hiumaa in Estonia (again by chance) to find that a festival was happening there; hearing the brass ensemble playing from high up the spire of St Lambert church in Munster.
Themes which emerged: storks and swans, boats, windmills, good weather except for several dramatic rainstorms, Jewish history and museums, festivals, ferries, and staying on islands.
We avoided tourists almost everywhere except in Rhodes, Corfu town, Tallinn and Riga, all towns where cruise liners are the problem but you can avoid them. It’s been really striking that the only places we came across British tourists were in Corfu and Tilos and there were no British camper vans or cars at all except one at the Russian border in Estonia.
Getting down to even more detail , categories of best:
-campsites with best views: Pennabilli, Delphi
-hotels: Sexten, Krakow and Tallinn
-rentals: Corfu, Tilos, and Chora(Amorgos)
-meal: Noto(Sicily)
-restaurant experience: in Rhodes talking to the owner, Albanian waitress and Pittsburgh professor about life, capitalism, the rise of the right wing, the future of democracy etc
-breakfasts: sitting in the street in Noto (Sicily),and Dordrecht (Netherlands)
-art galleries: Munster (Germany), Ystad (Sweden), and Louisiana (Denmark)
-museums: Athens acropolis museum, Marstal shipping museum, Estonian national museum in Tartu, museum of occupation in Riga
-scenery: Vikos gorge (Greece)
-short drive: in Italy driving up to the Nassfeld pass with Austria.
-walk: round coast to Gudjhem (Denmark), Marstal (Sweden), Vikos gorge (Greece)
-apps: Park4night (which shows where you can camp or park for the night), and Gaia (brilliant free app showing walking trails).
There are still many places we would like to have gone to if we’d been there at the right time of year including: Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, and the far North. One day….
So here’s the final map showing the entire trip. It was great. Ever onwards!
