THE bridge

Thursday

With all the windows open and insect screens down we had a cool night and slept quite well. My lower back is pretty painful - the only time it doesn’t hurt is when I touch my toes. It’s not easy to do the exercises when travelling.

After disposing of grey and black waste and taking on water we headed for fuel. At €2 a litre it’s much the same as home. There doesn’t seem to be a concern in Germany about saving fuel - there’s no limit to the speed the cars in the fast lane are doing.

Our plan of staying in east reach of the A1 didn’t work out as the Hamburg slipway was closed so we had to re-route an objecting Ms Google to do 2 sides of a triangle to get us on further up the motorway. Despite being on busy motorways for 2 days we have seen NO UK vehicles apart from the few getting off the ferry.

As the headed down into the Elbe valley we entered fog but after Hamburg we got back into sunshine near Luneck. I wish we had time to visit there but it’ll be there next time. Even though the motorway passes code by towns generally we never see them as the trees and high walls with greenery provide good screening.

We got on an earlier ferry at Puttgarden Germany for the 3/4 hour ferry crossing to Denmark. We won’t be coming this way again so splashed out on the €123 ferry crossing plus €100 for the bridge to Sweden from Denmark (we were unable to access a way to get the joint ticket for both ferry and bridge which should have been possible and cheaper). The motorway in Denmark was noticeably quieter than those in Germany, till we got closer to Copenhagen where there were 4 lanes each way. We don’t even have a dual carriageway from London to Edinburgh.

Finally we reached The Bridge of Scandi Noir fame, and entered Sweden. Another 300 miles today before we found the Park4Night place (€15, no facilities but lovely and quiet) about 4.45 behind a farm with a distant view of the bridge across fields of stubble. Thank you google maps and grid reference as the address wasn’t recognised. The buildings look like a location for Wallander. Let’s hope there will be no murders here!