2023 mystery european tour.

Thursday 6th July 2023

Linlithgow to Hull 280 miles approx.

Its been 4 years since we last took Bessie our van abroad on our fantastic extended trip up through northern Europe...Since then the world stopped due to covid in 2020 and it has taken a while for us to finally plan and embark upon a new overseas adventure...but it had to happen and 2023 was to be the year. Life is busy for myself and Joyce now, Callum and Logan are well into their primary school years and obviously any long trip has to take place during the school summer holidays which combined with our ability to take time of work without it being a sabbatical means that a 3 week(ish) trip is easier to organise than a 3 month trip...but that is normal and we are fortunate to have the fantastic memories of our previous adventure.

So....

Where to go...and what to do? Well, this question presented us with the biggest dilemma.....we loved Norway so much that we are desperate to return, but the logistics of getting there made me question how much justice we could do Norway as it takes some time to get there and also get back limiting our actual time there. So....I had another plan, which was to head south and perhaps follow the river Rhine to Switzerland and beyond. But we could just not choose and decided to keep our options open and not have a plan. 

We did have one wish for this holiday however and that was to try and visit some of our friends and family who live in different European countries. So a few messages were sent and immediately we knew that we would were going to see some people we have not seen for a while.

We have kept in touch with Ina and Bjorn who we met in Norway 4 years ago, they live in Lette,  near Coesfeld in Northern Germany and we always promised to meet with them again....so a couple of days before we were due to set off Bjorn gave us a call and it was set in stone that we should visit them at the start of our trip. That was going to be a great first few days of our holiday and could be factored in whether we were going north or south...we had no excuse not to visit and we definitely didn't want one anyway.

The packing of the van went ok but had taken a few days and we left Linlithgow at 8:45 for the drive south to Hull for the ferry to Rotterdam. The 275mile journey south went smoothly with no problems. We arrived early and our fish and chip shop of choice Chesters was not yet open, so we chillaxed for a while and were their first customers of the evening. Just like the last trip we waited until we were in our cabin on the Pride of Rotterdam before tucking in to our dinner....after dining we went for a wander to explore the boat, find a comfortable place to have a coffee and a few beers. The entertainment was pretty good with some half decent singers and a fun quiz. Callum and Logan we more interested in the arcade games however which the lady at passport control had kindly/stupidly (score out as desired) mentioned to them when checking their faces matched their passports. So, they had a good few games in the arcade of course. We went up on deck to watch the ferry casting off and soon we were on our was sailing down the Humber estuary on yet another gorgeous evening...just like 4 years ago. It felt quite surreal to be finally making this trip again.

We did well in the quiz and enjoyed the acts and I got chatting to a couple from Holland who were returning from their holiday in the UK. They gave us a few ideas for places to visit the following day as we had most of the day to fill before we headed east to Coesfeld. At around midnight we headed to our cabin and got bedded only to find that it wasn't midnight....it was actually 1am as we had by now entered a different time zone....oh well our sleep would be shorter than expected tonight.