A tragic death…..(not).

It falls to me (as the only one here) to bring you news of a recent death. The deceased had been my constant companion inside my campervan for three days and nights. Despite me leaving doors and windows open he refused to leave my side. He didn’t talk much and ate even less, but Oh he did like a bit of bare skin, the sweatier the better. His favourite places included the back of my neck and my legs. He was like a demanding child and always seemed to want my attention just as I was doing a tricky bit of driving. One of his amusing games was to fly in front of my face to get my attention and then promptly disappear.  He was completely immune to fly spray and had an astonishing turn of wing whenever he noticed a rolled up map heading towards him. I’d given him a name. I know it was the same fly, I’d recognise him anywhere. I called him “F### Off Fly”, and here he is…

Anyway, onto other news, I actually stumbled across a proper motorhome parking place last night.

and as I was outside with the phone anyway I took this picture as well..

Which was very lucky for me as it turned out. I’d pulled up, popped the kettle on, had another go at killing F### Off Fly, and then went for an exploratory ride around the town. I don’t think I was keeping a very good track of the various twists and turns of my route because when I decided to retrace my steps and head back to the van, not only had the van disappeared but so had the car park and both churches along with the road they were on. Obviously I’d made a little error so popped back into the centre of town again to get my bearings. That began a good two hours of cycling around looking for something (anything) familiar. My German isn’t good enough to explain in any great detail where my van was but suddenly I remembered the photo with the storage tanks in.  I started showing the photo to various people and asking where it was. They were all very helpful, I must have been sent to every storage tank in Emmerich, some of them more than once. Emmerich is a fairly big town but what on earth do they find to store in all these tanks? It was all becoming beyond a joke and I just wanted to find my bed.

I remembered that there was a sign on the gate to the tanks that said Feuerwehrzufahrt which is all about emergency access for firefighters, and then a real stroke of luck I spotted a group of firefighters standing having ice creams next to their parked fire engine. If anyone knew where those tanks are it should be the fire brigade. They did, and they even took the trouble to get google maps up on their phone to show me exactly where my bed was parked. It turned out that I had been looking on completely the wrong side of town.

This is a picture of my bedroom at night. The big red hammer looking thing in the background is a gigantic big red hammer, no actually it’s one of the supports for the bridge over the river. The other end of the bridge can be seen in the daytime picture of the river.

And here is the obligatory tourist picture of a bridge over the river Rheine.

Here is the map of the journey and the eagle eyed among you will notice that the direction is now West. The van is working perfectly but I’ve discovered that travelling is not nearly as much fun if there’s no-one to share it with. I almost carried on around the Baltic just because that’s what I’d set out to do but I realised I’d be doing it just because I’d planned it and not because I still wanted to. The thought of spending another five weeks in the van on my own  is quite depressing. So, I’m sorry to disappoint you but I won’t be going to Poland, Lithuania etc, I’m heading slowly back to England and I’ll collect my wife and dog and we’ll have a couple of weeks somewhere together.