9 June 2019 - Haarlem to Neumunster. 324 miles


A mixture of country roads and autobahns (no speed limit - lovely) today. Perhaps I have not noticed before, but having now crossed three frontiers of what will be left of the EU the only indication that one is in a new country is the change in place names. There is nothing to announce that one is now in Belgium, or wherever.


A 7.30 start, heading north to cross the Afsluitdijk. 32 kilometres long, it was built between 1927 and 1932 to dam the Zuider Zee and is an extraordinary engineering feat.


Here is a rather less professional effort for the record. But it does include an M3W.


An increasingly whiny BB aside, The Toad behaved impeccably today, buzzing along with barely a stop for over 300 miles. Even the fuel gauge has at last decided to give accurate readings (perhaps they need 18 months and 5000 miles to bed in? And for the Bevel Box - God knows). The same cannot be said of the sat nav, which took me down a cycle path and to one or two out of the way places.


But although most of my motoring life pre-dates the sat nav era, I can no longer remember how someone driving without a map reader could contemplate a journey like this one. I was lost a few times today with TomTom, but I would be hopeless without it. 

On Ian Parkinson's advice, rather than risk holdups on the Hamburg Ring road we took the ferry from Wischafen across the Elbe. Good move. Stopping to fill up a mile short of the landing, I met a bunch of bikers on their way back from the Lofoten Islands, where we are planning to be next Saturday. One had an enormous Can Am trike, and I thought nothing of it until drawn up next to me on the ferry were two more, these ones returning from a Can Am convention.



Same weight as an M3W. 1300 and 1000 cc respectively. And shortly after we drove off, another one shot past me, so we had a bit of a race for 30 miles. They must be popular in these parts.

Neumunster tonight. This is about as good as it gets 



because we bombed 40% of it to bits in the War and most of what was left seems to have been rebuilt in an homage to Croydon. All the windows here are new. Still, last chance for reasonably priced beer and wine tonight. Tomorrow we take on Denmark and cross to Norway. 

Mountains. Fjords. Eye-watering prices.





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