We learnt a valuable lesson, if you see cheap fuel, fill up regardless of how much is in your tank! We passed a petrol station near the campsite for cheap!!! Thinking that this was merely an indication of what was to come we drove on – first mistake. Then at a much needed toilet stop, on moral principle, refused to pay for fuel where it was 13cents/L more expensive – outraged and indignant we drove on, until the light came on and we were forced to by petrol for 15cents/L more than the original!!!! I don’t even want to work that value out over the cost of a tank, it might make me cry.
Our destination is somewhere in the middle towards the top of Germany. We will decide when we get there.
It has been raining at consistent intermissions, and continued to do so until we reached Celle. We chose Celle as a way point to the Mecklengburg region in Northern Germany. The camp was one of those funny ones where most of the people there live there and you get eyed very suspiciously. We went in to check out the store and it was conversation stopping. Picture those wild west movies, the store lady got up and left her beer on the table while she followed us around the store waiting for us to buy something. Feeling a little self conscious Dunc bought a beer. The campsite was located on a small lake so feeling brave but taking an umbrella (not that brave) we strolled around it.
The pop up shelter although a little awkward to pack in the back of the car, is proving to be worth its weight, so to speak. We have used it several times sometimes just to get out of the rain, or sometimes zipping ourselves in the with the PC to watch movies while Gemma whipped Dunc at scrabble.
With all the rain that we have had Gem’s greatest concern is whether the tent would survive the continual barrage of water?!? I guess we will find out!
We have had our first bit of repair work to do. When passing the light up from the 12v to the tent last night, Dunc accidently cut the insulation and blew the fuse for the 12v plug. We only discovered the fuse was the problem after pulling everything out of the car and the side of the car off to try and find the fuse box. Then of course once we found it we had every other fuse except the 20A one we needed. We plugged in a 25A for the mean time.
On arrival in Mecklenburg, it was hailing, they weren’t quite the size of golfballs but the hail stones were pretty big – maybe grape size 
These formidable weather conditions were not conducive to camping so we decided that maybe the tent needed a rest and we should stay in a hotel. Nice in theory however all of the hotels were full. There was no accommodation available for a night in Mecklengberg. Back to our maps we thought we would head on toward the Polish border and find a pension to stay. No such luck there either. What is going on!?!?!
After trying 3 hotels in the last town before the border we crossed into Poland. We had no Polish zloty, no idea what the symbol for diesel is and no idea where we were going. Practically the first building we saw over the border was a hotel – The Sans. So tired and hungry we pulled over and got a nice clean room and breakfast and internet for only 10euro more than our camping accommodation in Bruges had cost – score.
After missing out on her paddling in Mecklenberg which she had been looking forward to since leaving London, it was necessary to come up with a plan B and quickly. A quick consultation of the guide book and we came up with a lakes district in the north east of Poland the Mazurski National Park.
It is a long way across Poland – a lot longer than it seems. However between the storm showers there was some spectacular scenery, and we were far more impressed with the rolling farm fields, the forest and even the wind farms than we thought we would be. Unlike Germany the farmland seemed to end right on the doorstep of the forest. It was less orchestrated and in that sense has a certain raw beauty. The roads through the forests were dotted with women and children selling pots of what we think were blueberries or perhaps Juniper berries as well as some sort of mushroom. Not feeling brave enough to try we did not stop.
One of the campsites we stopped at in Poland was Wagabunda, at the picturesque Mikolajki. It was nice to not be driving and actually be sight seeing. Mikolajki looks, from the opposite side of the water, like a quaint waterside village. Over the bridge however it is a vibrant litte town, with a waterside atmosphere not unlike a country fair, with games and ice cream and good food. It was a lovely place to stop a while.
Nearby in the national park is a small town called Ukta. From here we hired a canoe and paddled 8km down stream (was harder than it sounds) to a pick up point. The river meandered along and the view was glorious. We did not see a lot of wildlife, apart from some iridescently blue dragonflies, extremely large water boatmen and the occasional jumping fish. In the shallow water it was crystal clear, allowing a window to the reeds and plants growing below. As it got deeper the water remained clear but became black contrasting nicely with the green rushes and making the perfect reflective surface.
In true European style there was no on at the meeting point to collect us. A German couple who had arrived a little after us were with the same company. Unlike us, they had been told to call for pickup – hmm we didn’t bring our phone with us and their phone did not have signal. An interesting quandary, but soon enough our ride came to collect us, then drove away with out us, then 10 minutes later returned.
So far as we had been doing a lot of self catering we had not experience much of the local cuisine. One lunch we did, although not intentionally. We had been drawn to the little rustic café, not by its charm, which it had plenty of, but by the massive advertisement for Kebabs outside. When it came time to order, there were no kebabs!!!!! As kebab was the only thing on the menu that we could understand we were in trouble. We ordered two seemingly different dishes on the menu, we received to very similar dishes. The local wild mushroom that we had being sold along the sides of the road had been chopped up cooked in a garlic cream sauce and served to us, Gem’s came with potato and cabbage and Dunc’s in vol a vant (sp?), the down side was that both tasted much the same, the upside was that we were both pleasantly surprised with the mushroom dish, and we could say that we had eaten something authentically local.