Life is full of uncertainties, as is this trip. In fact, one of life’s certainties was crushed for us in the last few days. You may remember that the last blog post we wrote was from an IKEA car park? Once complete, we headed towards IKEA with 8 Euros in our pockets (we’re the last of the big spenders). An hour and a half later we wandered out of IKEA, scratching our heads as to why we still had 8 Euros in our pockets. How is it possible to visit IKEA and not buy anything at all? This trip really is life-changing!

We thought that we’d had the last of the rain by the time we hit Hamburg, but as we headed toward the island of Rügen in north-eastern Germany, the rain came pouring down once again. We spent a bit of an anxious night in a park and ride car park outside Rostock (there was nothing to say that we couldn’t stay there… but we made sure we were out of it by 8am just in case). We could have stuck to the motorway from there, but considering the speed limits on the normal roads are out of Bertha’s reach, there was nothing to lose by going the scenic route, with pretty views, cars overtaking us and wait… what was that flash? Please tell me that speed camera got the car in front of us rather than us. Bertha, speeding? Surely that’s not possible. We don’t think that it was us… but if by some miracle we do get a speeding ticket, we’re going to frame it and mount it inside Bertha (after paying our dues obviously).

By the time we arrived onto Rügen, along roads flanked by forests and glowing fields of yellow the rain was but a distant memory and the sun once more did shine. And another rainbow… this time in the form of Camp Regenbogen.

Have you ever been on a campsite which has its own woodland? Its own bakeries (yes, that is plural)? Its own supermarket? Its own bar? Its own sauna? Its own private beach? It’s no wonder that some people had booked to stay there in their caravans for the whole season. The white sandy beach lured us immediately and we spent a happy afternoon playing by the sea. Whilst I did a bit of wood carving, Kiri reproduced my face in the sand with pebbles and wood shavings, then we played “catch” with a tennis ball for a while. You know what, I even showed my legs by wearing shorts.

We retired to Bertha for dinner and a glass of wine (thanks Jeff), before once more venturing to the beach at dusk for a romantic wander. We can be forgiven (I hope) for being secretly happy that the washing machine rooms were locked… our main reason for staying on a campsite in the first place. This was well worth it though; a truly cracking campsite.

One of the key draws of Rügen was the opportunity to see a 1930s architectural wonder; a holiday camp at Prora. This was one of several seaside resorts planned by the Nazi party to be accessible and affordable for everyone. In typical German efficiency, the resort was planned and built so that every room had a sea view, resulting in a huge building stretching a kilometre along the seafront. A little different from Butlins. Due to WW2, it was never finished and, having had many uses over the last 80 years, several bits of it have now been sold off to private parties. It’s a fascinating structure; you could say that it was ahead of its time in its almost Brutalist style… or as Kiri says, you could say that it looks like a prison.

As there was nowhere free to stay on Rügen in Bertha, we decided to move on towards Berlin. A rather uninspiring location of a supermarket car park (in the shadow of a petrol station offering unleaded fuel at 1.519 Euros per litre) provided a backdrop for what can only be described as a marriage-strengthening heated discussion that evening. Everything was happily resolved and by morning the sun was bright in the sky, it was obviously going to be a scorcher of a day and all was well with the world… apart from the unleaded fuel having risen to 1.569 Euros per litre. So those rumours about petrol in Germany being cheaper on a Sunday, Monday and Tuesday may have some grounding after all!

With our plan being to arrive in Berlin for the weekend (sadly a little too early for the Kill It Kid concert there on the 29th) we’re having a couple of rest days on the way. The thermometer has stayed permanently above 30 degrees today inside Bertha, so there’s not really much else we can do but sit back and appreciate our surroundings. Oh, and remain bemused as to how a 24 year old, underpowered, chugging motorhome (sorry Bertha) might have a speed ticket waiting for her back in the UK.