12 month European trip.

2^nd April 2013 at the start of our European trip, we set off from home on our way down to Dover to catch the 1 o'clock ferry to Dunkirk on Wednesday the 3^rd of April, all was fine until we tried to get on the M25 orbital round London, only to find it was closed between junction 29 – 30 after an accident, and this was the situation until after 8 o'clock at night. We tried different routes but everything was grid locked and no matter what we tried we were stuffed, so I ended going back the way we came until we found a service station to wait it out, we finally got that fed up waiting we just set off and was prepared to sit it out in the traffic jam on the M25, there were lorries pulled over on the hard shoulder all drivers run out of driving time and couldn't go anywhere.

As we arrived on the M25 a long way from the actual accident and made our way towards it, the message on the overhead gantry changed to the motorway was now open, so we actually got to the Dartford crossing which was now chock a block with traffic pushing and shoving to get through the toll, but at least we were finally on our way to Dover again, arriving at 10 pm much to our relief and us parking up on the Marine Parade for the night.

Wed morning up early to drive into Maplins to buy a 12 volt charger for the lap top, Sandra went into Sainsburys for a final shop and then on to the Ferry only to find we had missed our sailing as we thought we were on the 1 o'clock ferry only to have pointed out that is the time we arrive in Dunkirk, Doh!.. So the guy just booked us on to the next ferry at 12 noon arriving at 3 30pm.

We travelled on into Belgium and went straight to a stellaplatz without any problems and settled down and spent a couple of days chilling out and walking round the town before setting off for Germany and a stellaplatz in a town called Blankenstein which had a nice stop over, and the telly reception was quite good even though it was very cold and snowing, from here we set off for the Black Forest area driving all over looking for a stellaplatz or camp site, the tom tom gave us a couple which we went

only to find they didn't allow dogs, it was then we noticed the French border sign and all the street names and signs had suddenly become French.. Doh! again, getting lost is part of the fun but losing a country..

So we just wild camped in a nice rural spot and stopped for the night, in the morning we set off for the Romantic Road but on the way I noticed a sign for a museum in a city called Sinsheim that included the aeroplane Concord so we diverted to find it and what a place it was it was an enormous museum and it had two Concords, loads of different planes, cars motorbikes and war stuff, we also noticed there was a sister museum in a city called Speyer which turned out to be about 35 kilometres down the road and that's is where we are now as I write this, they have their own stellaplatz where you can stay the night, but it costs 22 Euros a night ouch..but it says you can get in cheaper to the exhibition of space flight, there was a Russian space shuttle and absolutely tons of space memorabilia and different planes you can walk round...We stopped here for the night in their own camp site, but it was expensive at 22 Euros for the night.

A few pictures.