We spent April to September 2019 travelling in our new motorhome, a Carthago liner-for-two and using our e-bikes to explore the areas where we parked up. We had a fantastic time and recorded our experiences on this blog and website. This post is a statistical and pictorial summary of the 6 months created mainly to remind us of what we did and the amazing time we had!
5 countries visited
England (Lincolnshire and Norfolk mainly)
Scotland (Edinburgh)
France (Normandy Brittany Champagne Burgundy Alsace)
Germany (Lake Constance, top half of the Romantic Road, Cologne and Düsseldorf)
The Netherlands (Holland and Utrech)
4 crossings to/from continent...Eurotunnel Dover-Calais and Calais-Dover; ferry Dover-Calais; ferry Hook of Holland-Harwich
Over 5000 miles travelled in our Carthago liner-for-two motorhome (route map to follow)
78 different overnight locations half of these were campsites, the rest were aires, stellplatz, Britstops etc
38°C temperature range from 8°C in Lincolnshire England to 46°C in Burgundy France
Most exciting moment ... picking up our new motorhome, obviously! And we have loved it from that moment on, it’s a fantastic motorhome and is perfect for us.
Most frightening moment ... last night of our trip driving 10 miles from the Harwich ferry to our Brit Stop in Essex. The A road was closed and the B road was very dark with no street lights and full of oncoming articulated lorries, late for their ferry, speeding and causing havoc 🚛😳🚛
Over 350 miles cycled on our e-bikes
We wouldn‘t have visited all these places and enjoyed ourselves as much without our e-bikes. A few cycle rides worth a mention are ...
Beauvoir aire to Mont St Michel, France
Up the hill to Chateauneuf-en-Auxois France when we couldn’t get the motorhome up there
Cycling routes around Bad Mergentheim Germany
Everywhere in the Netherlands which just feels like one huge cycle route
8 other modes of transport used ferries; eurotunnel; trams including a steam tram; buses; trains; steamer; canal cruise boat
20+ events/attractions visited
UK
Royal Norfolk Show (Norwich)
RNLI lifeboat station (Cromer)
Peterborough motorhome show
Camper UK spring open weekend (Lincoln)
France
Bayeux tapestry- twice, as it was so amazing (Bayeux)
War cemetery (Bayeux)
Windmill tour (Beauvoir)
Village des metiers d’Antan (Saint Quentin)
Champagne tasting (Champagne)
Wine tasting (Alsace)
Germany
Tour of cathedral (Cologne)
Chocolate museum (Cologne)
Medieval wall walk (Landsberg)
Medieval crime museum, (Rothenburg)
Night watchman’s tour (Rothenburg)
Erwin Hymer museum (Bad Waldsee)
Tour of Carthago City and the factory where our motorhome was made (Aulendorf)
Caravan Salon (Düsseldorf)
The Netherlands
Windmill tour (Kinderdijk)
Hoorn to Medemblik by steamtram then on to Enkhuizen by steamer, then Zuiderzee museum
Cheese market (Alkmaar)
Anne Frank’s house (Amsterdam)
Walking tour of red light district (Amsterdam)
Canal tour (Amsterdam)
Countless other great moments ... the cathedrals and architecture in France and Germany are something else! The countryside was beautiful everywhere we went. We took thousands of photos to try to capture as much of it as we could, these are obviously just a tiny fraction of them!
Oh and we gatecrashed three weddings...
... and saw some gorgeous sunsets
We ate more food and alcohol than we want to admit to! Some particulary yummy food worth a mention is:
Breakfast at St Malo harbour France
Moules et frites for lunch at Chez Gaby Carantec France
Dinner at Maisonette Dieu in Semur-en-Auxois France
Pancakes everywhere in the Netherlands
Ray’s birthday meal at Restaurant Onder de Linde in Noordwijk the Netherlands
... and add to that some champagne tasting in Champagne, wine-tasting in Burgundy and Alsace, and a wide selection of wheat beer in France and Germany that we really enjoyed during the heat of the summer!
33 friends/family visited us in the motorhome for a cup of tea or more. Our biggest concern before we left was that we would miss our friends and family. Despite our ever changing plans big thanks to the many friends and family that managed to catch up with us on our travels:
- in Germany Alan Mary Rob Annette Ben Chris Louise
- in UK Jo Derek Graham Jane Hatty Emma Lucy Julia Duncan Helen Andrew Ralph Lyn Tina John Rainy Dave Bill Sally Tim Annabelle Jon Pierre Lynn Helen Andrew
6 lovely new friends were made Phil and Carol from UK; Christian and Marie from Sweden; Roland and Marianne from Germany.... and we had loads of friendly conversations with other motorhomers along the way.
So many beautiful views from our motorhome windows ....particularly enjoyed by our bears!
A few hairy moments... of course it wasn’t all plain sailing, motorhome journeys never are! In the first 2/3 months especially there were a few hiccups, wrong turns, tight manoeuvres, storms and the kind of teething problems that you would expect with any new motorhome.
And finally 3 very big thank you‘s
We would like to say a big thank you to the teams at Camper UK, Carthago and Rutland Cycling (Barnwell Road) for all their support in helping us to identify the right motorhome, e-bikes and other equipment for our trip, and without which our travels wouldn’t have been the success and fun that they were!
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