Verden to Rotterdam - one last day

Last night we had a good walk around Verden were I used to live. It has changed a lot and it took me a while to find my bearings. Eventually though ,we found the Hotel Holtje which I were I stayed quite a bit in 1986 and 1987. Fabulous hotel by the way and after Scandinavian prices, excellent value. In fact everything in Germany seemed inexpensive after Norway!!

We had dinner in the pedestrian zone and then had a beer in my old pub. It used to be called the Distiller and was THE place to go. Cool, typical German pub. What have they done to it?! I was shocked. It is now called Los Locos (the crazies in Spanish) and was genuinely rubbish. It felt like  the lowest of Benidorm except without Johnny Vegas. Fortunately the rest of Verden is still a lovely town and we found my old house and took some snaps.

It clearly has changed a lot as there is now a McDonald's (the nearest was 50km away when I lived there) and the headquarters of 1st Armoured Division of the British Force Germany is now a housing estate!! The pic below is the main shopping street in Verden. My kids will remember the horses!

In the morning it was baking hot again and heading north for the Iselmeer but stopped in Leer on the way for water and calories which for me meant apple pie and cream. Lovely. We pressed on and without Dutch / German maps and with a broken Sat Nav, we found the Iselmeer and stopped in the middle for a coffee. For those that don't know, it is a huge man made (Dutch-made) barrier many miles long to help keep the "low countries" from being underwater. We have stopped there many times at the monumnent and today was no exception. We thought of absent friends and drank a toast to our old friend Pete.

We dodged around the Amsterdam ring road and headed for Rotterdam and Europort. ( Note to self: Dutch road signs are rubbish so prepare well!) Arriving at Europort we headed straight for the little pub near the ferry terminal and had a beer. I asked a lady there to take our picture but after two attempts is was clear she was going to cut some off.....in both cases our legs and I didn't like to ask again! ha ha.

Anyway, checked in, though passport control, on to the ship and into our "premier" cabin. No slumming it for us - this is a gentlemens' tour! (On previous trip we have jammed four sweaty bikers into one cabin and made do but after the huts in Finland we think we have earned "premier class" ha ha.

In numbers, here roughly is the deal:
we rode 4517 miles between home and Rotterdam;
this took 15 days which is an average of 301.1 miles per day;
we each used about 570 litres of petrol;
the bikes used zero oil;
we ate 45,000 calories each;
we drank about 32 litres of beer each;
and Tim is still trying to work out how many gear changes we made!

Keep reading.....more later in the next few days. Thanks for following us - it's been a blast.

Heading for deck 12 now for yet another beer!