Saturday, July 25
Travel time: 11 hours (ferry), 5 hours 15 minutes (car)
Distance: 525km
Destination: Neu Wulmsdorf
The boat is on Faroese time, the same as BST, but my over-zealous phone picks up a signal from the Norwegian coast and jumps forward in the middle of the night. Consequently the alarm goes off an hour too early, something I only realise, to my chagrin, after I’ve stepped out of the shower. I go up on deck and read: I’m practically the only person braving the wind, even though it’s dry and bright and warm enough to shelter in a T-shirt behind the big Perspex screens. After breakfast I pick up some goodies from the duty free (I’ve no idea if Faroese gin or Icelandic beer are any good, but when else do you get the chance?), load the bags into the car and wait. We are coming back to a Europe on fire: Iceland has been a blissful relief from the suffocating heat of The Hague, where temperatures are forecast to hit the thirties again next week. We have seen the signs of global warming in the shape of retreating glaciers, but insulated from the devastating reality in France and Spain, where Madrid and Bordeaux are preparing to evacuate in the face of encroaching wildfires. Even the parched, windswept Cairngorms have been burning.
We are almost the last car off the boat, but after that we make good time, the roadworks in Hamburg are mercifully clear for once, and we get to our hotel just before 7pm. Douglas Adams would have hated me for it, but years ago I devised a cricket-based game for long, tedious stretches of motorway. It works like this: every car you overtake, or that passes you, is worth one run. Vans and camper vans score two, coaches three (because they’re rare but not huge), lorries four and motorbikes six. But if you pass anything that’s towing – like a trailer, a caravan or a lorry with a double trailer (including car transporters) – you lose a wicket. You can play a full test match if you’re driving all day or limited overs on shorter journeys using the mile or kilometre gauge – a 60km or 50-mile stretch is a good length for an innings. It can get quite dramatic, particularly when what looks from a distance like a camper van turns out to be a caravan, or a juicy four-run lorry has a second trailer that’s not immediately visible, or a fleet of motorbikes speed past for a flurry of sixes. You can either play collectively, scoring for two different teams (I tend to choose countries we’re driving through) or competitively if you enjoy arguments in the car – in the latter case, it’s a good idea to appoint an umpire, especially on three-lane stretches when it can be hard to check off everything you’re passing. A vehicle two or three lanes away only counts if you have a clear view of it and things on slip roads or lanes that are breaking off at an intersection are excluded, which can lead to some close boundary calls. Retakes – cars that pass you back, or lorries you overtake a second time after a lunch break – should also be ignored if you notice them. And if you get stuck in a jam it’s very advisable to suspend play to avoid total chaos breaking out.
For our final night we are in Neu Wulmsdorf, a single-strip commuter town outside Hamburg. Its distinguishing feature is a suburban house that’s been turned into a one-screen cinema where you’re served drinks at your seat, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to watch The Odyssey dubbed into German, even with a glass of good wine. We’re staying in one of the identikit Greek-owned hotels that are ubiquitous in northern Europe: they always have names like Apollo, Delphi (as ours is) or Acropolis and feature the same blue colour scheme and lettering (surely Greek signwriters have more than one typeface available?). But the beds live up to the high German standards and the rooms are well equipped.
We have dinner at a local burger bar recommended on Google (not a chain – see previous entries) where we are the only sit-in customers, spread across two tables. The proprietor hears me coughing a couple of times and recommends chewing on ginger to clear my lungs. His medical advice would carry more conviction if he wasn’t himself spluttering like a classic Robin Reliant. We stroll back to the hotel past a Jet garage, pick up a loaf of bread from Aldi just as it’s closing and notice darkness falling at half past 10. We are most definitely back on the mainland.
