Our 2023 Tour

Day 2

We had a day on the beach and a look around the town. Lowestoft is a Lovely place with a great beach and plenty of parking, where overnight stops seem to be tolerate. It has a lovely museum with a room dedicated to Lowestoft porcelain. We also found where the original porcelain factory was. Lowestoft even have its own real Banksy painted on a bridge in the park by the museum! We boarded the overnight ferry and had the luxury of our own dog friendly cabin for the 7 hour crossing. We arrived at the Hook of Holland first thing in the morning and had no problem through customs with the dogs. Our first stop was the cube houses of Rotterdam, not quite sure how you live in a house like this? But they were an interesting concept. From Rotterdam we drove up to our only pre booked camper site, Camping Vliegenbos, a great, but expensive camp site about a mile from the centre of Amsterdam. 

Day 1

So we had booked a Stenna line ferry from Warwick to the Hook of Holland, we thought this would give us the opportunity to start our tour in Holland and save a days driving down to Dover and back up again from Calais. We started our summer tour driving down to Lowestoft in the evening and spending our first night parked up at the of a residential street overlooking the sea.

Once we had sorted our parking at the camp site we walked to the free ferry that crosses the river north of the city and drops you right in the city centre. We did the usual city tour, but If you want to get into anywhere like the Anne Frank museum or the Van Gogh museum you would have to pre book. With us having the dogs we couldn't go in anyway so had to be satisfied with a selfie outside the front door and a walk around the main sites, with the obligatory nosey around the red light district and the hemp shops.

Day 3

On day three of our tour we left Amsterdam behind and headed east as we had pre-booked tickets for Auschwitz and realised ours were for the 9th (six days time), so we had to get a shifty on towards Poland. The day was manly spent paying our respect to our war heros. This was the Airborne war cemetery in Oosterbeek, a beautiful place tended to by local children. There are mixed graves of mainly British troops but along side them lay polish and other allied men. A lovely dog walk through the surrounding woodland, then on to Arnhem and the Airborne memorial by the bridge so many lives were lost trying to hold. Rain was torrential at times and came without warning, but luckily this was mainly whilst we were driving and had dry breaks in-between. We finished the day up in a search for sites spot near Rubbenbruchsee lake, again a great spot and lovely walk for the dogs.

Day 4

On day 4 we mainly spent today walking in the forests with the dogs. The first a walk was in the wood around where we stayed the previous night, then we had a drive to Weser Uplands Nature Park, a beautiful forest with many trails for all abilities. Finally we drove on to Magdeburg where we are parked up on a “park for nights” spot right in the middle of a lovely city park with the plan to drive on to Berlin the following morning to grab an early parking spot.

Day 5

Day five saw a 6:00am start to drive into Berlin to make sure we got a parking spot. We got there shortly after 8:00am and parking by the Brandenburg gate was empty so grabbed a space for all day (and night if you want it) FREE! Spent the whole day seeing the sights, Brandenburg gate, checkpoint Charlie, the Jewish dead memorial, the cathedral, the Reishtag, the Berlin Wall memorial, the soviet war memorial, the east side gallery and lots more. We couldn't believe what a beautiful city Berlin was! We walked a total of 14miles! However we decided to leave around 6pm after a demo for peace was nearing its end and we drove south for about an hour or so to stay on a really nice free aire beside a leisure centre in Dahme/Mark before we left Germany for Poland!

Day 6

On day six we had a lazy start after the long day in Berlin the day before then we had a drive down to Colditz, the famous prisoner of war camp used in WW2. The building is impressive however you only get to see a small amount of it as a visitor and it has a small and a bit of a rubbish museum. The good thing was that they allowed dogs in all areas including the museum. We finally took another drive and parked up in Poland, just the other side of the boarder where diesel suddenly dropped by 30p a litre!

Day 7

On day seven the first thing we did was filled the van up with Polish diesel at £1.23 a litre! Then drove into Warclaw and wandered the city thinking what a small capital (as we thought we were in Warsaw), but it was a lovely city none the less. We also discovered you can buy flick knives, knuckle dusters and throwing stars in the shopping mall! We also had the chance whilst we were in Warclaw to visit the family of friends we have back in England, a lovely family in a lovely little village called Rogow Sobocki. We left in true polish style with gifts of bottles of vodka and home brew. A big thank you to the Pocalun family for their welcome and generosity! And also a big thank you Jolanta Pocałuń for encouraging us to call. We finally ended up staying somewhere in the woods on the way to Oswiecimand Auschwitz the following day!

Day 8

Day eight started with another lazy morning followed by a lovely walk through the Lesisko nature reserve. There is a large Soviet style monument remembering the Polish Silesian uprising, a huge amphitheater there and also plenty of deer and red squirrels bobbing about. We then drove to Oswiecim, as we had booked dog sitters for our visit to Auschwitz the following day, so we went to find them and check them out to make sure we were comfortable with them. They were great, and only 10 minutes from the museum. We parked up for the night on the park car park on the opposite side of the river to Auschwitz.

Day 9

Day eight was an early start so that we could drip our dogs off at dog sitters then over to Auschwitz. The Auschwitz tour is approximately 4 hours long and gives you a great insight into such a terrible place. A solemn day but a place that I have always wanted to visit, to pay my respects to the 1.5 million people that were exterminated at this place alone, not just Jews, but political prisoners, the disabled, gypsies and many other minority groups! Auschwitz museum is doing a remarkable job of marking sure that history remembers. Some people may think photographs are not appropriate, but "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it!” I hope my photographs help all that see them remember. Finally we drove down to our second paid site as it was right by the lake at Miedzybrodzie Bialskie. A lovely spot in a small camp site and our last night in Poland!

Day 10

Following a nice and quiet night at the lakeside at Miedzybrodzie Bialskie we drove to the Slovakian/ Polish border and had a fantastic walk up through the forest to the summit of Mt Plisko at 5109ft part of which is a large nature reserve. The walk to the summit starts off in Poland and ends up in Slovakia. We got back to the camper and decided to stay where we were for the night 100m inside the Polish side of the Boarder