A Difficult Day

Today was more than a challenge!  And this has not been the easiest blip to write!  

We left our lovely campsite in Denmark and stopped for a few minutes on the beach to say goodbye. In 3km we were over the border with Germany and bam!  Roadworks immediately!  And we encountered roadworks almost all day long as we headed south towards Hamburg and Bremen and Munster. It was a hot day and slow going. Imagine a bad spell on London's M25 - but ALL day long!  A couple of times I took an 'alternate route' suggested by my Garmin GPS and immediately regretted it, as I have every time. (Does this feature work for anyone??).

Going around Bremen was particularly challenging and when I stopped at some rest stops/lay-bys, I always seemed to have a problem getting any 3G signal so I could plot my route a bit better and also start looking for a hotel. I clearly wasn't going to get as far as I'd hoped today!  

So, I ended up driving into a town which helped me get 3G. Dolly and I were able to have a break here in front of this beautiful Courthouse in the town of Cloppenburg, south-west of Bremen. I almost booked a nearby hotel as I was so fed up, but really felt as if we should go a bit further south. We drove another hour or so, stopped for some fast food and booked a hotel about 40 min beyond that, still facing road works and heavy traffic as we went. (Is the whole of Germany rebuilding itself??)

About 9pm we arrived at the chosen hotel in the town of Bad Bentheim, near the Dutch border. I had been relying on Booking.com much of this trip and had had such great success. Getting to the hotel was challenging as MORE roadworks blocked the road to the hotel!  After 3 tries I finally got there. Only to find the hotel unusually dark, and a sign on the door saying 'closed Wednesday. Hotel guests please call this number'. Which I did. Only to find someone whom I couldn't communicate with at all!  (Although the website said they spoke English!)

So here I was, now 930 at night, single woman (and poodle) in a strange place, with nowhere to sleep!  I was tempted to get back on the road again but thankfully through booking.com I found another hotel within a mile that would take a dog and would take a late night check-in!  I was never so happy to get into a hotel room!