Day 98 – to Sittensen, Germany

A Czech guy who was parked next to me came over for a chat last night, and we ended up having a beer together. He had been fishing, and had been quite successful. He is part of a group of six who have rented a cottage for a few days. He decided to go his own way this morning, the others were a few kilometres away, and was confident his option had been the best one. He was a doctor from Prague, and it was good for a while to reminisce about the city I had also lived in for a year.

Here in Denmark they get our storms. It was a sore point to a guy I met while walking this morning, as he made the point that the Danish weather service very rarely gets the chance to name any of the storms, as they have already been named by the British or Irish.

The guy was walking around the grounds of the outdoor activity centre, which is the whole peninsula, revisiting a place he had been to many times as a boy. He told me the scouts were the main users of the place these days, and actually were trying to buy up more adjacent land to expand the centre. The fact is that the land is very cheap, mainly because it is so low-lying, and that it may not be useable in the years to come.

The centre is something of a showpiece for the Danish scouts. There was a group in, but they left in the morning. Their instructor, the guy I met yesterday, told me it had been such a warm weekend they had spent most of their time on water-based activities and swimming.

I drove for three hours this afternoon, determined to get to the other side of Hamburg on a relatively quiet Sunday afternoon. The A1, which passes through it, has major roadworks happening at present. I had located a hiking car park in a forest just a few kilometres off the Sittensen junction, and managed to arrive just as it went dark, soon after 5 pm now the hour has moved back.

It’s an ideal place, and convenient for a wander last thing this afternoon, and again I expect, in the morning.