We had a rather harried time before leaving for Sweden because of planning for the autumn re-roofing of the garage and items to be bought with long lead times. One result was that packing was hurried but I hope we did not leave anything important behind.
Anyway we left on 15th May and duly got the DFDS ferry to Dunkirk. My only real angst was to have missed buying good sandwiches from Waitrose at the M3 service station and instead to have got inferior ones on the M25. The ferry was as usual extraordinarily boring but uncrowded and our Tomtom, impressively led us directly to the carpark of th eOld House in Veurne which was its usual efficient and friendly self. IT started out as a 17th C. orphanage but has very modern bedrooms and bathrooms, alos excellent breakfasts. We ate at De Plakker as our favourite restaurant OOgappel was shut. We there had marrow bones for the first and probably the last time and then I had an excellent Flemish beef stew.
16th off to Den Bosch or 's Hertigon Bosch (sic) as Carnegie's Cottage hhas turned into a 5 day a week hotel, mainly to allow staff to have two days a week off instead of none. We like Den Bosch and its Catholic Cathedral but thought the Art Gallery expensive though it had some nice Breughels. It was only in Bath for the Bachfest that we found a Breughels Exhibition that we saw traced out the Breughels, at least four of them painters with other known painters allied by marriage. The Den Bosh Gallery also had some good paintings by a man whose surname was Nitt and who had some lovely studies of back lit trees in sunlight. The Nieuw Uilenberg hotel was indeed new, indeed a boutique hotel in the oldest pard of the city where it would be unwise to take a car; the steets are very narrow but charming. Many of the Den Bosch canals are covered over but one can take a subterranean boat tour.
17th May Shortish drive to Otterloo and the Kroller Muller Museum once again. We had a lovely group of Van Goch paintings on show with a lot of his very early and sombre portraits. The Kroller is said to have the second best collection of Van Gochs in the world and I certainly saw some I had not seen before even in reproduction. We proceeded then to Carnegie Cottage which was apparnetly doing well on five day opening and enjoyed it enormously as always. It is right on the edge of the Hoch Velue National Park, the chef is the husband of the owner and knows his trade and dining room is an Art Gallery. The rooms are good and we stay whenever we can.
18th May Long drive 500+ kilometres to Lubeck and Der Alten Statdmauer another favourite. The rooms are very orange and cheerful but it is quiet, clean and friendly - also parking is cheap.
We ate in a brewery where the equpment was large and mainly copper, the food was Ok but the beer good.
18th May After booze shopping we left for Rostock and a cheaper ferry crossing. Rostock too was a good place to visit and we found a superb fish restaurant for supper. Te day ended badly with the expected TTlines ferry replaced by a Scandlines one. They catered almost entirely to the truck trade giving them the best seating and providing the worst of thrucker grease food. They claimed that shortness of staff was the reason we had to have a row to get fresh bed linen - not recommended.
19th May godd sunny day and another long drive to Nykoping but less traffic and stress. We did a little unloading - car to boat - and went on to stay the night with great friend martin Morris. After shower, barbecued salmon and wine the world seemed a much better place
