It was bright and Sunny when we woke up this morning. I am hoping it remains dry until I get back home, not least because I left my coat at home – luckily I haven’t needed it since, and I hope it stays that way.

At breakfast in the B&B this morning there were lots of people speaking English, but none of them native English speakers. Most of the guests there were German (2 cars outside were on Berlin numberplates, there was a Stuttgart plate and another from somewhere in Nordrhein-Westfalen but didn’t recognise the district code) – as well as and one Swiss guest who had travelled all the way to Sweden by train.

We left the B&B after breakfast this morning and had a couple of short stops on our way to the ferry port. First was to Kåseberga where the Ales Stenar (Ale’s Stones) are located – think of this as being a bit like Sweden’s coastal Stonehenge.

Kåseberga is also a small village so we wandered down to the harbour for an ice cream and a look around the small tourist shop there. There wasn’t much of a beach there so we drove 4km down the coast to Löderups Strandbad where we stopped for a short time. It was quity windy and it was obvious there was rain on the way.

We managed to (mostly) stay dry though – the worst of the rain fell while we were driving in the car to our next stop: Ystad itself. We only saw the bit of town along the sea front yesterday evening but behind that there is more to the town – a very nice old town with lots of things to see and do. Doing a town tour on an old fire truck looked interesting! We only really had half an hour or so to wander about, pick up some leaflets and take some photos before making a move.

From Ystad we headed straight for the port – our ferry to Rostock would be leaving from Trelleborg and it would take around an hour to get there. Sat nav wanted me to take the main road but I stayed on the local (coastal) road which was quieter.

Although only a short visit to Sweden, it is probably my favourite of the places I’ve visited in Scandinavia over the last week. The roads once off the main E65 road weren’t busy, and navigation easy enough that I could confidently switch my sat nav off even to find the smallest of places off the main road.

With my leaflets and maps of Sweden’s Skåne County, I hope to return for another holiday here in the future – even if it is a long way to come by car, it should be relatively easy to fly to Copenhagen and then get the rain across.

Our ferry crossing was a long crossing – leaving Trelleborg at 14:30, the M/S Huckleberry Finn didn’t dock in Rostock until 21:00, but we coould see Rostock long before that and entered the harbour a good half hour before we reached the berth.

We’d booked a cabin as it was such a long crossing – this turned out to be a good decision as it meant I had somewhere to lie down, and it gave me a base so I could leave bags etc. somewhere accessible, since the car decks can not be accessed during the crossing.

There was a restaurant on board so shortly after leaving Trelleborg we had lunch, and we returned for dinner when the restaurant re-opened at 19:30. As much as I would have preferred to eat after arriving in Germany, this country is extremely annoying in that it is the sort of country where restaurants stop serving at 9 (same time as our arrival)… Not like Greece where a lot of restaurants serve food until beyond midnight.

Arriving in Germany did rather feel like arriving back at home. Suddenly we’ve travelled from a country where I don’t understand the language at all, to a country whose radio stations I can listen to and understand.

This gave me that feeling I normally only get when I’ve been away, landed back at Gatwick and am in the car listening to Radio 2 for the first time in a fortnight. Holiday’s over then, back to normal! Except it isn’t – I’ve still got a heck of a long way to go, and just 4 days to do it in.

I ended up turning NDR 1 Radio MV‘s 21.00 news up so I could catch up with what I’ve missed this last week (and hear what the weather’s going to do – good news: 29 degrees for this area tomorrow).

Tonight we’re staying in the Dock Inn Hostel in Warnemünde. The hostel/hotel is built entirely out of disused shipping containers converted in to bedrooms. They’re quite narrow but very long so in our double room we have a living room with sofa and TV (that’s where my sister is sleeping), shower & toilet, and a double bed at the far end. On stepping out of the lift it does rather feel like you’ve stepped on to a building site but it was definitely our accommodation for the night!

Bit of a drive tomorrow, got to get Corrie to Hamburg Airport for her flight home in the afternoon. Hoping to have time to stop at maybe Travemünde (near Lübeck) on the way – and then I’m staying not far from Itzehoe for my last night in Germany before I head South.

Gute nacht.

FH.