{"id":203,"date":"2018-08-10T21:58:59","date_gmt":"2018-08-10T20:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/?p=203"},"modified":"2018-10-05T18:30:37","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T17:30:37","slug":"im-on-the-road-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/08\/10\/im-on-the-road-again\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m on the Road Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Today was my last day in Germany &#8211; and I spent it mostly in the car. There isn&#8217;t too much to report today. I didn&#8217;t take any photos so I&#8217;ve used a stock photo for today&#8217;s blog.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Checking out of my hotel in Wilster at about 10:30, I got on the road perhaps slightly later than I would have liked, but nothing to worry about.<\/p>\n<p>Filling up with petrol (the cheapest I&#8217;ve seen in Germany this fortnight), I took the A23 to get down Hamburg in no time, and joined the A7. Hamburg itself, always a bottleneck, was busy but moving (stop-start through the Elbtunnel).<\/p>\n<p>From there I cut across on to the A1 which I followed for about 250-300 km &#8211; then it was just a case of following the signs to Venlo to cross the border in to the Netherlands.<\/p>\n<p>The A1 was stop start in places this afternoon. The Friday afternoon rush hour was in full swing. The worst bit was going past Bremen. Local radio (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ndr.de\/ndr1niedersachsen\/\">NDR 1 Niedersachsen<\/a>) travel news said it was an 11km\/6 mile Stau (traffic jam) which would take a good half hour &#8211; actually I think it was more like 40-45 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, shortly before 5, I crossed the border in to the Netherlands and turned off the motorway to go in to Venlo. I&#8217;ve shot past Venlo at speed multiple times, but wanted to see what the city is like. It&#8217;s a small city &#8211; most things in the centre are within walking distance.<\/p>\n<p>I ate dinner in the city centre and walked back to my hotel &#8211; going via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zomerparkfeest.nl\/\">the Zomerparkfeest<\/a> (summer park festival) with a large stage and live music playing. It&#8217;s free and runs for 4 days this weekend. It&#8217;s a bit like a Dutch version of Cirencester&#8217;s Phoenix Festival.<\/p>\n<p>So that&#8217;s Germany done!<\/p>\n<p>2 nights in the Netherlands now &#8211; one night here in Venlo &#8211; tomorrow an easier day, just a 2 hour drive to get to Zierikzee on the Dutch coast &#8211; and then back to Gloucestershire on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>In Dutch now &#8211; Goede Nacht.<\/p>\n<p>FH.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>Today&#8217;s Mileage:<\/strong> 297.7<br \/>\n<strong>Accumulative Mileage:<\/strong> 2273.1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2 nights in the Netherlands now &#8211; one night here in Venlo &#8211; tomorrow an easier day, just a 2 hour drive to get to Zierikzee on the Dutch coast &#8211; and then back to Gloucestershire on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[26,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-itzehoe","category-venlo"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2018\/08\/iStock-528423746.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/norway2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}