3 Days of Horse Bliss

Stellplatz: officially a Stellplatz but it WAS only a Restaurant Parking Lot

Wow is all I can say. What an absolute experience the Global Dressage Forum was. In a nutshell the GDF is a conference where the the cream of the crop of riders, judges, horse owners and organisations come together to discuss Dressage.

The first 2 hours I sat there completely star struck - I had the german Olympic Team Trainer on my right and a French Judge on the left. He turned out to be quite nice - we ended up sitting at the same table during lunch :-)

Lunch at the GDF

One big item on the agenda was the future participation of Dressage (and other equestrian disciplines) in upcoming Olympics. Basically the IOC has told the International Equestrian Federation to make the sport more publically attractive or be dropped from the Olympics from 2020 onwards. Ouch!

Another favourite of mine was the serious of "Greatest Dressage Horses of All Times". Beautiful videos were shown and the owners, riders, grooms etc were invited to talk about these horses. Ruth Klimke (wife of the late Dr Reiner Klimke) stood out for me - she was so happy to be talking about the horse that took her husband to Gold Medalist and you could just see the joy they had. Her bursting out into a fit of giggles when talking about trying to get the horse into the parking parkade in Madison Square Garden, New York at 3am in the morning was priceless....

Lovely riding and training demonstrations were held, the food was superb and I could go on and on but I won't bore you.

During the two days, I bumped into Claire and Rena (both from Cape Town as well) and they kindly invited me to join them the day after the GDF to view Helen Langehanenberg's stable close to Muenster in Germany. I was NOT going to turn down the opportunity to visit a London Olympics Gold Medalist and so we departed Holland at 5:30am in the morning to be at her Stable at 9.

Helen and her staff were fantastic and watching her (well her students anyway, Helen is due with her first child in 2 weeks) train the horses was just mind-blowing. 

After Lunch we headed back into the Netherlands to visit some Tack Shops and practice retail therapy. Thank goodness? my credit card is maxed already - I'd have come back with mountains of stuff ;-)

Just as a side note - while I had known Claire briefly from meeting up at Shows, I did not know Rena beforehand but boy did we have a blast of a time. I was physically sore the next day from so much laughing!

Never trust anything less than an 8

Campsite: De Hertenwei (Lage Mierde, Netherlands)

Rating 7,6. That's what the rating is of my campsite. And yes, it proves yet again that you want to try and avoid anything less than an 8.

The Campsite is characterised by a lot of cant's, dont's, and if yes, please pay 2 Euros extra.
I was looking forward to the Indoor Pool and the Jacuzzi but after having looked at the condition of these I wouldn't even use them for free!!

De Hertenwei is run down, bathrooms need a good scrub and the reception guy needs to learn to smile. Maybe he thought I was trying to con them when I only wanted to pay for one person? Only after my Invitation to look into Felix and convince himself that it really is just me, did he relent. Or maybe it was just due to his lack of english and my lack of dutch?

It's funny how campsites can differ so much in their general feel.

Speaking of campsites, just before departing my Stellplatz in Neukirchen-Vluyn, this old guy in the camper next to me told me about a website that reviews Stellplaetze and I found a video!

So here the (German) video on last night's Stellplatz.... And yes, I ended up staying two nights :-)

Tomorrow is the start of my 2-day Convention, I can't wait! The campsite (chosen due to location, not ratings) is only 3km away so I can cycle there. It will be a few late nights (Program ends at 22h00) so I will probably only be posting again on Wednesday....

A big thanks and a huge hug must go to Timm at this time. He encouraged me to take this detour and make this dream become possible. I am missing him terribly and can't wait to see him in 10 days time.

Have a great start to the Week.

Heading direction Netherlands

Stellplatz: Wohnmobilstellplatz Niederrhein (Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany)

As my Global Dressage Forum is due to start on Monday I had to start heading that direction today.

On the way I popped into a EuraMobil Dealership to get our side door fixed but of course the lock worked perfectly despite my numerous attempts to show the amused mechanic how it opens if you tug on it hard enough. Thanks Felix.

Cruising along I stumbled on an interesting Radio Station!

The Stellplatz that I at now is beautiful and again is highly organised by working on a card system. I would to say it's german efficiency but it's the same card system we had in Sweden :-)

Ok, ok, I'll move on

Stellplatz: Tropicana Erlebnisbad (Stadthagen, Germany)

Tuesday morning came and with it the departure of my Parents. We left home really early to beat the morning rush-hour traffic which allowed us to have a mellow breakfast at the Airport!

Trying to cram in all the luggage

And they're off!

For those interested in following their Blog: africaflight2015.blogspot.com


After all the departure excitement I didn't feel like driving far so I found myself a free Stellplatz 50km from the airport and headed there. Little did I know what a gem I had discovered.

This Stellplatz was virtually free (one just had to pay 1 Euro / 24hr of electricity), had an awesome indoor water park 150m down the road and free internet!!!

So in the end I stayed a whole 3 nights there just doing some work, going swimming and lazing around!

Hurry Up and Wait

Stellplatz: Frey Family Home (Barfelde, Germany)

She is finally coming home - the trusty Silver Eagle. 

Two years ago my parents flew around the world with their turbine Cessna P210 and this time round they are flying her back to Cape Town. 

The family, cats, horses and parrot... A reminder two years ago that (in thought) the family is always with them

But for the adventure to start, the Silver Eagle had to be transferred from her local airport to Hannover Airport as bad weather is predicted for tomorrow's departure date and Hannover has an instrument departure. 

So the plan was to transfer today when the weather was better. Alas, we woke up to rain and low clouds and so my dad and I spent the day at the airport waiting for better weather while my mom carried on with the last preparations at home...

Finally, at 3pm the skies cleared and we sneaked out! So the adventure can begin and all I can wish my parents over the next two weeks are safe flights, no unplanned adventures and a lot of enjoyment!!

Our flightpath

Family Weekend

Stellplatz: Frey Family House (Barfelde, Germany)

Dropped Timm at Copenhagen Airport on Thursday evening, he's heading back to Cape Town (for the last time on this trip) to see the kids. Pickup is in Vienna on the 3rd of November!

By coincidence, my parents are also in Germany at this point in time AND my mom had her 60th on Saturday! I really am grateful that I could spend a little bit of time with them, celebrate and just catch up. Speaking over Facetime is just not the same....

Heading "Home" to Barfelde in Germany

Looking back over my photos, I realise that I didn't take ANY photos over the weekend so all I can offer you are the leftover's of our Sunday "Kaffee and Kuchen"

Exploring Copenhagen

Stellplatz: Svanemoellehavnen (Copenhagen, Denmark)

Did you know that here in Denmark you can buy prepaid Data SIM cards with unlimited data? I kid you not, we have paid 99 Krone (which is approx R160) for 7 days and you have no data limit. Timm and I have both been watching Netflix at the same time without a single lag in streaming. Absolutely incredible.

So, today was Copenhagen day and we hit the town on our bikes. Today was also the first time that we had the need for gloves for cycling - our fingers were frozen!!

A german children's song comes to mind - "Alle meine Entchen...."

Copenhagen, like many other big city's, has rental bike stations all over the city. What makes Copenhagen special is that they are e-Bikes!!

Found at the back of a public toilet door. Just in case you were unsure on how to use the toilet ;-)

The famous Copenhagen Mermaid

Hans Christian Andersson's House (Of "The Ugly Duckling" and  "The Emperor's New Clothes" Fame)

Sedgeway Tours

Monday Madness on a Tuesday

Stellplatz:  Svanemoellehavnen (Copenhagen, Denmark)

We have a saying at Ronin - Monday Madness. Monday's at Ronin are complete chaos, everything and everyone seems to lose their mind over the weekend and it takes Monday's to sort things out again.

Well, yesterday was quite uneventful (unusual for Mondays) but oh boy did it do a (delayed) return today.

Felix's side door stopped locking so Timm spent the morning unscrewing locks, realigning stuff etc etc. Then a few things cropped up at work which needed sorting. Then we arrived at our Stellplatz only to find it closed for the season. What? Copenhagen does not have a SINGLE stellplatz open during the off-season? Seems so!

Seeing that we had already paid our 2 night stay at the Ticket Machine and the Harbour Master was too lazy to give us a refund, he kind of grunted something to the effect of letting us stay in the Car Park. Score!

Welcome to Copenhagen :-)

Timm fixing Felix's

Impromptu Work Day

Stellplatz: Korsor Yachtharbour (Korsor, Denmark)

Not much happened today. I sat down at my computer in the morning to quickly do some banking and answer some emails and ended up spending half the day doing work!

Timm in the meantime spent his time trying to find some more gold in the drainpipe but no such luck....

In the afternoon we started heading direction Copenhagen and spent the night in a Yachtharbour.

I enjoy the Yachtharbour's as they tend to be highly organised and this one wasn't different. You arrive, find the Payment Station, put in your credit card and you receive a magnetic card to access the Ablution Facilities, laundry etc.

When you leave, you return the magnetic card and it refunds you any unused credit as well as the deposit. Easy as that.

Our Landyacht among the sea-going Yachts :)

One very expensive bridge - R1500 toll fee later...

Stumbling onto Gold

Stellplatz: Bauernhof Lyngegaard (Odder, Lyngegard)

So there we were at out halfway point heading south towards the gold panning capital of Denmark and we decide to stop and listen to some trees sing to us .....each tree below had a duke box with the best hits of artists who have put on concerts at the cultural center in Aalborg in the past and planted a tree. There was Sting to Beyonce to ZZ Top to Eros Ramazzotti !

Then on we went to a very quint farm house with a very cheap clean and well thought out Stellplatz.

After setting up camp we decided the day was still young and we should do some arbitrary prospecting in a local stream we saw on Google earth.

I mean what were the chances of getting gold in some random stream.

So we set off and found the stream but it was boggy and too deep..... But hang on their is a drainage gully running down through the village into the stream with a single big pipe making a crossing - what are the chances..... 

Nah there will be nothing in here but we took out camping chairs and put them in the drainage ditch and dug up some dirt which Timm theorized could have gold in it because the pipe formed artificial bed rock and the slight waterfall effect of the pipe blah blah blah ..... You would swear he was a real gold prospector....

So we panned our first pan and ......

More gold then we had seen in a pan!

So we have vowed to go back tomorrow and test the upstream side of the pipe as Goldilocks thinks there is more gold there ..... A drainage ditch - who knew!

Beacon of light in a Sandstorm

We arrived at 0430 in Denmark both very tired and we found a Aldi car park and fell asleep. Next day we went in search of a special lighthouse with a unique problem....

The lighthouse has been swallowed up by the dunes.

The walk was good for us both and we like Denmark as it is orderly and open but way cold!

We then made plans to search for Danish gold and made camp for the night ready to journey south tomorrow.

Sweden is Closed

Gothenburg Ferry, Kattegat

Yes I kid you not the ferry from Gothenberg to Freidericshaven crosses the "Kattegat"

We managed to find a nice parking in Gothenberg and after some help from a very attractive and helpful young lady on how to pay for parking we set off to see what the City sights could offer - in return a little love note was stuck to our windshield .... No not from the nice young lady - from the traffic department - 600KR (which is R977 !!!!)

Apparently we did not park between the lines in the parking - well perhaps that is because the camper does not fit between the lines - but hey traffic police are not renowned for thinking out the box!!!!!!

In short Gothenberg fell well short of expectations sight seeing wise and we decided to have a nap and get on the ferry to Denmark.

Comment from Mel:
When booking the ferry, Timm was all for taking the 00:30 ferry. It would be fun he said..... Well, it felt like being back on Nightshift! I didn't close my eyes during the trip so when we arrived in Denmark at 4:30am we drove a few km's and then pulled into a parking lot to catch a few hours of sleep

Happiness Is

Campsite: Guldstrom and Co, Ädelfors, Sweden

My back is poked, the right shoulder and elbow are complaining, Timm is groaning every time he moves but we've had an absolute blast the last 2 days. 

After our great gold-panning attempts in Tankavaraa, Finland and a few dismal, disappointing attempts at panning on the way through Sweden, we finally arrived at Guldstrom and Co. 

Guldstrom is a family owned business led by Son Rolf and their passion is gold mining - be it by panning like we do right  through to more complicated dredging machinery. In fact, the way I understand it, they owned the first commercial gold mine in Sweden. 

They already blew us away prior to our arrival - in theory they were already closed for the season but when phoned up by our campsite Rolf said "Sure send them this way, they can camp here as well"

And so we arrived and have enjoyed every minute of it. Joran, the archetypal gold prospector (see below) was designated as our mentor and he showed us how to find gold, improved our panning technique, showed us how to "sluice" and find the microgold. And we literally panned from morning until darkness fell....

Were we successfull? Absolutely, but more than that, it has been one of the most relaxing days in a long time. I love to stay longer but A we need to keep moving and B my body is screaming at me!

So here are just a few pics of what we have been up to

Jöran, the man when it comes to sniffing out Gold

Washing Stations, Shop and Braai Lapa

The pit where we found 99.9999% of our gold

Panning

Gold!!! 

Ready for Day 2?

Sluicing

Our reward - if we continue like this we will have enough to make 10year anniversary rings....

Sleeping under Fighter Jets

Stellplatz: Vlygvapenmuseum, Linkoping

We have now left Stockholm and are on our way south towards Gothenburg via Vetlanda.

We spent the day stopping in at Camping Places looking for winter covers for our Fridge vents and Timm eventually convinced one guy to sell us his covers currently on one of the sale caravans. Score!!!

Stellplatz for the night was in front of the Swedish Airforce Museum right next to the Airforce Base and of course we spent a few hours in the Museum itself

Tommorrow we're off to Ädelfors in search of Gold....