Sailor's Grand Tour, 2017

[Sailor]

Finally, after all the Photostuffit problems, I've managed to sign up to Imgur. This means it's time to change from forum to bore 'em. Yes, it's holiday snaps time!

The first leg of the this year's tour was a circuit of the south western Baltic.

I joined the boat in Travemünde, a busy place on the mouth of the river that serves the old Hanseatic port of Lübeck.



We were moored near an historic barque, the Passat.




Our first stop was at another Hanseatic port, Wismar.



It's low-lying country with not much in the way of natural building stone, so this is the land of brick. I don't know how the massive churches stay up: surely there's a limit to the compression a bit of fired clay can stand?



Quaintness isn't forgotten, either.




We sailed on to Stralsund. More Hanse and more brick, this time with painted inside walls.



There's technology, too. This astronomical clock is over 600 years old.

[Drax]

wonderful stuff, im always fascinated by your tours and love the pics

[sol-lude]

Awesome pics

[norks27]

Great photos

[simonc]

Brilliant. I've been looking forward to your trip. Hope you're enjoying your hols.

[Sailor]

You're too kind, chaps.

We sailed to Kröslin, where a waiter tried to sell us wine that had “been aged by leaving the bottle in the sea”. He knew his sales script was rubbish, of course, but didn’t go so far as to say he’d only been following orders. Some of the crew went for a look at the old rocket base at Peenemünde,

Next came Germany’s largest island, Rügen.

The old fishing port of Sassnitz has faded charm.





Just down the road is Prora, built for holiday makers in the late 1930s. The war got in the way and it was not used until twenty years later. There were eight of these concrete blocks, all over 400 metres long. I counted six there now.



They’ve started doing them up as flash apartments.



Rügen has a thriving car scene. These aren’t Hondas!

[Sailor]

We’re all getting a bit old for derring-do and we let the high winds delay our departure. But it was time for another country. The overnight sail to the island of Bornholm was fast and thrilling (Force 7 with gusts of 9 can be like that). We stopped at Svaneke, a fishing village.





Sailing via Ystad, Sweden, we were back in Denmark. Rødvig’s a pleasant place. The restaurant near the marina has a great buffet with lots of caught-today fish and a suitably nautical theme.



There are car meets here, too. (Also not Hondas …) Some of these were mint:




We headed south and west with a mixture of great sailing and boring motoring. It occurred to me that a photo like this could not have been taken a decade or so ago: wind farm plus contrails makes for a thoroughly modern seascape. Unfortunately, it’s all too common.



Back in Germany, Eckernförde gave me the opportunity take a rare photo – it’s not often that I can get all the mast in a single shot!



I also got a good look at an early, classic Gold Wing.

[simonc]

Wonderful shots, Hans. Thanks for sharing them.

[Sailor]

Ta.


Now for the Second Leg

Having locked up the boat in Eckernförde, I left the others at the airport and set off for a couple of weeks touring through central Germany. There were two of us to start with, hiring a small car from Europcar, the only company at Hamburg airport that had anything available on the day. It was expensive.



I hated it! The 1.4 diesel was sluggish, with gear ratios all wrong for the engine. Forward visibility was pants. It didn’t even offer much in the way of fuel economy. Mrs Sailor found my grumbles a bit tiresome by the end of the week.

We collected two friends and upgraded via Enterprise to something that was much better than I expected. And cheaper for eight days than the Polo had been for seven.



It was quicker than it felt, though: I got photographed three times …


Had we merged the two weeks together into one tour, it would have looked something like this:

Let’s start with Lüneburg, a fine city.

[simonc]

You should be working for Conde Nast.