30 Oct 2008

30th October 1988 - the first morning

The first day on the continent doesn't get off to a good start. I felt out of place in the campsite, as the only ones I've stayed in before were fields for tents with basic facilities. This was more like a hotel where you brought your rooms with you. I couldn't work out how to get a hot shower - not last night, not this morning. So I had a cold miserable one.

And then we hit the road, having thrown out a few more things (pots and pans!) that we don't need to keep with us. Driving on the wrong side of the road is a nightmare. The road signs (some of them anyway) are unfamiliar, the roads have three different numbers so we're never quite sure which one we are on.

We didn't want to go to Amsterdam ‑ we don't want anything to do with driving through cities, whatever country we are in. We're looking for the open fields and lakes beloved of geese in winter ‑ but we end up in the city anyway. Thank goodness it's Sunday and there isn't too much traffic on the roads. Jim drives slowly and concentrates on keeping to the right; I look around desperately for road signs and trams ‑ our travellers' handbook says that trams take right of way over everything except emer­gency vehicles and they expect you to know that. It's all rather nerve‑wracking. Sudden­ly the town centre is left behind and we're on a road to nowhere ‑ it ends in a tramyard!

As we turn back towards the town centre, a car full of youths pull up and one of the occupants asks us a question in French. They don't seem to speak English any more than we speak their language but eventually we understand they want to know the way to Antwerp ‑ HELP ‑ we just want to know the way out!

We move on, but suddenly the side door of the camper slides open and a box of cassettes spews its contents into the road. The Belgian lads pass us again as we pick up the pieces; later we see them stopped in the middle of a crossroads with the boot up and belongings flying out. They wave cheerfully as we go past.

Eventually we reach the outskirts of Amsterdam, back on the road we had come in on. We want Lelystad, a reasonable‑sized town some 30 km from Amsterdam, however, as we now realised, the road is actually sign-posted to a bigger town on the next page of our road atlas. But at least we now have got it sorted out.

So why, at each of the subse­quent turnings, do we end up going in the wrong direction? This is the first day of a year of continental driving ‑ surely it won't all be like this ‑ we are already at each other's throats! If Jim doesn't like the directions I'm giving him, why doesn't he just look for the road signs himself!

Somehow the nightmare takes us into a small village with a grassy enclosure in its centre. Small children pass bread through the fence to the fallow deer inside. It's now early afternoon, so we stop for lunch and watch the deer. Then we grit our teeth and set off again.

After four hours of driving, we complete what should have been a one and a half hour journey to the Flevoland Polder. It's not been a good introduction, either to the Netherlands or to continental driving, but I dare say we would have a similar experience in whichever country we started.

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