European Tour Sep 08

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It never rain but it pours! Literally & metaphorically.
We left home yesterday evening about 2100, as there had been problems all day with the channel tunnel, consequently we arrived at Dover at 2305 for a 0200 ferry. Fortunately they put us on to the midnight one instead.
The crossing was uneventful; we arrived in Dunkerque at 0300 local time. With the Satnav on we headed to Germany, though it wanted to send us via France, with hindsight it might of been trying to tell us something.
After about an hour we stopped for a cup of tea etc just after Bruges and fell asleep for three hours. Vaguely refreshed we continued on our journey via Brussels, Liege and Aachen into Germany.
Here the fun started, it was extremely wet, and the spray was awful, we came across an accident south on Bonn, which held us up for about 40 minutes. As we were starting off again, the water level warning message came on, and the temperature reading went to 130°C. We exited the motorway and managed to park in a Shell garage and ring the AA (when ever we travel in Europe by car on holiday, we seem to need to ring them for assistance), they arranged for the local ADAC to come and find us. This seemed to take an age as they struggled to know where we were. In the end a Herr Roos found us and we followed him to his SEAT garage, only about 2 miles from where we had parked! The water level was low, which he filled, and we went on a test run, with no problems, he thought the temperature reading was faulty as the water had not boiled.
So we set off again, still best part of 300 miles to go! Sadly after about two hours the warning light came on etc etc. This time we pulled into a McDonalds, so coffee was readily available. Again a little ADAC man came out, sadly with no English, therefore we used the AA as an interpreter, and established that there was probably a leak affecting the heating system, and that we should check the water every 100 miles or so.
During all of this we kept ringing the Gasthaus zum Fischewirtz in Graswang, Germany, where we were heading for, it was becoming farcical, but they were in good humour, and we were able to finally give them an arrival time of about 2120 (nearly 24hrs after we had set off).
The last 30 miles or so was very difficult, the dipped headlight had decided to blow, and the lines on the road were not visible because of all the rain. We did arrive though and there was a nice young lady from Hungry waiting on the steps to welcome us.
The Gasthaus is really lovely; we have a large family room, excellent beds and so welcoming after the adventures of the day. Tomorrow we’ll have a day of relative rest, hopefully.

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