Or How to get from the Northeast of England to the Northwest of Germany

Sail Bremerhaven is a 5 yearly event in my home town of Bremerhaven and it involves loads of Tall Ships, Fun Fair Atmosphere, Maritime Accessories for sale and a town that has built a tourist attraction around its old fishing harbour and its derelict and now restored old harbour – without forgetting that it is a thriving and very important administrative town serving an area of around 500,000 people and the biggest car import and export harbour in Germany if not Europe.

We started on the 7th August in County Durham and arrived on the 12th August in Bremerhaven.

We went however via Barnsdale Garden, Wiseley RHS Garden and visited on elderly Aunt in Ransgate. We also stayed one night in France and 2 nights in Ansterdam!

We stayed on the previous nights in hotels but now in Bremerhaven we stayed in an AirB&B. We booked it with booking.com – however it was more of a traditional AirB&B as we had a whole flat in a house to ourselves.In fact 4 rooms to ourselves.Fully functional kitchen and a big bathroom with a great standalone shower. Also it was only a walk away from the main station but in a housing estate that reminded us more of Mayfair in London.Big and older houses from about 100-80 years ago.

Our host was a retired Doctor who quickly told us about the washing machines in the cellar and the electric charging point. Also he told us about his 14kw solar and battery installation! Wow that was not in the brochure! We were living carbon neutral – well almost!

So we arrived on the 12th August and we had a quick familiarisation and we were already whisked away by my best man to the first meal in the fish harbour which is now a tourist attraction and culinary centre for everything fishy!

We also got our first tour of a tall ship. Well my best man is the President of the Preservation Society of the Sail Training Ship Deutschland – the only one left built in Bremarhaven almost exactly 100 years ago in 1927. We‘ll forget about the Russian Tall Ship Kruisenstern for the minute!

Supercharger Locations we visited:

What have we learned on our trip?

1. Public Transport in European cities is brilliant. But choose your accommodation carefully and near major public transport links. In Amsterdam and Bremerhaven we were only 600 meters away from a major transport hub. In Bremerhaven during the Sail Tall Ship Festival Public transport to and from the Main Station was free. In Amsterdam and Bremen it was tap and go with a credit card or buy a ticket in Bremen on-Board the tram.
2. Tesla chargers are far and wide and all over the place now and most are open to all in Europe.Cheaper and fast than all the other networks. Some are even in P&R facilities like the one in Bremen Sielhof. So convenient also right by a restaurant.
3. Booking.com is still good but sometimes has its flaws. Do not use in general an AMERICAN EXPRESS CARD as they charge a foreign transaction fee, but one company preferred AMEX. SO don’t ravel without but in general use a card that you know is free of foreign transaction fees.
4. You need an extra battery to charge your phone if you use it as a tool to pay for your journeys on public transport, as a payment method and your main camera. I used a MagSafe battery from Amazon.Not necessary from Anker but use one that has good reviews.
5. Use a credit card that has no foreign transaction charges.I was charged 5 Euros in a transaction on the Amex.
6. Assess the different offerings of Canal tours in Amsterdam. There are some open boats with drinks packages and some without. Also make sure with them how many drinks you can get during the trip.Soft drinks or alcohol – don’t be shy to clarify that.
7. In Amsterdam you can easily do 15,000 plus steps so plan in some breaks.Amstersam is great on coffee and beer but not great on tea! Fresh milk in tea is hard to come by – it is almost always condensed milk.
8. Speed Limits! It appears that recently the whole Netherlands have a speed limit of 100km/h or 62mph so pretty slow during the day 7h-19h Where as between 19:00-7:00am you can go 120km/h.Belgium has 120km/h and France 130km/h. Of course Germany has big stretches still with unlimited speed but also sometimes reduced to 120km/h. However the general speed is 130km/h otherwise you are deemed to be jointly responsible for an accident if you go over that speed.
9. Superchargers : Grantham a little slow and getting old now.Avoid! Faversham in Kent is very good and has a great Farmshop. Kortrijk in Belgium is very good. Meerkerk near Amsterdam is very good. Very good cafe and restaurant – however toilets cost 50 eurocents but very clean. Emspark in Germany is very good with good toilets and shopping centre and a Tesco like shop called Kaufland.Also the Sielhof supercharger by Bremen is great with a P&R facility opposite and a great restaurant on-site.
10. If you have never thought about it but use Google Maps for Public transport. The standard Google Maps app is brilliant of showing you how to get from A-B and which transport system to use to get for example into the town centre of any major City! I was so impressed how it guided us to the stops of the trams or underground and how to get back. Fares are not displayed but you can gather that from local inspectors or security staff at the transport hubs/stations.
11. What makes me think that we used 95% of renewable energy? Car transport with a Tesla Model Y and charged only at Tesla Superchargers which claim to only buy renewable electricity. Transporting our car through the tunnel was by electric train. We used mainly IHG Hotels which claim to have a low carbon footprint as they implemented policies that minimise their environmental footprint.These include only cleaning rooms every once during a 48hour continuous stay. We used mainly electric trams and electric powered underground trains for public transport . Our airB&B we used in Germany was powered by 13kw of solar installation and also had a nighttime battery storage of another 13kw. So all the washing and drying we did was done with solar or battery stored electricity. Also our charging we needed was done with solar energy at the airB&B .
12. So in general we can conclude thatching can have a fun, brilliant and sophisticated holiday if only you watch out and choose companies that will implement low carbon footprint policies and procedures. Also it is not hard to do. You just need to spent a little time on Websites and we have stayed with IHG hotels for a little while now and found them very comfortable.IHG hotels have brand names like Holiday Inn Express,Holiday Inn and some others. If you are a member you get points just on Tesco etc.
13. Next time I would research charging stops in Europe a bit better on the Supercharger app as we came by accident for example to the Antwerp Supercharger and it had an outdoor Swimmingpool at the Novotel and at 30 degrees in August we would have used that for overnight as well.

Here are some stats.