Following the intensive sightseeing we all needed a rest and a beach holiday! We moved north east of Berlin to the Ostsee, or Baltic Sea. We stayed in a rented house in a small hamlet called Hohenkirchen (High Church), which was about 2km from the nearest beach, and about 20km from the nearest shop! We spent the whole time either on the beach, sitting in the car waiting for the rain to stop or playing 'Phase10' card game or 'Luxar' board game. We were intrigued by the fact that having paid to park our car, which was always nice and close to the beach, there were then ticket machines at the entrance of the beach, to pay to use it! The part of the beach we chose, and at the children's request had to return to everyday, also had a refreshment cabin. Pete had a few cups of teas from there, but 'Mo' didn't hang around very long once the rain looked threatening, so must have been disappointed with her first-week-of-August trade! As you will see the most was made of the beach, with a variety of activities filling the hours:
Shall I go in? It's a bit cold...
Yes!
The first sand castles!
Base Camp, we got pretty good at packing up speedily just before the rain came!
Learning about shellfish...
My favourite photo, the rain clouds gave a lovely light!
Trying to save the island from the encroaching sea...
A rare moment of harmony!
keepie upie!
Boules
Another castle.
More castles!
let's run around it!
What haven't we done yet? I know......
This is the church that lends it's name to the hamlet we stayed in:
Our holiday house:
The lane outside our house that leads to the church:
On the Thursday of our week , there seemed to be no breaks in the cloud and rain, so we ventured to Wismar, about 25km away, to stock up on food supplies and do a bit of sightseeing.
Our last day on the beach:
Then we headed home, refreshed...all except our car that it is. It had had enough! We had six hours of driving to get home, with 290km to go, the car started to lose power everytime we desended a hill. With Pete's patience and skill we limped home, having pulled into the hard shoulder/breakdown lane at the side of the road four times! With a wing and a prayer we made it home safe! We didn't use the car all the public holiday weekend , then on the Monday we needed to call the breakdown service as the car wouldn't even start. The mechanic couldn't understand how we'd made it home! We emptied the car as if it was on it's last journey on the back of the truck to the garage, as we thought it was the big end, BUT the garage managed to fix it! We spent a week and a bit car-less. Even the children entered the spirit and took rucksacks on their bikes so we could go food shopping. A big bill later, but the old girl will serve us a bit longer, and hopefully until our time to leave here, having enjoyed a holiday and bit of pampering of her own!
