Kołobrzeg to Hamburg

Baltic Sea Circle Day 15

I’d forgotten what real bed felt like, it was amazing. Don’t get me wrong the mattress in the roof tent is comfortable, but not the same as a real bed. After waking up I looked out the window and discovered it had rained in the night, the terrace was wet and so were all our clothes. Oops! We wrung them out as much as possible and packed them into a plastic bag, ate the last of our breakfast cereal and packed our bags in preparation for our stay in Hamburg tonight. How could the adventure be nearly over? It all seems to have gone so quickly! It only felt like yesterday we were in Sweden on gravel tracks, or camping in the forest of Finland. 

As today was the last day of the rally we were allowed to use motorways without penalty and that meant we could make the most of the German Autobahn again! Oh how I had missed those “ausfhart” signs. We packed the car, locked up the apartment and figured out how to leave the place and put the keys through the letterbox. After finding out we were probably trying to get out of the entrance gate, we encircled the block and found the correct gate, then I held open the pedestrian gate until Gemma had returned from depositing the keys. Teamwork!

We made our way out of the town, fully fuelled and ready to do the 5 hour trip to Hamburg. The Polish motorways were good on this side of the country, and with a speed limit of 130 kmph they were fast too. The Porsche kept up with them all, happy to cruise at 120 or 125 kmph and even happy to do a short burst or three to 130 when needed to overtake. The rear view mirror in the car has a terrible vibration making it tricky to see, but the side view mirrors give excellent visibility. Before we knew it we were in Germany again and crossing the border, once again without managing to swap our juices and chocolate milk! We were determined to make the finish line on time, we had to be there between 4 and 5 pm and there would be drinks and a celebration around the podium at 7pm. 

The car cruised at Autobahn speeds, and as we travelled we came across several other rally teams, some in convoy. We’d wave as we overtook them, leaving them with the smell of partially burnt fuel. We had a few teams overtake us too and thumbs up were exchanged. Everyone was feeling the joy, still hours from the end, and revelling in the team spirit that the rally had created, bringing strangers together from around the continent. 

We arrived in Rostock at lunchtime, and parked up in a carpark. We checked the map and found that the place we could get our photos printed was in a retail park and they had a car park too, so we drove the 5 minutes around the corner to the shop, and headed over to DM, which as it turns out is just like Boots chemist in the UK. They had Kodak instant print machines and we hooked up our phones one at a time and selected all the photos we needed, then waited for them to print. Success at last, our photos looked amazing! After a short toilet break we headed back to the car, and started to glue the photos in while we ate our, hopefully last, lunch of peanut butter and jam sandwiches. We knew it would take another three hours to get to Hamburg and got back on the Autobahn. Gemma was petrified of the fast cars overtaking, so I did my best to keep the speed up and plan our overtakes well. I was always keeping one eye on my mirrors for the distinctive front grilles of the Audi S series, Mercedes AMG or BMW M series cars, as well as the odd Porsche that would be instantly on our tail. After driving on Europes roads for two weeks this felt much more normal than the first experience we had on our way to Hamburg. 

Soon we were approaching The city and found ourselves tailing a Mercedes 230L that was also a rally competitor. We dropped in behind them and moved in sync when it came to overtaking trucks, going in convoy for about 20 minutes, helping each other move amongst the fast moving traffic. As we got closer to the finish line the traffic got much busier and we broke convoy to get ahead, giving the Merc a huge thumbs up and wave as we passed them. Their engine sounded rough and we could hear it over the drone of our own. 

Like every city Hamburg has its own rush hour and we joined the queues as the traffic ground to a standstill. We kept our eye on the clock as it approached 4pm. We turned off the autobahn and missed the lane we needed, forcing us to turn right and into another queue, where we had to wait several junctions to find a turning left again. We found ourselves in the backstreets of Hamburg and were searching for road signs and trying to keep our speed up with others and navigate the lanes correctly. We saw the signs for the fish market, where our chequered flag would be waiting and headed down the street, the air filling with the smell of the river. The end was just ahead, somewhere and all we had to do was turn left and find the entrance; we missed it and needed to make a u turn, but got it second time around!

We rolled down the ramp onto the fish market, a huge concrete area that was now filling up with rally cars, covered in dust, mud and dead bugs. There were horns beeping all around as we joined a queue at the direction of a marshall and waited our turn to cross and get our photo taken. As we sat in the queue we looked at each other smiling. Had we actually just done this? Is it really the end? We were filled with an overwhelming feeling of pride, for ourselves, the car, the people that had supported us along the way. Crossing the actual finish line was a bit of a blur for me, Dan from the rally organisers came over and fist bumped us, he’d been following our progress the whole way. We stopped on the finish line, hopped out and got a photo, we looked exhausted and felt it too. We had driven 7,500 km in 13 days, 3 days fewer than the rest of the rally teams. We’d managed to catch up and meet our rally companions in Estonia, and now we saw them again all looking more tired, but also excited and glad to have reached the finish line. A few folks came up to us and said how they’d being watching us on the tracking app and cheering us on. We saw the guy from Estonia who had invited us into their group and he gave us a hug. Even though we’d only met these people once before, or in some instance not at all, we had one thing in common: we’d all just completed one of the biggest adventures of our lives and felt amazing. 

Despite the tiredness, we headed over to the bar across the road where we got a cold drink and sat amongst the other teams talking German and recalling some of the rally highlights, still not believing it was complete. At 7 we headed back to the podium and cheered all the teams who got a mention for driving the furthest, having the best theme, best wild camping spot etc. The couple who had tried to convince us to get naked in the sauna won the best theme as hippies; it wasn’t really a theme for them, it was real life. We then had the winners ceremony and each of the podium teams recalled some of their own highlights and trials. The winning team had totalled their rally car in Lithuania and were worthy winners; they walked away from a wreck with no injuries and other teams had come to their rescue. 

After the ceremony Gem and I headed back to the bar, ordered two pizzas and enjoyed a good meal. We were shattered and headed to the hotel around the corner. We parked the car in the underground carpark, grabbed our bags and went to our room, which was the size of the entire apartment from the night before. With a huge bed and bath this was a bit of luxury at the end of an epic adventure.