Two days, two special places: we spend the night all alone next to the ancient city wall of Messene and spend Saturday among theatre, stadium and colonnades. Then it’s along narrow roads to the “middle finger” of the Peloponnese and Vatheia, where tourists photograph not just the village but the Mammothon too…

Vatheia with its tower houses

On the drive from the ferry the belt starts making odd noises, and the diagnosis is not what we hoped for: the bracket of the second alternator has broken. While the spare parts travel from Germany, we move our office to Elia Beach, first convince a snake that a tyre tread is no good hiding place, and have a breakfast van dropping by every morning…

A snake we have to talk out of staying before departure

Holiday! Our daughter has arrived and we explore Kefalonia: a cave with sunbeams, a boat trip, a birthday wish that takes us to the Palace of Odysseus on Ithaca, turtles and a mountain that we hike down first and then back up, just to be safe. To finish, there is a ferry on which we cannot even get a place…

A turtle near Argostoli

Goodbye Italy, hello Greece: We drive Mammothon onto a floating multi-storey car park, meet its previous owners there, arrive in the middle of the night and find a pitch where we are practically parked in the sea. Add the first proper Greek meal, an imposing bridge, another ferry and a holiday house with several floors that we first have to get used to…

Lou makes friends with two fellow dogs on the ferry

Three weeks of Italy in one go: a week in Tuscany on a vineyard with a very narrow gate, a visit to the ruins of Ostia Antica with Lou in a backpack while Sven pops over to sample Irish weather, and a drive across the country to Apulia. There an olive farm, a flight to Zurich and a town we had not even put on the list are waiting, and it still knocks us off our feet…

Lou finds Ostuni quite acceptable too

Two weeks in the Allgäu, an odometer that cracks 100,000 kilometres, and a mountain that this time greets us not with ice and snow but with almost too much sun. Then we get our home back from the Dachstein, and the second half of the season starts towards Bologna, where a lizard and some rather bad roads await us in the Apennines…

Lou has the overview

A pitch in the Ore Mountains so crooked that even Mammothon gets vertigo, an evening in Franconia with very tasty food and a night in which our stomachs beg to differ. At the weekend we head to our old home, where Lou meets her sister…

Two sisters, one reunion

Through the Suwałki Gap we head into Poland, where the storks in Masuria are firmly part of the inventory. A few hundred kilometres later we are back in Germany, between rocks and ladders - and Sven works with the most beautiful office view of the trip, but sadly no time to enjoy it…

View from Saxon Switzerland

Hardly have we left Riga behind when the next country is on the programme. First one of the most surreal places of the trip, then into nature and finally to a pitch where the television is a window - and the stars are water skiing…

Lou among a few more crosses

After the two capitals we first head back into nature: to the Estonian north coast and a Baltic Sea in which you can stroll for hundreds of metres. No sooner are a few quiet days over than we stumble into the next capital - and look for a gap with Mammothon that should not really exist…

The most famous cat in Riga

After weeks of remote pitches we end up on a city campsite, put up the umbrella and roll onto the ferry to the next country. There an old town awaits that is surprisingly empty - and Lou learns that a carrier bag has its good sides too…

Tallinn without the tourist crowds

For weeks the needle has pointed north, now it turns around: we have a workshop appointment in Schladming and a few thousand kilometres to cover before it. Three stopovers lie in between - with reindeer right outside the door, salad on the pizza and a Finnish invention Sven falls in love with on the spot…

The welcoming committee in Suomussalmi