Even though it was light outside and it was about 9am my body just didn’t really want to work. I managed to sit myself up and the moment I swung my legs out of bed I felt that “WHY!” creaking cracking noise from most of my joints after the total punishment from day before.
I struggled to the shower and stood under the running water for ages, it was nice.
The thought of the long drive home was not one of excitement but there were a couple of things that we had to do before we left.
We met up with Chris and Faith outside the room. Gathered our things and loaded the car. We met the girls who had checked out already in the Kamps on the ground floor for a bit of food. I had the strongest coffee I could find and a Nussecke.
Our first destination was the Mohne Dam. This Dam generates power and holds back the Mohnesee. It was built in 1913. It is 36m high and 777m wide. It was destroyed in 1940 by the RAF – documented quite well in the film Dam-busters with the legendary bouncing bomb.
Now I haven’t been to the Dam since I was about 8 years old. We found parking and walked out onto the dam. To our left was the Mohnesee and to our left was the small town of Gunne. After the lessons learned in 1940, the town now resides on the side of the hill, almost out of reach of the torrents of water held back by only a few meters of stone.
The sun was out, the sky was blue and it was the first really relaxing moment of the whole holiday. The stroll over the dam was warm and there were only a few people about. I think on our return next time, we might have to do one of the countryside walks. It is a contrast to the rest of the region (which is predominantly industrial). There are loads of evergreen trees, and plants and general greenness.
We were there for about an hour, taking in the sight and wishing we had time to have a boat trip.
Our final stop off before the journey home was a small spa town near to the Dam called Bad Sassendorf. Sassendorf is a salt mining town and is locally famous for its salt water baths and ‘Wellness’ treatments.
Parking is not stress free in this town, a place dedicated to relaxing people and keeping people alive, it has the worst parking in the whole of Germany. We spent quite a lot of time gridlocked, waiting for the aged drivers of the town work their way in and out of parking spaces.
After about 30 mins we managed to get parked and strolled into town. The first thing I notice, as I’m sure my companions did as well, was that we were by far the youngest people in the town. There was an organic, natural produce, hippy style market on in the town and the main streets were packed with bumbling elderly people, all looking for tat to buy and offload onto unfortunate relatives……..
We eventually found some Curry-wurst and chips to chow down on and made our way to the Thermal Salt Baths. We paid, changed and got into the salt water pool, it was lovely and warm and felt strangely ‘silky’ and we swam about. Once again, we were by far the best looking and youngest people there, so I suppose, in a way, it worked – we looked and felt fantastic, especially after the stressful day before.
An hour later we were shrivelled up like prunes, changed and ready to roll. We got in the car, got out of town and onto the Autobahn for our trip home. 
We did the journey pretty much all in one to be honest and made good time. We stopped for a breather a couple of times just so that I could wake up a bit and get some blood flowing.
The Chunnel was reached in about 5 hours and we were on time for our shuttle so went straight through.
It was an excellent weekend away, the company was ace and we managed to pack loads into a short space of time. At £50 for fuel each way, it certainly beats flying
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