Day 5 of our camper van escapades and we are now safely parked at Mums in Wheathampstead for a few nights until we move on to St. Ives (Cambs) and tour around for a week. Evie loved going to the local baker/cafe for her coffee at 7am, before we started to melt from the heat yet again!

We’re mightyly enjoying the luxury of brushing our teeth in a sink bigger than a postage stamp - the one in the pictures is from Bremen not Mums before you think her house is a bit industrialised!

And we can sleep in (in theory as I’m writing this before 5am - again!) here at Mums unlike when we stay at a camper site where there’s no such thing. You have to be up and at ‘em before 7am to get to the showers to beat the hoards. Otherwise it's shower roulette - is one available, is there a queue, do you get stuck with the dodgy one with barely a dribble, and did the last person leave it covered in… stuff.  By 8am there’s a stream of people stomping towards the shower block in various states of undress and sticky-up hair!  😳

And talking of undress apparently taking your dog out to do their first pee of the day in your underwear (I’m talking both men and women here) is totally acceptable! At least in Germany…

But back to those ablutions. In Bremen you got a 5 minute shower for the pricely sum of €1 - IF you could convince the archaic coin machine that your €1 coin wasn't fake. My record was 9 tries while panicing that I'd have to go back to the van for another coin and lose my favorite shower in the process.

But finally, the penny drops and you can jump in and watch as the timer counts down your 300 seconds, which turns out to be longer than you'd think unless you have to wash your (long) hair in which case it all gets a bit frantic!

Out of the shower there's then the 'crocs dance' - trying to stand on one leg while kicking off your croc to free your foot and get your knickers, shorts, or whatever on without putting a bare foot down on the (more than) slightly suspect bathroom floor.  And repeat for the other leg. 

I'll talk about the joys of using the shower in the van, a space about a quarter of the size of an old London telephone box, another day.  It certainly doesn't turn out to be bigger on the inside, when you get in there, like the Dr Who version!

Now I’m off to enjoy the life size shower at Mums while I still can!