We came towards the coast, looking for somewhere to spend a week before we meet up with Yvonne to visit the bison reintroduction project.  At first, we headed to another nature campsite.  But when we got there, it didn’t feel as open and welcoming as the others.  After spending a night there, we felt a bit sad about the place and decided to move on the following morning.

So the next day we set off towards the dunes, battling a fierce headwind but only for a short ride of 15 km.  We arrived at the recommended campsite and set up camp – in a howling gale!  That evening, once we’d had lunch and done the shopping, we went for a pre-dinner stroll.  We set out into the dunes behind the campsite, past a lake where some young geese were gathered, between the dunes, beside a small area of planted woodland and out onto the beach.  As we crested the dune and got a view of the sea, the full force of the wind hit us and teated us to a facial sand-blasting.  Giggling and squinting, jackets flailing, we ran down the dune towards the sea, ditched our sandals and ran into the waves.

This place feels like the wildest place we’ve been to.  Not because it has the most exciting wildlife (don’t think so) or the fewest people (certainly not) or the least intensive management scheme (no way).  It feels wild because of the exposure.  Gone is the safety of the forest.  No shade, no shelter, no respite from the elements.  The dunes are a barren-looking landscape – sharp grasses and salt-tolerant shrubs holding the sand loosely together.

This place feels wild because of the salt, the sand, the sun, the rain and the wind.  Oh, the wind, the furious wind!  Reshaping the dunes and causing every plant and animal in its way to bend to its will.

One evening walk and we were starting to feel better already.

We had a slightly sleepless night in our wind-battered tent.  And today, we had to go back into town for more supplies and the laundrette.  Then, lunch and chores done, we headed back to the beach to check out surf board hire options.  We signed up for a surfing lesson tomorrow then hired wetsuits to go for a swim.  Before we went in, we were feeling a bit tired and lacklustre.  But a salt water wave to the face soon sorted that out!

The waves here aren’t particularly high, but they are strong.  And the longshore current is so strong that you can’t stand still in any one place at all!  So we walked up-shore, waded our way out to the good waves and body surfed in the waves as we got carried down-shore, where we’d get out and walk back up again.

Paddle paddle paddle, sploosh!  Wave after wave of cleaning salt water, bringing us back to life.

There’s a poem ‘On the Sea‘ by John Keats… he doesn’t go in the water, but it talks about the freedom that can be found in nature and I think it’s rather beautiful.

It keeps eternal whisperings around

Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell

Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell

Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.

Often ’tis in such gentle temper found,

That scarcely will the very smallest shell

Be moved for days from where it sometime fell,

When last the winds of heaven were unbound.

O ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,

Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;

O ye! whose ears are dinn’d with uproar rude,

Or fed too much with cloying melody, –

Sit ye near some old cavern’s mouth, and brood

Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!

– Anna

We need a detox!

We met up with the Renner clan again in Gent. We managed to find some good weather and went into town to enjoy a boat ride through the historic city centre, and then wandered around enjoying the atmosphere. We also had a trip to the Gruut brewery, the last one in the city centre. The brewers once had their own church in the centre of Gent, but apparently beer sales fell as it was being built and they lost faith so didn’t bother putting the spire on. True story (according to the boat guide). The Gruut brewery doesn’t use hops to flavour its beer. It uses the far older method of using a mix of local herbs and malt. Now that is definitely a true story, and the results are delicious! I’m sure they will be appearing in the bars of Shoreditch before long.

The next day it was raining so we went to the climbing wall. It was a sad day for me and Anna as we realised we basically can’t climb any more, but Casey discovered a new skill so all was not lost.

We said goodbye to the family that evening, I’m looking forward to seeing them again in September! Things were moving quickly though, and we went straight on to spending some time with Anna’s mates from Southampton, who come over to the festival every year. We stayed on a fantastic canal-barge ecohostel just outside the town centre. It’s called Ecohostel Andromeda, and I strongly recommend a visit! It was great to catch up with everyone and of course we had to go on another boat trip, drink more beer and listen to more music!

After several nights of drinking and going to bed too late, we said goodbye to everyone and got another train to Haarlem, where we were expecting to start our next project visit tomorrow. We found out today that things are a bit delayed so we have a week here to kick back and enjoy ourselves a bit more. Probably with less beer though!

– Dave

The sun started heating up the tent around 7am and turfed me out of my sleeping bag. Dave was still inside his when I had to get out the greenhouse because it was sweltering! I’m always too hot in the mornings anyway, and after a few day’s respite from the heat, I wasn’t in a good mood. But it was a beautiful day and after breakfast I cheered up a bit. Then when we got on the road, I cheered up a lot.

It was a glorious morning from the bike – cool air rushing past us, warm sun on our skin, a canal full of ducks and their ducklings. Oh, and almost no cars! And the ones that do go past are super cycle friendly, yay!

We spent all day on cycle paths as usual, sometimes alongside a main road, sometimes between fields and sometimes through woodland or along the water. We stopped every 20km as usual to have something to eat and drink. There were some nice places to stop today.  The first town we came to was Gouda.  It had a market on and we stocked up on bread, cheese (gouda of course!), stroopwaffels, pastries and dried fruit.

Our second stop was just outside Rotterdam, by a lake where people were sailing. And we had some entertaining characters walking in the park to keep us amused. Several blokes were walking incredibly small, disobedient dogs that either couldn’t keep up with them or just refused to. Sadly none of the men reduced themselves to picking up their dog and carrying it home, but there was a lot of futile whistling, walking away, walking back, then more futile whistling as the dogs just ambled around sniffing at things or standing still, resting their tiny tiny legs.

After lunch, we rode through Rotterdam. It was as cycle friendly as always but a navigation nightmare! But we got to ride over some nice bridges and the weather was good so the detours went largely unnoticed.

On the way out of town, we stopped at a supermarket then found a park to have second lunch in. Then we were campsite-bound. And a good thing too, it was somehow 5pm already! Still the weather was lovely and we continued to enjoy the 25 degree warmth and riding in the evening sun.

We got ourselves onto a countryside cycle path that went all the way to the campsite and arrived tired but happy, having done around 80km of gloriously easy Dutch terrain.

Dinner was an unusual treat of burgers (in burger buns and everything!) with a side of cous cous salad. It was very nice, even if I say so myself. Although I wasn’t the one trying to clean the pan afterwards!

We’re at another Natuurkampen tonight and it’s just as great as the others (minus wifi). A lush green field with some trees and a shower block – ahh. It rained a bit this evening but not as much as it sounded like it should have from the amount of thunder we heard!

Tomorrow we’re riding across the islands towards the Belgian border.

– Anna

Aaaaah, such a long lie-in this morning! We heard Huygen get up at 6 am and went back to sleep without any guilt whatsoever! By the time we got up it was almost 9, and Emma had been out walking the dog already. I did feel slight guilt about that but never mind.

We had a really good morning chatting while we slowly got our stuff together ready to go. Emma made delicious pancakes, which we ate with yoghurt and fresh fruit. An amazing treat after having cereal every day for the last few months! By the time we were ready to go it was around 12. We said goodbye to Emma and set off. Into the drizzle.

The cycling today was easy. The Dutch have really got it nailed with cycle routes. I knew that on a theoretical level, but actually using the routes every day makes you realise how much better it is than anywhere else we’ve cycled. It feels like they really thought about cyclists when they built the roads, instead of cyclists being an afterthought. The British government could definitely learn something here!

The rain was on and off all day, so annoying to cycle in! It was drizzle, otherwise know as “wee wet rain”. It comes in from the side, the front, the back and sometimes even from underneath! How does that happen?? When it’s raining, it’s awful. Then the rain stops and you get too hot in your waterproofs, and you think, hm, maybe the rain wasn’t so bad. Then it starts raining again and you remember how much it sucks.

We stopped for lunch in a little park with a pond and a fountain. There were three groups of people fishing in the pond. One group was all kids. Is fishing fashionable with the kids now? They were getting rained on and everything. Very confusing. No-one caught anything. BECAUSE IT WAS A TINY ORNAMENTAL POND MAYBE?!

We went to an outdoor store for some camping gas. Anna invested in an inflatable pillow to go underneath her normal pillow. That’s right, Anna goes camping with two pillows now. I think she’s well on track to buy a caravan in the next few years.

As we got near the campsite for this evening we heard someone ringing a bike bell behind us. It turned out to be a lady who’d seen all our stuff and wanted to offer us a camping spot on her farm tonight. She has done a few tours herself and said that she always offers a space to people she sees riding past. We declined her kind offer because we were excited to check out the campsite we were going to, and because we didn’t want to leave ourselves with a longer day tomorrow. It was really good to be asked though! Lots of people are nice.

We turned off the main road and got onto a little single track by a canal. We followed it for a mile or so, and eventually saw a sign advertising Nature camping (it’s not the same as Naturist camping!). We went in and were shown to a nice quiet spot on the edge of some fields by an elderly farmer on a bike. The price was €12.50! That’s the cheapest of all except Portugal. What’s going on!? We were worried the showers would be cold, but no, they were steaming hot, and there was even wifi. Luxury on a budget.

The campsite is cool, it’s a working farm, but it looks like they invite people to have quite a good look around in all the barns and things, and see how the animals are kept and how everything works. We also spotted some canoes for hire; sadly we didn’t have the time or energy to go up and down the canal any more than we already have.

Tomorrow we will go to another of the Nature campsites near the coast. It’s quite close to Rotterdam, which means we’ll be able to see the end of the Rhine, even though we didn’t cycle all the way along it!

– Dave

Today we just had 50km to cycle, then we were going to visit one of Dave’s friends Theo, his wife Emma and their baby Oscar.

When we woke up, the weather was still a bit gross and we wiled away most of the morning in the tent, unwilling to get up. Eventually, we managed to pack up in the relative dry but once we were on the road, the drizzle seeped in.

We rode through a bit more of the forest before having to brave the open road. The forest was lovely – the trees kept the wind and rain off us. But on the cycle path by the road with fields either side, we got rain straight in the face as we rode into the wind.

There weren’t any picnic benches to be found, so after 25km we resorted to picnicking by the side of the cycle path. Whenever a big lorry went past on the road, we had to shield our sandwiches from the road spray. Not the best, but we needed to refuel and felt better afterwards.

In the afternoon, we found some nice canal-side cycle paths and enjoyed the last stretch before Amersfoort. Then we cycled up the only hill in the Netherlands (a full 20 meter climb!) to arrive in the thatched suburbia where Theo and Emma live. We pulled up outside their house and sat in their front garden whilst Emma came back from walking baby Oscar and the dog Winston.  By this time, the sun was trying to peek through the clouds and it was humid and nicely warm.

When Emma rounded the corner and saw us, she nearly had her arm pulled out of its socked by Oscar excitedly jumping the hedge to greet us! Emma welcomed us in and we unloaded, unpacked and had showers between having chats. Dave and Emma were catching up whilst Emma and I were getting to know each other. Since Dave last saw the pair of them, they’ve moved to the Netherlands, got married and had a baby!

We had such a nice afternoon and evening together. We went to the shops, talked a lot about all of our travels, discussed their impending house move and entertained baby Oscar. Then Theo came home from work, we had a delicious dinner, a few glasses of wine and more story sharing. At 11pm we had to call it a night and went to our lovely comfy bed feeling happy and sleepy. It felt like such a nice long day with all that good food and conversation – and no campsite activities to be done! What a luxury. Thanks Emma and Theo!

– Anna

Yesterday we got the train all the way from Hausach in the Black Forest to Emmerich on the German / Netherlands border. It was a long trip! We got to Emmerich about 6 pm and cycled over the border, which we were delighted to find looked like this.

We found a campsite nearby and went to bed to recover from our epic train ride. It’s a tough life.

It was raining when we woke up this morning – stupid northern Europe! We managed to pack everything away with minimal saturation, except when I left the tent door open for a few minutes. Oops. I’m not used to precipitation!

As we were washing up and getting ready to go we started chatting to another tourer – a Dutch guy. We mentioned we were planning to go to one of two National Parks near Arnhem and he told us all about them, and said there was a really good campsite nearby. We decided to check it out.

We hit the road dressed in full waterproofs, it was like being back in Galicia. Too hot to wear the waterproofs, too wet to take them off. It was great riding though, there were cycle paths everywhere! Another of the tourers we were talking to last night described the Netherlands as a playground for cyclists, it looks like she’s right!

The landscape during the morning ride was mostly agricultural, with a few small patches of woodland. It wasn’t particularly inspiring, but I suppose they have to feed all these people somehow!

We got to the park (Nationaal Park Veluwezoom) in the afternoon and found our way in. We didn’t have a good electronic map of the trails, so we found ourselves going along wet, sandy tracks, up and down hills (who knew?) until we found a cycle path and a proper map by the side of it. We stopped for lunch and enjoyed being back in the woods!

As we made our way out of the park we saw something on the path. Anna joked it was a sleeping bear, but as we got closer we realized she wasn’t far off – it was a massive bull lying across the path enjoying a good cud. We didn’t want to get too close; luckily there was a sand track just next to the path so we could get around. It turned out the bull only had one eye, and was super chilled out, he didn’t even move as we went past.

We got to the campsite and went to check in. We found out this is one of a network of campsites under a group called “De Groene Koepel” (The Green Dome). You have to have a membership to stay at these sites, which costs €15 per year, but after that it’s pretty cheap to camp each time. We decided it’s probably worth it if we stay at a few other sites in the next few days so we went for it.

The site is really cool. As we were cleaning the bikes and cooking dinner we got chatting to a family who volunteer here. The campsite only employs one person, the rest are volunteers. The electricity here all comes from a solar panel, even so, they invite you to charge up your phones etc from the battery – a very nice change from trying to sneakily charge stuff up from the shaver sockets in the toilets!

The lady we were speaking to said that when she first came to this site there was a toilet and a cold shower. Since she’s been working here they have installed hot showers, the solar panel, a washing up area, new toilets, and a cool little shelter where you can cook and eat when it’s raining – such a good idea. They also light oil lamps and put them around the site each night instead of having electric bulbs – it’s such a nice light compared to bright electric light invading your sleep! As they were lighting the lamps she said they’d had a suggestion to put one in the shelter, so she was going to see if there was a hook there, and if not, to put one in because “that’s a good idea”. I like to think that that was the sort of open-minded attitude that resulted in this being such a great campsite!

Tomorrow we’re heading to Amersfoort to meet up with a couple of friends of mine, Huygen and Emma. Since I last saw them they’ve had a baby and got married, so there’s a lot to catch up on – can’t wait!

– Dave

Today we walked into the Black Forest to see what it was all about. We went up the road from the campsite for a while before crossing a small stream and heading into the trees. It wasn’t as scary as I expected. We found out last night that the impenetrable Black Forest of the Grimm Brothers is long gone; it was almost completely deforested during the 19th century, and subsequently replanted with monocultures (mostly spruce) across vast swathes. In the ’90s there were a couple of bad hurricanes that destroyed a lot of the monoculture stands, and these have since been left to recover naturally.

We saw few really big old trees. There were occasional examples with big trunks that looked over a hundred years old, but most looked up to 100. The mix was nice though, stands of spruce and pine with deciduous species like beech and birch filling up the gaps.

We headed up to a lookout point called “Bear rock”, which promised an all-round view. As we got to the top of the hill the things that caught our eyes were the three massive wind turbines standing well above the tops of the tallest trees. They were really impressive, and a bit noisy – like hearing an aircraft overhead, but never passing!

We went on to Bear Rock, but as we were going downhill from the turbines there was no 360 degree view of the forest spread out beneath us. Or there was, but you could really only see the trees right in front of you. It was a good spot to stop for lunch though.

We walked back down a different route, through more mixed forest which opened out onto a lovely view across the valley. As we got back near the campsite we stopped by a watermill and Anna cooled her feet off.

This afternoon we tried to get train tickets for tomorrow via the DeutscheBahn website. We were on the verge of buying some pretty expensive tickets when it told us our journey wasn’t available any more. Anna got rage at this point and after ten minutes of screaming and thrashing about on the floor she borrowed the campsite’s phone and called the train company. She spoke to a very nice man who helped us to buy tickets all the way across Germany with our bikes for €22 each. After that, Anna got the campsite to print the tickets out for us. What a hero. Hopefully our journey tomorrow is sorted and we’ll soon be kissing the sweet, flat, cycle-friendly earth of the Netherlands!

– Dave

Today we had a lazy morning then made the most of our free train tickets to get into the heart of the Black Forest without even working up a sweat.  We met another tourer on the train and had nice chats.  Then before we knew it, there were 13 bikes in the train all at once!  Dave got a few tips of adjusting his Brooks saddle from a man who’d had his for decades and everyone was busy admiring each other’s bikes.

We got off the train in Triberg, which we’d heard was tourist central.  It didn’t seem too bad though, apart from a busy main road.  We headed down through the outskirts of town and passed a few cuckoo clock attractions – this area is famous for its cuckoo clocks.

I had envisaged us riding down the valley along a lovely cycle path through the forest, but there wasn’t one.  So we got on the main road and headed downhill as fast as we could, holding up the trucks and the cars.  Every now and then, there was a cycle route around a tunnel and we enjoyed some relative safety.  Except for one that went through the works yard of a saw mill and I nearly got taken out by a logging truck!  (Okay, it was my fault for overtaking a street cleaning buggy on a corner.  But the swept up grit was going in my eyes!)

We carried on for a bit along parts of cycle path and parts of the main road, stopping by a field for lunch.

When we reached the town of Gutach, we went to the supermarket, then found ourselves a cycle path and headed for the Rodelbahn.  We found it and its beer garden full of families and made ourselves at home for an hour or so.

Once our beer-legs had stabilised a little, we each had a go on the Rodelbahn.  It was fun – went up really really steeply then whooshed all the way down, trying to remember to brake for the corners! The adrenaline subsided and we had to admit that it really was time to head for the campsite.

Just a little more downhill coasting before we turned off along another main valley heading upstream.  Then we turned off again down a quieter road uphill alongside a little river.  We were feeling surprisingly good post-beer and coasted uphill in the late afternoon sun.  My bum is getting pretty sore now but luckily Dave’s back is better.

One short but insanely steep hill to the campsite and we’d arrived.  We pitched up intending to stay for two nights and go for a walk tomorrow.

– Anna