Maastricht – Leersum (kind of near Utrecht)

Today's Route

This morning Helen & Anthony headed off to the sunshine – but not before we had some photos. Helen had bought Anthony some Crocs for his 60^th a couple of weeks ago, so we were 3 pairs at once today – a bit sad – but definitely worthy of a photo!

It was lovely to see them – and I hope that they have a fab holiday – although if they find sunshine too soon, I really don't want to know about it.

They did leave us with a loan item though – their small electric fan heater. Mmmmm. Lovely. Sad that we are using it in the middle of August – but already, after just having it on for a short time last night, I don't know how we managed without one :)

Anyway, they were on there way, and so were we – destination unknown though as we set off – vaguely we needed to be closer to Amsterdam, in preparation for Helen & Andrew visiting on Thursday.

Stopped at a bakery on the way out of town for croissants.

We actually crossed into Belgium again for the first 40km north or so, and then back into the Netherlands – with a more distinct border post this time (I think I am obsessed!). We still didn't really have a plan though. Originally we thought about Arnhem, but I happened to text Helen that's where we were headed, and she said that was on their itinerary for when they are here – so we changed course.

We stopped in some ropey looking town for lunch and found some internet. I was really pleased as the blog hasn't been updated for ages and I thought I would get a nice long session in – get it all up to date. Typical, got internet – Blogger not working. What a pain! Will have to try again another time I suppose.

After all that, we headed off – vaguely towards Utrecht and some greenery we saw marked on the map. We went up a road that was clearly marked on the map as requiring a ferry crossing – which it did and it was fab. OK, so the crossing took maybe 4 minutes or so – but what fun!

First place we looked at to stay was De Gouden Ham – seemed to be some kind of lake / nature reserve kind of thing (I was just intrigued by the chap lying under the tree on the sign), but the 2 campsites we looked into were rammed full of people and didn't really do anything for us – so we pushed on.

Next was a similar affair a bit further north, but Jon wasn't really loving it, so we pushed on again - taking in our first 'proper' windmill – over another car ferry thing and into the national park. Now we were talking.

We found a massive campsite – no idea how much it is going to cost us, reception was closed, find a pitch – sort it out in the morning (apparently), but it is nice. Nice facilities, nice pitches, nice surroundings (trees)........nice.

We also went out for a run – 35 minutes which included some fartlek type things – sprinting between points, running backwards, high knees, etc – got to keep the locals amused – and then Jon made a rather marvellous beef stew for dinner. Perfect.

All I need now is the internet – I have nearly a week's worth of blog updates ready to go, but no way of doing it!