We set off on Friday night to try out our camper. We drove north not really having any idea where we would go. We picked out a free camping spot in the book we have and set our Tom Tom with the Gps co-ordinates of Velsen. (this was a first for us so wasn’t sure if it would work) We arrived at a small beachside carpark next to a restaurant overlooking a major harbour. The carpark was pretty full but we managed to squeeze inbetween 2 other campers. We had a view all night of large ships coming in and out of the bay, the lights of the harbour and a small island with a lighthouse.
The next morning we went for a long walk along the pier, not realising it was so long and spent a pleasant hour watching the fisherman and the ships. After this we drove into the next town of Wijk aan Zee, here we unloaded our bikes and went for a ride to explore, we road down to the beach and then around the town. After doing a bit of shopping we then decided to head off south to see where we might stay the next night. While driving through Den Haag, we stopped at a park to have lunch, it was a really nice place to stop next to a lake. We decided to spend the afternoon here, so we offloaded the bikes again and then went for another ride. Around the park there were people doing all sorts of things, there was horse riding, canoeing, people sunbaking, having picnics & barbeques, kids playing soccer, playing with dogs, swimming, sitting at cafe’s, such a lovely scene. We stayed there all afternoon, even had a nap for an hour ,then when the local hoons turned up to do their wheelies (yes they are everywhere!) decided to move on. We drove down through a place called Monster (we just decided needed to be looked at) to Hoek van Holland where we found a nice quiet place by the beach to park for the night.
In the morning we drove back to Martin’s because we had to meet Michel to go to a football match in Rotterdam. He picked us up and we went to Trudy & Michel’s place for coffee before the match. Feyernoor were playing Heracles and luckily Feyernoord won the match 5 goals to 1. So it was a good result, but a very one sided game.
Today we will head off to visit Ewout’s uncle Eddie in De Lutte, near the German border. We will visit him tomorrow but have decided to head off today and take our time maybe staying somewhere on the way. Then we will spend the rest of the week exploring further north into some areas of Holland that we haven’t been to yet. We will take it as it comes as we have no real itinerary and no time constraints. We are still waiting for the “green card” from the insurance before we can leave Holland and then we can go further.
