Belgium & Holland
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Belgium & Holland
In September 2007 and at fairly short notice we decided to take the new van to Holland for a run and try out.
Having seen the prices of the ferry for Harwich - Hook of Holland we opted to do the Dover - Calais crossing and drive through Belgium. We went Sea France and paid 104 quid return which is not bad for 2 people and a 7.5 metre beast.
We decided to take the opportunity to stop in Belgium and have a look at Bruges, Sheila claims to have visited when she was 12 and it is somewhere Gilroy had not been.
We stayed at a site at Jabbeke which is a short bus ride from Bruges; we picked it out of the Camping Cheque book on the basis that the standard would be pretty good. It is a very large site just in the last few weeks of the season and so not many of the facilities were open but in the holiday season it must be a good place to go as there are restaurants and lots of activities for the family.
Bruges was a lovely place and we spent two whole days wandering around, taking lots of pix , a trip on a canal boat and took in some interesting museums although the really big museum is closed until next year.
From Bruges we went into Holland which involved taking a very long and expensive tunnel into Zeeland. Unlike the Dartford crossing where we pay car prices despite our huge size, in Holland we pay small van rates.
Here we stayed in a site in Middelburg, not the most salubious of sites, but it was quiet and there was hot water. Middlelburg itself is an attractive town and there was a big market on the day that we cycled in.More importantly it was a great base for some serious cycling around Zeeland which is very pretty, is very flat and has a wonderful network of well signposted cycle routes. On the recommendation of a woman we spoke to at Jabbeke we went to Veere which was well worth it, a delightful place.
We spent three nights in Middelburg heading off to Delft where the camp site was a short bike ride from the town. Lovely camp site and obviously very popular as it was quite full , something we had not seen before and did not see again. Delft is full of canals, I have never been to Venice but I am sure Delft gives Venice a run for its money in the sheer amount of canals that there are. Interesting museums here that kept us quiet but despite it being the home town of Vermeer there was not an original left in town.
Our next stop involved going to stop at a site not far from Arnheim; this too was more a holiday resort than a mere campsite with lots of activities for visitors although all pretty well shut down by the time we arrived. The supermarket had barely anything left on its shelves and reminded Gilroy of Tanzanian supermarkets in the 1970s. There were no Brits at all on this site and everyone else was Dutch. We did think we had come across a rally ( organised trip for vans) from Bedford at one stage but on investigating further we found that it was all the vehicles that were Bedfords, some real classic stuff there.The plus part of this site was that it was 1 kilometre from Hoge Veluwe National Park where there was a fantastic museum, art gallery,lots of cycling, restaurants and allegedly deer and wildboar. The gallery was full of Van Goghs - maybe forty at least.
We found that we spent far longer in places than originally planned and so did not get to visit all the places in Holland that we had intended so there will be plenty more to see if we go again.From Arnheim we headed straight back to Calais and parked at the aire next to the ferry terminal which meant only a short journey to the ferry the next morning. Lots of people to talk to the aires, comparing notes on sites, ferry fares and of course vans. The aire costs seven euro a night and a guy in a van comes around in the evening to collect his money.
Generally the weather was ok, probably not quite as good as it had been at home but the last day it bucketed it down which was unfortunate as Gilroy volunteered to help the old French guy next door to give his van a push start.
The van performed well, we have got into a routine, we know what is kept where and setting up home takes less and less time each time we move on.
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Bruges |
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Delft
This is one of the gateways into Delft - a town that is a wonderful place to cycle around.
Delft was home to Vermeer and indeed the Girl with the Pearl Earring was filmed here. There is a Vermeer museum in the town but not an original Vermeer on show, they are all elsewhere, the Hague or Amserdam for example.
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Veere
We had come to Veere on recommendation and a pretty little place it is too. It is a small port, now largely for recreational sailing and the odd people ferry but in the past it had been a trading port and had ( for reasons unclear) it had had close links with Scotland and a popularport for the disembarkation of Scottish goods.
The people in this picture were watching a wedding but note the date on this building 1579.
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