Sunday 15th June 2025 – Getting the Stena ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland departing at 11pm. We should arrive around 8am tomorrow. Great to be on the road again, especially after the delayed leaving date. We have a cabin booked. Seemed better to go on an overnight sailing given that ferries aren’t the most fun.
Having been delayed we kept thinking of extra things that we could take! Not good when George weighed in at 3 tonnes loaded last time (we put him on a weighbridge at Symmonds Farm when we got back from West Africa). However we have tried to leave stuff behind that we didn’t use last time. It is difficult not to take things “just in case”. Some successes, with a struggle. We aren’t in remote parts of Africa this time. Things like parts for the Land Rover can always be sent by courier if we need them although we do have quite a number of spares with us.
16th June 2025- Ferry uneventful. Truly awful coffee for breakfast though! Great to arrive to super-clean, bicycling, pot-hole free Netherlands.
Visited Zaanse Schans on the way. Lots of amazing windmills, most of which are thatched, even the walls. Amazing. We visited the “cheese experience” here. Edam cheese with everything – pesto, chilli, jalapeño, even frankfurter!
At the cafe we found great coffee and an “Apple pie”, a thick slice of apple with the centre filled with melted brown sugar covered with a crumb. Simply delicious! Plus they were selling Stroopwafels which I love. So more-ish.
Extraordinary fireplace in the bakery building.
Lots of old buildings in the area.
Tonight we are staying at Edam, a beautifully manicured town famous for its cheese of course.
We visited the 15th Century Great Church of St Nicholas, the largest hall church in the Netherlands.
It has a barrel vaulted ceiling with walkways along the beams. There is no altar that you would expect to find in an English church. Impressive carved stone tablets in the floor of the nave and aisles.
We visited the cheese market, (however it is on a Wednesday!). A beautiful square however and there is the Henri Willig cheese shop open there. The prices are fairly astonishing though.
There are many beautiful typical Dutch style houses with canals and vistas of trees.
Campsites are expensive €40. Outrageous. However we got membership of a club so it is discounted to €27.
Found a nice Patisserie.
Tuesday 17th June 2025 – visited Volendam this morning. Beautiful harbour area with old Barges and Sailing ships.
Again more beautiful houses and canals.
Every town should have a giant inflatable Melanie (very Dutch do you think?).
We drove across the dyke forming the Zuiderzee. What an extraordinary feat of engineering. It created 1,500 square kilometres of land from the sea and secured the area from flooding. Known as one of the seven wonders of the modern world it employed thousands of people and used 36 million square metres of material to build the 32 kilometre dyke. It was also completed 2 years ahead of schedule (which never happens with a UK infrastructure project!).
My new mantra spotted in a window in Volendam :
Today George, our Land Rover, clocked up 170,000 miles. He decided to mark the day by not letting me select any gear at all (he had done this a couple of times in West Africa). Just letting us know that we shouldn’t take anything for granted! Pulled up at the side of the road and it freed up again. Hopefully it will remain that way!
18th June 2025 – drove 98 miles to camp at Berg en Dal. Had a further wander around the canals of Geithoorn before leaving. Saw a new thatch being done. They use u-shaped tiles here instead of the straw ridge we use in the UK. They also put velux windows in thatch.
The agriculture here is extraordinary. I see no sign of set aside or the crazy environmental schemes that we have in the UK. Every square metre of land is used. The potato crops look particularly healthy and there are many fields of silage for animals. They must be regularly cut through the summer and look like giant lawns after the silage has been bagged. They didn’t invent the process here but adopted and developed the process to feed their dairy cattle.
We walked from the campsite to Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery and Memorial. Very moving indeed. A total of 2,619 burials, the cemetery contains 2,338 Canadian soldiers, 268 British and various other nationalities too. Immaculately kept as these Commonwealth war graves always are. The headstones are sadly deteriorating however, the legibility is getting difficult on some.
The website is proving troublesome to update. Unsure whether it is a software update causing the issues or something the company who has taken over my web host has done. I am managing to find ways around the problems, slowly though. Technology is wonderful when it works (not as often as we wish).
The cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands is just extraordinary, it makes the UK’s half hearted attempts look dangerous and amateur. Had fun in the supermarket buying butter, we now know that zouten is salted and ongezouten is unsalted (should have guessed). Butter is surprisingly expensive for a country with so many dairy cows! Had some really delicious steak from a local butcher which was tasty and good value. Usefully the Dutch word for steak is steak!!
Thursday 19thJune 2025 – wandered through a bit of Belgium on the way to the university city of Maastricht. Lots of cafés and boutique shops in the old quarter. The city hall:
Romanesque Basilica of Saint Servatius.
Great bookshop in the Dominican Church.
Sint Servaasbrug (Saint Servatius) Bridge
Drove through an Asparagus growing area today. Unfortunately the white form they grow in continental Europe and the season is over having passed Midsummer day. Huge amount of Maize grown in Holland (second only to pasture) principally for animal food for dairy cattle.
Friday 20th June 2025 – meandered back into Begium before heading into Luxembourg for the night at Bourscheid-Moulin on a lovely spot by the river. Stopped at a super patisserie in Belgium (nice to be able to speak French) and bought a Mocca and a strawberry tartlet, delicious.
George started whistling just before we left the UK and it was too late to do much about it.The whistle has now developed into a grinding noise, mostly noticeable when the engine is idling. I had a look and suspected the air conditioning compressor. The previous owner had however changed it. We decided we must visit a mechanic to check it out in case of catastrophic failure. We visited one garage who said his Land Rover mechanic wasn’t in today and referred us to another. Land Rover A&M Maastricht were great. A mechanic looked at it (he was clearly unfamiliar with classic Defenders like George) but diagnosed the bearing on the air-conditioning compressor. He called for help from a colleague who owns the same model as George (his black Defender was in the car park). They didn’t charge us for the advice and were incredibly courteous and friendly. The showroom was full of shiny new top of the line Range Rovers on 2 floors. The mechanic suggested that if the noise got worse we could just cut the aircon drive belt off. He suggested that that belt wouldn’t come off without removing the main drive belt. I believe that hopefully I can remove it by removing the idler pulley completely. We will see because the noise is getting worse so I need to remove the belt. George is getting old and a bit like Trigger’s broom many parts have been changed. Those that haven’t can be expected to wear out soon.
Tuesday 7th October 2025 – got George’s rear brake pads changed and the scored disks cleaned up in Beinum. The nearside caliper was wearing the pads quickly (especially the inside one) probably as the piston was seized. Will replace in the UK. The mechanic here (at the fourth garage we asked, all others busy) was a Land Rover fan so fitted us in! Nice 5,500 kg lift with a subsidiary lift for the axle:
We plan to get the ferry tomorrow night back to the UK. Departs at 10pm and arrives at 6:30am.
