The midnight knock and a broken mirror – bad luck in Holland, 14/5/10

At 1:30 am I became aware of bright lights further along the seafront.  A car drove slowly past, torches were shone and there was a firm knock at the door.  The two policemen explained in perfect English that wild camping was outlawed in the whole of Zeeland province, and that we would have to either stay awake all night or move on.  There was little choice.  Shame, even at this time of night it was a lovely place.  We packed up slowly, and drove on to nearby Domburg where we stopped in a carpark and wondered what to do.   Check things on the laptop?   We did, and amazingly found an unsecured wi-fi connection, and that lucky fact kept us occupied and awake for a couple more hours.   Finally it was just too much, and as dawn was breaking we found a more isolated car park near the dunes at Oostkapelle, where despite the bye-laws we caught up with some sleep for a few hours.

Our route through Holland after the midnight knock

We were, inevitably, tired all day.   We intended to start a longer journey south to the Belgian Ardennes, but as it was such a nice day we decided to take a roundabout route across some of the dams and barriers that connect all the islands of the Rhine Delta.  The longest was the storm surge barrier across the mouth of the Oosterschelde, a kind of mega Thames barrier that lets the tides through under normal conditions but can close to block dangerously high surges.   We came to the town of Zierikzee, which was picture postcard-pretty.  The main square was full of cafés and restaurants where people were enjoying the good weather, and the small centre was otherwise surrounded by canals and waterways.  Our route then took us along dykes and over bridges past a lot of reclaimed land, until we hit the ‘mainland’ at Bergen-op-Zoom.

Zierikzee

Approaching this town on a straight but quite narrow road, there was a sudden loud bang on the left-hand side of the van, as a passing bus smashed into our wing-mirror.  We stopped as soon as we could (unlike the bus), but there was nothing to be done.  I picked up what fragments I could from the road, and we retired to the local Macdonalds to research Renault dealers on their free internet.   It was now 6pm and clear we weren’t going much further, an internet search found us another minicamping on a farm in pleasant, Norfolk-like countryside east of Bergen for the night.

Our poor van

Lesley’s small note –

Charlie picked up an admirer at the campsite - a girl of about ten, daughter of a guy who spoke excellent English, having lived in Canning Town, London, for several years. She made friends with him by giving him dog treats and insisted on taking him for a walk with Rob, even though she was in her pyjamas and ready for bed.

We have definitely slipped into our own peculiar time-warp though. Dinner seems to be getting later and later – 10 p.m. tonight.

Into Holland

We had never intended to go through Holland, but from Brugge I looked at the map and realised that the border was hardly any distance away.  Some of the areas in the Rhine Delta, in Zeeland province, sounded like they were worth seeing in a low-key sort of way, so we decided to take this opportunity.

Into Holland - the islands and waterways of Zeeland province

It drizzled as we left Brugge and headed north-east, back past Damme again and on ever-smaller tree-lined roads across the endless flatness that looked so much like the English fens.  At one sleepy village we rounded a corner and found ourselves in Holland.

The drizzle turned to rain as we took the larger road that led to the tunnel under the Westerschelde waterway.  When we saw the price of over €7 for our van we nearly took the last exit and turned back, but at the last moment we persisted and 6km later (yes, it was some tunnel) were driving in the rain towards the Dutch town of Middelburg, on the island of Walcheren.

We stopped in Middelburg for some shopping, vowing to come back tomorrow for a better look during the weekly Thursday market.  The town had some nice old streets, and a large central square dominated by an ornate stadhuis or town hall, but all in all reminded me of a British provincial town centre, all chain stores and rather bland, with few places selling food or other essentials.  It was, however, surrounded by an attractive ring of canals.

Middleburg

We were sure we would find a campsite somewhere out on the nearby Walcheren coast, and drove first to Veere.  This small port village has an illustrious past, when in the C14 to C16 it traded extensively with Scottish merchants, and two large stone houses are even now referred to as the ‘Scottish houses’.  Today it is a quaint, sleepy place with an oversupply of grand buildings, and lots of tea-rooms for the visitors.

The roads of northern Walcheren led us across flat farmland and through stands of woodland, until we reached the village of Oostkapelle, and found a “minicamping”, or basically a farm campsite.  It was a well equipped place, catering to a mix of caravans and tourers, and for €16.50 with electricity & free showers, it did us fine.

We spent Thursday 13^th May – my (Rob’s) birthday – slowly exploring the local area.   We went first along the North Sea coast towards Westkapelle, where we found a stretch of road alongside the beach with a number of motorhomes and cars parked up.  We had a walk by the sea, and noted the place for later.

The village of Westkapelle was attractive, tucked in  a corner of the island behind high sea-dykes, and dominated by a lighthouse that looked like a church tower – in fact it was built on a mediaeval church tower, to which the light was added in the 19^th century.    Most of the village had been rebuilt after the war, as Westkapelle had been the scene of an allied landing in 1944, when the dykes had been breached and much of Walcheren flooded.  A small monument atop the dyke recorded all this, alongside a WW2 Sherman tank.

Westkapelle from the sea dyke

As it was Ascension Day – hemelvaart in Dutch – Holland enjoyed a bank holiday.  Despite this, Middelburg’s weekly Thursday market was still on, and we spent much of the afternoon there.  It was a busy affair, and we came away with a chunk of Dutch cheese with cumin, a smoked sausage, some samphire and a green vegetable grown on the salt marshes called ‘lammsoren’. We also partook of the local “fast food” – fried fish in batter called “kibberling” and freshly preserved herring on bread.

To end the day we decided to watch the sunset from the dunes near Westkapelle, and camp wild there for the night – after all, we had seen other motorhomes and the site was quite ideal.   We had a nice meal with aperitifs and cava, and enjoyed the spectacular sunset over the sea – it was a lovely evening.  We noted with amusement that the other campers all drove off after sunset, but when no-one had appeared to clear us off by 10pm we reckoned everything would be OK for the night, and settled down.

Aperitifs on the beach - spot the dog!

Ostend to Brugge

Day two of our journey

Lesley - 

Sleeping in a car park isn’t so bad you know. Ok, so it’s really called an “aire”, but essentially it was just a car park by a lake. I do like the safety in numbers aspect though and there were about five motorhomes in this aire, and another eight in the one just round the corner. Now that was just a car park – at least our aire had a lake.

If I thought I could manage it these days it would have been easy to hire a bike at the aire and cycle round Ostend. As it was, we caught the park and ride bus the very short distance into town, getting off at the Albert I Promenade to look at the 1953 casino built on the sea-front which wouldn’t have looked out of place in an old Eastern Bloc town square.

The Casino and the marina

Ostend is another pleasant sea-side town with a marina packed with expensive looking yachts. How many times will we be saying that?

We bought our first provisions– brawn slices and black pudding – in a traiteur; this is one of the reasons we travel, to taste the full range of foods on offer.

From Ostend we moved on to de Haan. Guess what? It was a pleasant sea-side town, no marina though. It was Cromer with a large tidy-up and a dose of elegance, and lots of bathing huts – you certainly need them with the windy conditions on this stretch of coast (similar to the stretch the opposite side of the North Sea actually).   De Haan clearly thought itself a notch above de Panne along the coast, and unlike the latter had kept all its Edwardian buildings and style, and was dotted with large villas in half grand town-house, half mock Norman cottage styles.

De Haan's seafront and "Normandy" style villas

From the coast we headed to Brugge, or Bruges to give it its French name, via some pretty tree-lined avenues running alongside canals. We had a brief look at Damme, which has a very impressive town hall and old buildings – enough to place it firmly on the coach party trail. It is now little more than a picturesque crossroads on a canal, but in its heyday was a rich town.  Looking down the 8km length of canal from Damme we could see the church spires in Brugge. Unfortunately we lost the road that ran alongside the canal, but found another canal (there are plenty to choose from), by a tree lined avenue, and stopped there to have a bit of a picnic, while several different groups of cyclists, including a party of OAPs, rode past.

You're never too old...

The sat nav is turning out to be more useful than Rob expected. It got us painlessly to the aire in Brugge, and we walked into town with Charlie via the Minnewater Park. Our first impressions of the city were that it is every bit as lovely as the guide books describe it. As the sun began to dip below the Flemish gables we sat outside a cafe and had Belgian beer – very tasty indeed.

Rob -

Brugge made a strong impression on me from the moment we crossed the ring-road to enter the historic centre.  The historic core has survived almost unspoilt, a maze of mediaeval streets lined with ancient houses and religious buildings with barely a hint of the 20^th or 21^st centuries in its architectural styles.  The tourist crowds were stifling in the middle of the day, but if you ventured into town before 10am you would share it only with the locals – flocks of pupils cycling to school, or people walking their dogs.  I ventured twice into old Brugge at this early hour, and these were my best memories.  On Tuesday I took my bike and rode around for a couple of hours, looking at first for an open bakery, but then just enjoying myself and exploring further and further parts of the town.

Views of Brugge

Tuesday’s weather soon turned colder, and rain threatened for much of the day.  We  took a boat trip along the canals – interesting and picturesque, but boy it was cold.  We explored a bit more generally, and particularly liked the renaissance interior of the Holy Blood Basilica, which was painted in rich reds and golds over every inch of stonework.  The name comes from one of the many biblical ‘relics’ produced en masse in the middle ages, and purporting to be a vial of Christ’s blood as washed from his wounds by Joseph of Arimathea and brought back from the crusades by a Flemish knight ( a mere 1000 years after the crucifixion, but why spoil a story ?).  Apparently the miraculous vial was dry until 6 p.m. every Friday, when it mysteriously liquefied, until the year 1325 at any rate. Being the run up to Ascension Day, when the vial gets paraded through the streets of Brugge, it was out on show for some veneration, so we got to see the glass surrounding it, if not the actual item.

Views of Brugge

We had left our sleepy dog for some hours in the van, a situation he seemed quite happy with, but so had eventually to return there.  The weather then turned very rainy, but being inside the van by now we were not too bothered by it.

Over the Channel to Belgium

We crossed the Channel on a cold and rainy early May day – Sunday May 9^th to be precise.   Driving rain pursued us from the M25 down the M20 towards Dover, and we stopped only twice en route – once, to fix with tape the new Renault wiper blades that seemed to come with a different attachment from the one our 5 year-old van expected, and secondly, to buy new pigtail hoses for our two Camping Gaz 907 cylinders, purchased only yesterday but unusable without these parts.  Like so many things in preparing this trip, we glibly assumed it would all be easy, and were left rushing around at the last minute when it wasn’t. Thankfully, Kent Motor Caravans near Maidstone saved the day, and we were knocking on their door at 10 am as they opened.

The journey begins 

We caught the ferry to Calais rather than the tunnel, on cost grounds, but I for one was very glad.  I haven’t caught a Channel ferry for nigh on 20 years, and it seemed once again like ‘real’ travel.    If you’re crossing the sea, cross it by sea for goodness sake - get out and walk around so that you can see the sea, feel the movement of the ship and watch coasts receding and approaching.  Or at least that’s what I feel, and that’s what I did.  Despite the drizzle and biting wind I thoroughly enjoyed our 90 minutes and it felt like a suitably ‘real’ milestone at the start of our adventures.   Charlie seemed unfazed by the momentousness of the events and slept contentedly in the van in the ship’s hold.

 On the ferry

Arrival at Calais seemed mundane.  We drove off the ship and seamlessly onto a motorway, and without lingering we drove north-east past Dunquerque and towards the Belgian frontier.   We descended from the motorway just before this point, and soon passed a small blue-and-stars Euro plaque announcing ‘België’ and we were in another country. Almost immediately we turned left to the coast, and arrived in the resort of de Panne.

 Beach huts at de Panne

The Belgian coast is one long chain of seaside resorts interrupted by a couple of major ports, and only in a few stretches does the natural landscape of high sanddunes backed by woodland still exist free of urban encroachment.  De Panne is the western extremity of this chain, and is a pleasant-enough place of medium-rise seafront apartment blocks which have superceded the fin de siècle townhouses with their gothic twists that must have stood there a few decades ago.  It had a broad seafront promenade which was whipped by the biting wind, and the customers of each café huddled behind lines of upended beach umbrellas that stood as windbreaks in rows across the sands.

We got as far as Ostend that night, and found its municipal aire, a few spaces in a car park by an area of parkland, and the starting point for a park-and-ride shuttle bus to the town centre (which was not far by foot either).   Our first celebratory meal of the big trip was sausages we had brought from home.

Our progress on day 1 - the journey begins!

On the Move

It’s so cheesy, but for the last week I’ve been humming “The Final Countdown”. I’ve never even seen a Rocky film, but a quick Google tells me the song is, appropriately, by Europe. The lyrics begin:

We’re leaving together

But still it’s farewell

And maybe we’ll come back,

To earth, who can tell?

It’s been a week of farewells. Our social life has never been so good. We’ve been out every night, or entertaining friends in the nearly empty house with meals served on the last dregs of crockery to be packed, an eclectic mix of mismatched, chipped plates.

We are both so tired now that we are in danger of sleeping through the first week of our trip, when we get there that is. Still, as the title says, we are on the move. One heavily packed van and one car have reached Stansted. No, we’re not flying out, we have family there.

The van is stuffed full until we can unload boxes of treasured possessions and emergency suitcases – wedding, funeral, job interview clothes – at various family members who have kindly offered some space.

The last moments in Leicester were pretty hectic, but they only followed on from final days there which whizzed past in a blur. We thought five weeks would be enough. We thought we’d have plenty of time. Rob had planned a couple of days cycling – they didn’t happen.

Advice to anyone planning a long trip abroad – start early – time flies.

  

The house has never looked so good. Well done Rob!

My last actions on leaving the house? I grabbed the pepper mill, some pegs from the line and a large bag of dirty washing to take to Mum’s (I didn’t even do that when I was at university!).

It was a race against time to get everything done and in the end we lost. We seem to have left loads to be done and we could have given ourselves another week, but we decided that it was better to get some of our stuff on the move. However, Rob has to go back up to the house tomorrow to pick up the car which never sold and now has to be stored, and to do a final, rather larger than we would have wished, tidy and lock up.

I’m now in the Kleenex zone. Goodbyes to friends, goodbyes to sisters, goodbyes to parents – it’s just not worth putting on mascara these days.

We think we’re organised though. We can get to our money. We’ve set up the new laptop we were forced to buy at the last minute when our not so old one upped and died like Mr Bojangle’s dog. My clothes all fitted in the van in the end – employing the “squash ‘em in” technique helped.

It really is the final countdown!

Tying Up Loose Ends

It’s not entirely easy, this packing it all in and taking off business. You can’t just up and go. Disentangling yourself from your old life is actually quite a complex affair and trying to do it while finalising plans for the big trip is exhausting. I mean – I fell asleep on the sofa on Thursday and it was only 3 p.m. Anyone would think I’d retired!

Of course, we should have started all this a bit earlier really. We could have begun de-cluttering the house ages ago, years back would have been good, considering how much we seem to have. It seems a bit late to have started e-baying, but we have, and we spent this weekend preparing for and participating in our first car boot sale, though in our case it was a van completely full of varied jumble.

My nephew sold all of his toys.

As novices I felt the need to do some internet research so I read all the tips, often conflicting – price it up – don’t price it at all, and dire warnings of arriving only to be mugged by people rifling through your still packed boxes. I looked up prices of similar things on e-bay. I shouldn’t have bothered. No-one was interested in any of the good stuff, the antiques, but many things sold if announced loudly as a bargain at £1. Charlie dog’s old lead went for £2, as did two very mouldy wine racks which had lingered for too long in our damp cellar. My four boxes of books, all of them thoroughly enjoyed by me, did not shift at all. I guess they’re not big readers around here.

We could have sold  my brother-in-law's bike ten times over,

but then he'd have had to walk home!

It was a fun day in a strange way, though getting up at 5 a.m. for the opening at six was not pleasant. We sold about half of our stuff and joint profit for the van load was £220, shared between me and my sister, who is clearing her house too. Some of what is left will be going on e-bay tomorrow.

Speaking of e-bay, our auctions are hotting up. I have a few bids of 99p and 3 watchers on one item. The most exciting thing was a question last night about how much I would sell one item for straight away. I declined, but the chap came back with wanting it for his mother’s birthday. Big ahhhhh! It was just a quick click to check on the guy, who turns out to be an antique dealer, specialising in silver, which explains why he wants our art deco silver tea set. How lame was that?

Research for trip is like a spider’s web or tree roots. I look up something, which leads me on to something else, and then there’s this bit to read up on. I can’t imagine what I will do without constant reference to Google, so internet access is a main concern. There are all sorts of ways to connect to the web. You can dangle your dongle and pay the price. You can go upmarket and get your own satellite thingy for a cool 4K, but I think we will be plumping for good old McWifi. I’m not sure how it all works. I can’t remember the last time I went in a McDs, let alone accessed the internet there, but I am assured it’s easy and free. Added to that, a lot of campsites now have internet access apparently, so I should be able to check out minor details in finishing the novel in McDs, and could Skype family when at campsites. So what do you actually do? Get a coffee and a code to log on or could I sit in the car park and access the internet without having to spend any money at all?

Rob has used internet cafes, but that was in very far flung places like China and India where they have loads. I can't say I've really noticed that many when in EU cities, but perhaps I've just not been looking. It’s just one of many areas at the moment where I can only give a shrug and trust that it all works out in the end – it usually does.

We hope to get away by the start of May. House packing is going on, last minute decorating for rental, solicitors to contact as we decided we need a will, banking to arrange for use in EU, opticians to see to get a year's supply of lenses, shelving to put in a van cupboard, a wooden box to remake (read cobble together) in a smaller size, bags to sew from a old green tent we found at the back of a cupboard (still working on storing those cushions)... it’s a long list but we're getting there!

Weekend in Wiltshire

“We’ll meet half way.”

Half way between Surrey and Leicester came out as Wiltshire, so that’s where we headed to the Saturday after we both finished our jobs.

Needless to say the voluntary ending, possibly only temporarily, of our careers was bound to be emotional. For me that was floods of tears – the Burbage tsunami, according to one colleague – for Rob it was doling out fine cheese and Bosnian pastrami – well, we all have our idiosyncrasies.
Rather than mope at home muttering “It doesn’t seem real,” we headed off to meet family, and half way seemed sensible.

The van was duly brought out of storage and loaded up. One additional visitor was disposed of in the back garden – a mouse had got into the shower, presumably through a heating vent. It couldn’t have been there long as there wasn’t much damage and it was still very much alive, although Charlie dog nearly saw it off as it was released to find new mousy friends and most likely invade the garden room and eat the sofa.

Marlborough

We had a good drive down to Wiltshire and drove past Rob’s sister and brother-in-law as they got out of their car in Marlborough. It eventually registered on them why a woman was waving at them out of the window of a van and we stopped for a coffee before moving on to our destination –a small village nearby with a camp site and a pub with accommodation.

They say first impressions count, but in the case of the campsite the first impressions weren’t good, yet it turned out to be a fine place to stay. Yes, we did park up in a corner of the farm yard, between two barns, but we had a view of a field on one side. Yes, it did seem to be populated by a work force, hitherto hidden to us, of semi-itinerant, casual labour, living in small, permanent caravans, but they were very friendly and seemed happy to welcome any new face.

Typically of many small communities, word was soon out that the people in the posh van were there with the people in the even posher car who were staying in the pub.

We had loaded up the van in a bit of a rush to get away early, but on settling in we found we had failed to pack any saucepans or a frying pan. Luckily we were planning to eat at the pub, but we’d have to be inventive on Sunday.

We filled up with fresh water, parked up and switched everything on, only for the water to dump out of the boiler – all of it – gushing – very dramatic - this just as our family arrived to look at the van in action. Thank goodness we’d joined a motor homing website though. Weeks of idly reading posts in the Motor Home Facts forums had prepared me for this. Don’t panic. Nothing had burst in the very cold weather we’d had in February. We’d done something wrong. The boiler was dumping water. This happened when the weather was cold – below freezing – which it wasn’t. It also happens when you forget to put the little drainage valve switch thingy, that stops it dumping water, back into the position after you left it open when stored away. We’d written all this in the little yellow notebook which was...on the breakfast room table...not good. Still, we had the boiler handbook. The fact that none of the pictures or descriptions seemed to match our particular boiler didn’t faze us and we got it all going, albeit with very little water now in the tank.

We made our way round the dark little lane, past the church, to the pub, and spent a very pleasant evening with our family. The food was surprisingly excellent for such a small, out of the way pub and all four of us were satisfied with our choices, which was good because there’s nothing worse in a restaurant than being jealous of what someone else has ordered.

We got back to the van around 11:30, which suddenly turned into 12:30 as the clocks were springing forward into spring. It took another half an hour to get the bed up - if only we’d packed the little yellow book where I’d carefully drawn the layout of the cushions. Without it the whole process was like some cruel tangram puzzle. First Rob moved the pieces about, swore gently, scratched his head, then I did the same. Each time we were left with cushions which didn’t fit the available gaps. After four goes we had a bed. I swear it wasn’t the bed we had last time, but it did fit the space and we had another very comfortable sleep.

Sunday, Palm Sunday to be precise, was the time to get clever with the cooking. As the church bells called the faithful to come and celebrate the run up to Easter we were happily tucking into a bacon sandwich – grilled – and a cup of tea – boiled in our 24 year old Turkish teapot – a nice link back to leaving our jobs as we bought it on our big camping trip before we started PGCE teaching courses and got our first real jobs – for me at the very same school I’d left on Friday actually.

We said our goodbyes to family, assuring them we would see them again before we left the country and reaffirming that if they could find us we would happily meet up somewhere during the coming year.

Barrows at Overton Hill - known locally as "hedgehogs" .

Then we drove off to visit barrows and standing stones, which must surely be what Wiltshire is most famous for. These sorts of trips always end up with endless questions about what such ancient sites were used for. Barrows are easier – burial mounds, rituals surrounding death, they seem to be a basic of most societies.

                          Silbury Hill

The stones are more problematic. We ended up with likening them to the building of cathedrals. Huge structures to the glory of something outside their worlds – a god – several gods – maybe some alien beings who’d visited our planet thousands of years ago (damn that Erich von Däniken bloke – he’s ruined me for anything spiritual).

                          






 Avebury

There’s only so much culture we can take in a day though and since it was late afternoon we didn’t bother looking for any of the experts’ information in the museum. We’re much too know it all for that malarkey. Instead we headed for the very attractive campsite at Postern Hill.

It’s amazing what you can cook in a van oven in one baking tray, and since we’ve been without an oven at home since Christmas it was a change to eat roast carrots, onions, potatoes and sausages. Gravy was made in the pan too. See Mum, all those cooking skills you taught me still come in handy. Not only did I assure myself popularity at university 30 years ago by being able to cook a full Sunday roast, I can still come up with tasty meals with virtually no cooking equipment at all.

It rained fairly solidly for much of the night and so the first Monday after leaving our jobs was a bit of a damp squib. Still, we were away on a Monday morning and it wasn’t a bank holiday, but life always likes to throw up little problems and ours was a good degree of wheel spin in the mud and no discernable forward movement. We tried rolling into reverse to get a grip on the tree roots we had carefully parked on but nothing was happening. In the end we were pulled off by the tiny campsite tractor. It was more of a lawnmower really, but it did the trick and we were able to head off home to start on the next stage of our journey, packing up the house.