Biking’ and Family

After leaving Noord Holland we biked south to Haarlem where we had a couple of days with Maaike’s Aunt & Uncle. It was lovely exploring around a bit.

Next it was on to Utrecht. One of Maaike’s friends, Nelie, very kindly offered to move out of her place for a week and to let us have it! It was lovely to have our own space again for a week, unpack a bit, spread out! While I do love the travel, I admit I’m quite looking forward to having my own space again.

We had a lovely week in Utrecht, it’s a very pretty city and lots to see and do. We met up with our friend Harold who we’d met hiking the NW circuit on Stewart Island back in 2014. It was super seeing Harold again, and he took us on a very nice walk. It’s amazing how quickly you can surround yourself by nature even in The Netherlands where there’s a pretty high population density, at least compared to NZ. Again, it’s reclaimed land, quite a bit of the walk was at minus something meters.

You can see here a red line, this shows were the water level is expected to get to in times of a major flood. They have barriers they can put down across the road, if your house in on the wrong side, well, hard luck! (though presumably a cheaper house to buy ;)

We also visited Maaike’s sisters family, took the kids to a “show farm”. The youngest, Daphne, absolutely loved being spun around on the .. spinny thingy. Really as fast as I could spin her she wanted more. My arms and shoulders were wrecked by the end of it!

We visited Sjoerd, Maaikes brother in Nijmegan and then onto Germany to see another Aunt and Uncle. Beautiful Autumn light and colours, which my little phone camera doesn’t do justice too.

We also got out for a nice ride around Maaike’s parents place. Good route choice chosen by Femke. Maaike and I tried to keep up with them on our mountain bikes, but no match for their fitness (and proper road bikes ;). They also have an incredibly prolific walnut tree, planted when they first got to the house – very cool!

All in all a really lovely month in The Netherlands.