pics from today, Sunday 11th Sept

We had to laugh at how orderly everything in Belgium is - trees are planted in perfect straight rows, fields meet at perfect right angles, farms are neat and tidy, nothing out of place.
I had never even thought of Belgium as a place to visit, bit it is very pretty although we did find the people a bit dreary = I think they have too much stuff and everything's too perfect!
Next was Holland. We were just passing through the sticky out bit of Holland between Belgium and Germany.

I wonder if anybody of you'all have had a "responsibly fresh" lettuce before, cause we did in Belgium - I think they may have lost something in the translation there. We're finding fruit and veg. extremely cheap here compared with France, Spain and Portugal.

Wednesday night we stayed at a "campsite" in Holland - it was more like somebody just had a very large garden and allowed campers!! There was a little hut with a notice on the door saying that you just needed to put your money in an envelope with your name and address, how many nights you stayed etc.  and put it in the post box under the carport - all in Dutch, which thankfully is not a problem for us to understand - not reading it anyway, it can be a bit challenging when they speak.

View to the house of the campsite owners - we never saw them, seems they don't like to be disturbed thus the "put the money in an envelope and get on with your own life". 

View towards the road. There were no facilities apart from a couple of hoses and somewhere to empty waste water.

The hut with instructions. There was electricity, but we didn't need.

Cute gate sign made with horseshoes.

In the evening when we walked the dogs down the road, we were pretty far down when two very large Ridgebacks came running down the road by themselves - at first we thought they were with a couple on bicycles, but they were on their own. We had a bit of an encounter and had to do some shouting to get them to back off from our dogs - scary stuff as we have a psychotic terrier that will attack anything, no matter how big, and a large labrador who thinks he's the boss. After Spotty being attacked in Portugal, I confess I'm a bit neurotic with big dogs around him!!

Wednesday night we were in Germany and stayed at a lake - and I didn't take any pictures!!

THURSDAY and we arrived at Helen and Robbie - the whole reason for the trip to Germany was to visit dear Helen whom we haven't seen in probably 18 years - we worked with her at PE Golf Club all those years ago!!

Pictures of their lovely place in the woods will be coming up. We're having a fantastic time doing woolly crafts, walking dogs, cycling and just chilling - it is so beautiful here, they might have to kick us out if they ever want their place back to themselves. We're camping in their driveway :-)

The weather is like summer in South Africa, been a long time since we've experienced heat like this!!

Tuesday 6th Spetember 2016

After breakfast and a nice walk on the beach we headed off towards Belgium, just a hop away.
Found a lovely place to camp near a canal outside Brugge and decided after lunch to cycle in to the town as we had all afternoon, rather than leave it for tomorrow when the weather was supposed to be even hotter!! It was nice and shady under the trees so we were happy enough to leave the dogs.
Belgium is great for cycling - FLAT, with cycle paths and right of way everywhere, and did I mention FLAT!! Even I could get used to cycling here!!
The town centre was just a bunch of old buildings -  seen one, seen them all really. We bought some stickers for the truck (only reason to enter any kind of civilization) and had coffee in a little coffee shop. We toyed with the idea of sharing a waffle, but neither of us was hungry - on the way back we will definitely have to have an official Belgium waffle! The lane where we camped was quiet but for a gazillion cyclists coming past!! Most people seem to be over the age of 60 and most look miserable - like they been sucking lemons for lunch. There were a few friendly people who shouted hello, but most just looked us up and down with their sour faces so I said to Chris I wondered if we were doing something wrong when we were cycling on the path into town!!

 Brugge town centre

 Along the canal

 Camping spot

Part 3...... Sorry there wasn't a part 2 from our first trip to Europe, but here is part 3, second trip to Europe: We spent 2 nights with Barry and Jess in Woking, Surrey, Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th of September. On Monday morning shortly after we got up, Jess came and told us there was fun and games in Calais with protests by farmers and truck drivers to do with the Jungle refugee camp in Calais. Chris checked the ferry website and rang the automated update line and all was running as usual, so we decided to go ahead and leave when we were ready and see if we could get an earlier sailing rather than our booked 21.20pm - we thought it would be better to arrive in the light. There seemed to be a diversion in place out of Calais anyway. We arrived in Dover in thick fog, but it was a bit clearer at the ferry port. They let us straight through and onto a ferry that was leaving in 20 minutes!! So, instead of arriving in the dark, we left at 15.40 and arrived with plenty of daylight to get away from the trouble zone :-) Apart from a very obvious police presence, all was quiet - as Chris said, probably a lot of media hype and not much really going on, always best not to check the news too often. It seems a lot of people must have decided not to go to France via Calais because the ferry was pretty empty and there was nothing doing at the ferry port in Calais (or Dover for that matter). I reckon whoever manufactures those fences they've got up along all the roads around the ferry port must be very wealthy by now!! We headed straight for Dunkerque and a camping car aire - which was chok-a-block full when we got there; some of those people looked like they'd been ensconced there all summer. We went around the corner to a play park and fed and walked the dogs then headed for another camping area, right on the seafront. It was much better, with only 1 German camping car and a hippie bus with 3 English girls who are volunteering at a nearby refugee camp. Apart from lights on all night, it was a good place to camp. The doggies are always glad for a beach to play on - there were a lot of cyclists and runners though - never a good combination with our dogs who chase anything that move!!

Pics: 1) Saying goodbye to Aunty Cheryll and Adam

2) On the beach in Dunkerque

3) Some bunker things on the beach

4) Spot the camper