Weather: 🌤️🌤️🌤️🌤️🌤️
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪🥪(5 out of 5, a good Dutch lunch with Croquettes)
Track: 🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱 (3 out of 5, interesting hike through the port area of Rotterdam, and the really Dutch landscape)
Home stay: 🛌🛌🛌🛌🛌 (5 out of 5, at Joost and Annemieke. A real home away from home, with everything you need, including a shower, washing machine… and good friends!)
Name of followed trail: Grote rivierenpad (great rivers trail)
Special mention: Our friends and neighbours who came to meet us on our first day in the Netherlands! Thank you for coming along Ferdy, Nadine (and Eloise and Feline), Annemieke and Joost!
When we wake up, the boat is still in open water, but soon we enter the port of Rotterdam. We moor around 8.45, and after some waiting, we get off the boat around 9.30. Outside we find Marks friend Ferdy waiting for us, what a great surprise!! He walks with us for the first kilometer, but has to return to work.
Together we walk through the port area of Rotterdam. Flat, tarmac and straight, but enough to see to keep it from going (too) boring. The IJzerkoekjes (local cookies, really good) that Ferdy brought along also help 😁 We spot our first official mention of E8 on the signs!! That deserves a sticker! After the port we get to Rozenburg and take the ferry across to Maassluis. There we have lunch with friends Joost and Annemieke, who will be our hosts for the next few days. Joost goes home after lunch and Annemieke walks along with us the rest of the day. Great to catch up this way!
We hike the dutch ‘polders’ (grasslands) on this sunny day, on our way to the pretty village of Schipluiden. On our way we find a handpulled ferry to get across the canal. In Schipluiden Nadine, our neighbour is waiting for us with her two daughters, to ‘donate a snack’ in person! Nadine, thanks for the effort, great seeing you and the girls again! Whilst we sit outside in the sun, we find out that the other people on the terrace are friends of our other neighbours. It really is a small world :-)From Schipluiden we continue through the grasslands, over grassy dykes (yep, we’ve got them too…) towards Schiedam. On the way we get shouted at by a cyclist. And while we do think that Dutch cyclists like to shout at pedestrians for (to us) no apparent reason, this one we actually knew, so he was just joking 😅 Thanks Maarten for being that typical cyclist! Good to see you again too!
We get to Schiedam, where Joost is waiting for us with the car to bring us home. To their home, not ours, no worries! We will stay with Joost and Annemieke for 2 days and then move on, on tour through the Netherlands!
In the evening I go to my scouts to see how they are doing. Everything seems so normal all of a sudden. Yet we will leave again in a few days, and become thru-hikers once again. But for now: we are really happy with the shower, bed, and company of friends in a normal home away from home!