Weather: ☁️🌤️☀️☀️☀️
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪 (4 out of 5 good 2nd breakfast at the supermarket and lunch in Ochten)
Track: 🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱 (3 out of 5 not bad at all, yet not really special either. Another day on trail)
Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺ (3 out of 5, flat, next to the pancake restaurant but squeezed in between road, houses and footpath)
Name of followed trail: Grote rivierenpad (great rivers trail)
We wake up at 7, but I’m still tired. All the nights past hikers bedtime are taking their till I guess. It was a lot of fun though.
We get up and pack everything in the bags, before we leave the campsite towards the ferry. Looking at the ferry landing on either side of the Waal, we see no ferry. We ask around and check online, but we can’t find out why there’s no ferry. We look at the trail and see that it goes back to the North side of the river again, so we decide on a detour to get back on track. When we get back in track, we get onto a detour again, because they are enforcing the dykes. This makes for some ok roadwalking, this time waymarked. We’re happy that we can read the signs here, otherwise we might have thought that ‘omleiding’ was another trail… We follow the detour until we get to our halfway point, the cafe in Ochten, for lunch.
From Ochten we continue on a grassy lane in the area around the river, used as a flooding area when the river levels are high. We pass through a few villages and along a dyke where we have a short break. We have a chat with 2 cyclists before we get to the Hemmen estate. This is a beautiful area with parks and pastures, with a little village in the middle! On the edge of the estate there’s a…pancake restaurant! 3rd time this week, and still enjoying it 😋😋
We find a spot in the late afternoon sun and get a beer and ‘bitterballen’ (dutch beersnack, try it when you’re there). No worries, we had pancakes too 😂😋🥞
After a good meal we go into the small forest behind the restaurant and find a spot. A bit squeezed in between the restaurant, the road a footpath and a house, but quite alright. When the sun goes down, we pitch tent and after some catching up on the blog, we go to sleep.