Weather: ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️ (again)
Picnic: 🥪🥪🥪 (3 out 5, early lunch from the backpack. The magical wraps from England are finally being used. We had 2nd lunch afterwards at a bakery in Rheurdt)
Track: 🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪 (3 out of 5, nice trail through forest and farmland)
Route markings and GPX: (👍👍👍👍👍 4 out of 5 thumbs up, it works now!
Campsite 1: ⛺ (1 out 5, full of muscitos, next to a huntingspot (hoogzit))
Campsite 2: ⛺⛺⛺⛺⛺ (5 out of 5, at the stables of Reitschule Tempel, flat, quiet and with beer and extension cord into the tent to charge our phones😅)
Name of followed trail: X2/ E8
We leave our campsite before 8.00 and enjoy the forest trails. After a few kilometers we celebrate our 1250km point. Time flies on trail! There is a café nearby, but it won’t open for another hour. We continue and hike into a village where there is a sign saying ‘gartenterassen’. We translate this as a terrace in a garden of a café, so we follow the signs! We are slightly disappointed (and have to laugh about ourselves) when we find out they meant: a terraced garden, a garden made in different levels…😅🫣 Lost in translation or wishful thinking I guess🤔 We do find a café , but that doesn’t open for an hour (again). So far for the early start 😅😅😅
We continue through forest and farmland and enjoy seeing the farmers at their work. We also see some farmkids learning how to help their fathers by driving the tractor. Cool to see how these kids learn the farming trade on the job!
We walk until Mark starts talking about food more and more. This means it’s time for lunch, but there’s no bakery or village nearby. This means that our magical wraps that we carried all the way from Stockport, England, are about to be on the menu. Mark says a short goodbye to them before they are eaten.
After lunch we hike to the Oermterberg near Rheurdt, where we have a drink. Apparently no lunch here, so we walk over the hill into the village, where we hope to find May celebrations and food stalls. Again, wishful thinking. Rheurdt appears deserted. Exept for one bakery that is open! We have 2nd lunch here and have a chat with a group of hikers that also longed for a piece of cake and a cold drink!
It’s warm, but still quite ideal hiking weather. We are amazed by the amount of sunny dry days we’ve had so far. Good for us, less good for nature. We notice the drought in other ways as well. There are warning signs for fire prevention in many of the forests, so we are really mindful with the gas stove for instance. Another (more positive) thing is that my towel dries overnight in the tent 😁
We continue to the end of our planned 30 km for today, but the forest is full of undergrowth of nettles and blackberry bushes. We continue and hope to find a good spot a bit further. This search takes us 4 km further (almost een hour of walking) than we’d have liked. We find a spot that’s ok flat without too much undergrowth, but close to a huntingspot and with a gazillion mosquitos. We start pitching our tent, but are troubled by the mosquito’s and Mark seems unhappy about the spot. We sit inside our ‘mosquitobunker’ and consider our options. We agreed before that we don’t camp where one of us is uncomfortable, so we move. But where to go? We’re both tired and not looking forward to moving, but this is not the place to be. First option is a forest 800m from here, the other us 4 km further.
The first forest is no good, I was afraid of that… I’m tired and grumpy and feel myself turning inward in order push on for 4 more kilometers. Than a man cycles past and says hi. I greet him back and realize that turning inward is not the way to go. Staying outward and open is, eventhough that’s hard sometimes. I immediately ask the man if he knows where we can pitch our tent. He points us to the stables a few 100m further (on trail). There we find Adriaan, the owner, who says yes without any question. We are over the moon with our spot and very hospitable host who offers us a beer and even brings a cable so we can charge our stuff in the tent! Tired but so happy after our 36 km hike today! And another lesson learned: staying open to others makes a great difference, as does asking even if you think they’ll say no!
We bring a toast to asking and go to bed soon after, just when the full moon rises above the trees.
Mooie les, die zullen we onthouden!