Weather: 🌤️☁️☁️🌧️☁️
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪(3 out of 5, restaurants on trail were closed, so we had a very late lunch with nice bread a bakery in Zevenhuizen)
Track: 🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱 (3 out of 5, interesting hike through the outskirts of Rotterdam, surprisingly green and very unmistakably Dutch)
Home stay: 🛌🛌🛌🛌🛌 (5 out of 5, great food, friends and wine. What more do you need?)
Name of followed trail: Grote rivierenpad (great rivers trail)
Special mention: Kim and Richard for opening their home for us. Thank you for your friendship and hospitality!
We leave Joost and Annemieke around 10.00. It’s strange to leave again. Almost more so than when we left home to start this whole walk. So normal for 2 days and now we have to get into ‘hiker-mode’ again. We say goodbye to Annemieke, who brings us back on trail, and head towards Overschie, an old village close to Rotterdam.
New shoes, clean packs, ready for the next 1000 km! We walk the outskirts of Rotterdam today, which are surprisingly green! We walk along the river Rotte and the lakes in the area. We actually have some elevation in our day due to the artificial ski-hill. Nice views over Rotterdam and The Hague!
Above us dark clouds fill the sky. We see the rain fall ahead of us, but thus far we’ve kept it dry!
The grasslands, dykes and bridges are so unmistakably Dutch that we start a Dutch Bingo. Windmill, bridge, flag, tulips, etc. In Zevenhuizen village we complete the bingo when we see an old man on wooden shoes! (note to our foreign readers: this is exceptional to see in real life)
We get lunch at a bakery and continue our walk. Not a whole lot of resting during our 30 km hike today, because it’s cold and cloudy, without a café to sit down. When we continue after our late lunch, it starts to rain. We get the clean raingear out of the bags. It clears after some time so before Nieuwerkerk we take them off again. Nieuwerkerk is a lovely village. I’ll admit, it helps that it’s also our destination. 30 km without a brake on new shoes was a bit much… 😅
When we get to Kim and Richard, the chimney is smoking and we can smell the BBQ. What a great welcome!
We enjoy a good meal and a good glass of wine together. We also get to play with the dogs and Fleur (not sure in who’s favor it was mostly…🤔😁).