Day 41, Lexmond – Rhenoy

Weather: ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Picnic: 🥪🥪🥪🥪🥪🥪(6 out of 5, the best picnic I’ve ever had at a great spot, with good company and good food!)
Track: 🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱 (5 out of 5, I don’t think you can have a better hike in the Netherlands at this moment. Fruit trees in bloom, dykes, windmills, and fortificatios at the Waterlinie. Loved the trail today!)
Home stay: 🛌🛌🛌🛌🛌 (5 out of 5, great to find trailangels that are actually friends!)
Name of followed trail: Grote rivierenpad (great rivers trail)
Special mention: My colleague Cisca, for sending our website to her cousin Jasper, because our trail goes past his house. Thank you for helping out like this, and accidentally re-connecting us! Karin and Jasper for opening their home for us, wanting to do so even before they knew who we were! Thank you so much! Great to meet again like this!

We wake up to the smell of freshly baked bread. Paulien baked a good sourdough bread I’ve been told and now I finally get to taste it. She wasn’t lying 😋

After breakfast Paulien and Juda walk with us the first few kilometers. They show us their fishing spot and we talk about the area around us.

We say goodbye for now and continue through willow fields and pastures. We even have to cross a style. After the pasture we get to a milk vending machine, where we get 2 glasses of fresh, cold milk.

We continue along a dyke into a village, where Paulien drops Jaël and Joas to walk with is to our lunchspot where Paulien and Juda prepare a picnic for all of us. We walk through an area full of fruit trees that are in full bloom 😍🌸 We buy juice from a vending stall along the path and look for our picnicspot. They found a beautiful spot on a flower meadow under the fruit trees. I honestly don’t think I’ve had a picnic on a more idyllic spot than this. The food, prepared by Juda and Paulien is also really good. pigs in a blanket, scones, home made bread…. Best picnic ever!!

After the picnic we say our goodbyes to Paulien a de het sons and continue on a still quite long, but beautiful trail. The trail leads us through orchards and along the Lingedijk, which is a beautiful area

full of good memories from hikes we did before. In this area there are a lot of fortifications and inundation works that were built to defend the Netherlands by flooding parts of the land to stop the enemy. Cool to see all the remaining structures of this era once again!

We walk past the leaning tower of Acquoy (pay attention to the name on the gravestone in front), continuing along the Lingedijk and walk past 2 people drinking a glass of wine in the afternoon sun. We have a chat with them and continue our last few kilometers to Rhenoy, where we meet Jasper and Karin again after 6 years!

We first met on Te Araroa in New Zealand. A few days ago Karin send a message through our website, offering us to come and stay with them! We were wondering about how they knew about our hike. Jasper tells us my colleague Cisca is his cousin and she send him the link to our site because the trail is close to their home. Thank you Cisca, for looking at our plans in detail and making this moment of reconnection possible!

We have a glass of wine in the evening sun and spend the evening sharing stories and catching up. Another great day on trail, where we were absolutely spoiled with friendship, food and scenery!