Weather: ☁️🌤️☀️☀️☀️
Lunch: 🥞🥞🥞🥞 (5 out of 5 pancakes, great lunch with Eva, only slightly late. Good thing that we found a bakery in Beesd with satay pies for 2nd breakfast and fresh strawberries in Tricht as a seasonal snack😁😅)
Track: 🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸 (6 out of 5 blossoms. What a great day to be hiking the Betuwe region! Good trail and diverse landscape, but so much blossom that the blossom sensor in my brain got blossom overload😅😅)
Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺⛺ (4 out of 5, flat, a bit off trail, good company and facilities at ‘Camping tussen de dijken’)
Name of followed trail: Grote rivierenpad (great rivers trail)
Special mention: Wim, the elderly gentleman we met in Tricht, who will be walking the Peace walk on 28-4. ‘Buon Camino’ Wim!
We get up in time, because we have a long day ahead of us. We have a good breakfast with Karin and Jasper and go on our way, much to the disappoinment of Fenna, their overenthusiastic dog.
We walk out of the village and back on trail. The route meanders along the river, through the beautiful villages Rumpt and Beesd. This area around the Linge is absolutely one of our favorite parts of the Netherlands!
In Beesd we find a bakery that just finished baking some satay pies… sold!
We continue through a lovely forest area at Mariënwaerdt. When we take a turn we get up the Appeldijk, where there are apple trees on both sides in full bloom as far as we can see! I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many flowers together 😍! What a joy to walk here! We meet some hiking cyclists (they do exist) and have a chat with them.
We continue and see a market stall with a Dutch flag. There are 2 girls opening the stall. They sell fresh strawberries😍! We buy ourselves an afternoon snack and enjoy the fresh treat. We have a chat with another hiker and are about to leave when an elderly gentleman with a walker walks by and asks us if we can help him understand his English speaking tablet. Ofcourse we can! The gentleman is training to join part of the Peacewalk. https://peacewalk.info/ Looking at the route, we don’t think it’s been the last time we see something of this walk!
Wim had always been a hiker together with his wife, so we have a nice chat before we wish Wim good luck. We sure hope you make the 20 km you’re planning on Wim!
We continue on some grassy lanes and some roadwalking into the village Buren, where my cousin Eva is meeting us for…. pancakes! The restaurant has a gazillion choices, but we manage to pick one each. They’re all good! It’s great to see Eva again and catch up with her. We’ll have to do so again after we finished our hike I guess 😅.
From Buren we hike our final 13 km to Tiel and take the ferry to Wamel. At least that’s what we want to do. When we get to the river Waal, there is no ferry
to be seen. We’re an hour late for the last one 😱. It’s already 19.30 and we haven’t had dinner yet, so we do need to find something rather quickly. Mark finds a minicamping 2 km off trail, so we go there. Camping ‘Tussen de dijken’ it is.
We get a warm welcome and Jan, the owner, shows us our campsite. We pitch and make dinner. After dinner we go into the campsite bar and find out that using a campsite definitely has its advantages! We have a chat (and a beer) with fellow campers Peter and Inez and with the relaxed camping owner Jan. Happy that we missed the ferry!