Rest day & prep

19-20th of September was the last days we had plans. We knew the first part of the trip would be England with H’s family, then Scotland booked well in advance because everything was booking out for the summer events there, and then onto Eindhoven and Amsterdam with Tom, Myra and Paul. But nothing further. So for two days we rested and prepped for our next steps. We went grocery shopping (chocolate pictured is so yummy!), got washing done, watched ‘Depp vs Heard’ on Netflix together and also joined Tom to his friend Ralph’s birthday party which was the reason we’d returned to Eindhoven. (Photo included of the many bikes the party had taken to arrive at Ralph’s house, so different from NZ house parties!). It was really cool to chat to some of Tom’s oldest friends and learn about what growing up and living in the Netherlands was like for him. My favourite thing was how Tom lived literally across the road from his school and so Myra would organise an afternoon tea for lots of kids who would join Tom at his house. All of Tom’s friends lived super super close. Like 2 of them were still just 3-5 doors down from Tom. And the rest not much further. Would have been awesome to be in this sort of community as a kid!

Anyway we enjoyed the party but definitely appreciated the rest and time to decide what our next plans were. We also got in one more Dutch treat since we hadn’t made it to a pannenkoekenhuis, we made pancakes for dessert and finished off the last of the pecan caramel ice cream that was also a big hit with V and I.

After chatting to Paul and Myra about all the bike touring (bikepacking) they’d done around Holland, France etc. Paul had well and truly convinced Vikum that we should go bike packing for a few days from Eindhoven out towards the west coast. I took a little more convincing but realised what an amazing opportunity we had to borrow their gear and guidance to bike tour the Netherlands so agreed for max. 3 days at slow pace (H from the future is now in love with biking in the Netherlands after this trip). Also it helped that if we reeeaallyy needed it - Tom could probably drive to save us, if anything went wrong. Vikum had also had a taste for how flat the terrain was on his bike trips to the supermarket which helped to convince us of how good the country would be for biking. Either way, we were now excited and used Sunday to set up two of Myra and Paul’s bikes, camping gear, about 2-3 sets of clothes with our tent on the bikes. All ready to set off from the Monday 21 August…Read more