Having previously been impressed with the squiggly nature of the Dutch coastline we, or at least I, was looking forward to today’s drive. The weather was a bit pants, but being a driving day it wasn’t so much of an issue.

We discovered that a lot of the roads ran along fortifications to keep the blessed water out and when we got to Vroewenpolder at the far side of the island the scale of things went up significantly from this…

To this…

When you could get a glimpse over the edge there was the turbulent North Sea to the left and the calm inland water (which I swear was a bit lower in level) to the right.

The scale of the engineering was seriously impressive, and had we have been of such a mind, we could have enjoyed the local water park/shrine to Dutch cleverness.

The weather settled and the scenery resumed with flat fields and windmills of a more modern type.

Eventually we decided to stop off for lunch at one of the self service petrol station areas and decided we’d google a nearby supermarket before going further, as once we got to the campsite we may not want to go exploring straight away. We were just outside the town of Ouddorp, and google led us to our first Dutch shopping experience in the Jumbo supermarket.

We went a bit mad, buying more stuff than we strictly needed, including the following:

1. Dutch chocolate biscuits

2. A yellow scarf

3. Chocolate with summat in it ⬇️

Turned out to be salted caramel. And it was well salted.

There was also stuff to inaugurate the new Cadac barbie for tea time. Brian led us into the very picturesque looking town of Brielle

and to Camping & Marina de Meeuw. We had a bit of an issue finding the way in, ending up following a sign for Besoekers, which turned out to be visitor parking. We were about to drive out the other end, but fortunately got out and spied the correct way in, saving ourselves the embarrassment of getting stuck on a cycle path.

Again it was quite a sizeable site, lots of bungalow style holiday homes, lots of boats, some caravans and tents. It was arranged into little sub fields, each signposted clearly from the one way access road system. Appropriately, we had been put in the field of Berk

and for the first night we had it all to ourselves.

We cooked up a feast and drank what turned out to be Belgian beers, and took an evening promenade to check out the surroundings.

Which were extremely pleasant, and in close proximity to lots of the wet stuff.

We had paid 20€ deposit on an odd shaped ‘key’ which was required to enter the John building and to switch on the hot water for the shower or the washing up.

The facilities, whilst not as extensive or sparkling as at Janse, would still be very pleasing to Mother, being clean, well stocked and with artwork on the walls and plants dotted about (!!?)

Mrs Woman (Margret) gave us an abundance of pamphlets on the delights of the local area so we took to exploring when we had a full day to go at. The road out of the camp was v. narrow and with water on both sides,

but that was something we had to get used to…

there was a lot of it around.

But casting a glance at one of the many leaflets now cluttering up the van, you can see why:

The town is basically a fortified island, with just a couple of canals running through it. The centre was cutely old fashioned,

and we were back to old fashioned windmills. Which was nice.

We ambled and then decided on an al fresco lunch and liquid refreshment.

De Hoofdwacht was pleasant enough but the nipperz were less than impressed at getting mayonnaise and apple sauce with their chicken nuggetry.

We had planned on tea time at the camp restaurant, which was also on an island, but were too brussened after the lunchtime victuals, so retired for lounging and a very long session reading Potter to the junior bookworm.

The peace of berk field was short lived though as during our absence the field was rammed with dog loving neighbours who had turned up for the campsite’s Hound festival which was about to kick off.

We consoled ourselves with one of our other random purchases, Butter cake. Delicious.

The anklebiterz had thoroughly enjoyed another quality play area and having had lots of space to play in and we both concurred that we would be happy to return at some point, having barely seen owt. There was just the matter of getting some diesel before leaving town…