For the final 2 nights of our Nederlands trip, we are booked in at Strandcamping Zuidduinen near Leiden. I paid just under 115€ for 2 nights, which is steep. Best campsite of the week, though, quality service and installations and gorgeous weather, which always helps.

The campsite is an ecocamping, in the heart of the sand dunes, right next to the beach. We were pre-warned that it gets quite windy, so you have to park with your back to the prevailing wind. KB take note.

We arrived in glorious sunshine, with a breeze and 22°C , given a great, flat pitch near to the main building with shop (well stocked) and bar at ground level and the showers and toilets at the basement level.

Mother would be bowled over at the quality and cleanliness of the facilities, suffice it to say that she wouldn’t need to be parading around with a wad of toilet roll up her sleeve here.

If you’ve got room for vegetation and oval mirrors, all your bases are covered. You can just get on and enjoy having a coffee morning.

The picture above here does not do justice to the severity of the dunage to be climbed in order to get to the beach. It was a serious endeavour and you deffo don’t want to forget your suncream because the climb back up is worse than the descent and your calves will be begging for mercy.

We ate out at the bar on the first night there, with a round of pizzas and that. I had a gin and tonic that arrived in a fish bowl, and once we’d dispensed with the comestibles, we paid about the same as eating out in Gouda. The staff were friendly and the table service was good. The terrace had glass panels around to keep the breeze off, which was nice.

Also, unusually, I made use of the washing up area to deal with the fall out from schnitzel and wedges and an assortment of oven trays. It was more stylish than your average sink scenario.

There were a couple of absolutely cracking sunsets to admire over the sea with the weather being so good, and me and the boy child braved the dune mountain to go and enjoy the spectacle. It was worth the climb and the copious amounts of sand we exported after the fact.

The main inspiration for this trip was to visit the Corpus Experience in Leiden, which happened to be just down the road from the camp. It’s a journey through the human body, entering through the knee and working your way up to the brain.

The kids were absolutely buzzing. I was reserving judgement as I’d read mixed reviews online, but it turned out to be fantastic.

You have to book a time slot and become part of a small group who are escorted through a series of interactive presentations about different organs or processes.

Some bits were with 3d glasses, some with moving platforms, some with 4d cinema seats. We walked on a squishy tongue, pretended to be red blood cells, and enjoyed a small girl getting a fright from a giant splinter, all very entertaining.

I do want to make a note here about parking. The Corpus website is clear about the parking costing 10€ extra to the ticket prices (95€ for 4) and being a multistorey with a 2.1m height limit. I researched parking for the van and wasn’t happy about the suggestion to use the hotel next door’s overflow parking, so I did some extra research on park 4 night looking at spots in Leiden and it suggested a free car park at the start of a walking trail about 10 minutes walk from Corpus. It was at  ///skin.instant.stormy for future reference and was ideal. We combined the Corpus Experience with a stroll and saved ourselves a tenner.

So this was the end of a very fruitful week of Dutchness and we wended our way back to Hoek van Holland to get our ferry back to the UK and the long drive home.

Great weather, great new places, good campsites and although we didn’t put in loads of miles, it felt like we saw a lot of stuff. It definitely made me want to go back and see some more another time.

Tot ziens Nederlands 🇳🇱🇳🇱