Jude's baseball league had us traveling within a 30-minute radius to nearby clubs for Saturday games this fall. After living somewhere for a while, you think you know all the places to go. Then, you find yourself driving past estates and windmills headed to little league fields! I decided to take advantage of being on the road and we made a point to see a lot more of our beautiful corner of the world on weekend adventures this fall. We're also very excited that our "new" car has a tow bar so we can bring our bikes on our adventures again.
We visited the Zuid Kennemerland National Park by bike, stopping at a gem of a lake, Oosterplas, with cool sand dunes to explore.
The next weekend, we headed to the Lage Vuursche outside of Hilversum for a family hike. Supplied with scavenger hunts, the kids were into it. The park was next to the former Queen's palace (one of them anyway). I had thought we'd get glimpses of her castle, but all we saw were the tall camouflaged fence and security cameras. It was super busy there (a product of COVID sending people outdoors and the beautiful weather) so we had a bit of a wait for a table for lunch at Buiten in de Kuil, but it was really nice to eat outdoors in the forest.
We drove through the charming tiny village outside of the Drakensteyn Castle (the former queen's residence).
Finding ourselves on a roll, the following weekend we visited Woerden during the National Open Monument Days. I had wanted to visit a castle but was too late in booking. Woerden had been on my list though and they had a number of buildings open to the public, including a former school that was hosting a free art workshop for children. We got into town early enough to grab a quick lunch at a cafe and then expected to spend the rest of the time in the workshop. We arrived with the kids, they handed us a pad of paper to write down our telephone number if there were any problems and then they told us to come back 2 hours later. So Pete and I got some time alone to explore the town! We visited the working flour windmill, the cheese factory and walked the canal-lined perimeter of the medieval town before pick up time.
The kids' creation
We had to cut our time short in Woerden to make it home for Pete's much-anticipated hop harvest! Some very generous friends came over to help pick Pete's hops. He knew he had a lot of hops (as did I on account of the extreme overgrowth in our garden!), but didn't realize just how many there were to be picked until he started cutting them down. He is going to owe them all a lot of beer!
I felt this urgent sense to get out and explore while we still could (weather turning, potential future COVID lockdowns). But after so much adventuring, the kids had to beg to stay home! Glad to have made these memories during these crazy times.
Maeve is doing a little sports camp every other weekend that is run through a local Korfball club. What is korfball? Excellent question! A sort of outdoor handball meets basketball with coed teams. I finally got to see a little game of it during one of her camps.
