A Beautiful Day

---

It was freezing ALL night sleeping in hoodies with every cover over us we were still cold, a hot shower in the morning and we uprooted. Setting James in the direction of Arnhem we set off…..



Woolly says – James is Bonza and keeps wanting to stop for Barbies! Being Saturday we thought the roads would be ok, traffic was heavy in places which meant when reaching Arnhem we couldn’t stop at the bridge behind the film A Bridge To Far, we glimpsed it as we followed cars, bikes and people all over the place. Then Jo told me we were off to a castle!!! I started looking out of the window; the landscape has changed a bit, instead of flat fields everywhere we were driving through forests. Spotting signs for our Castle we pulled up beside the Huis Bergh, it didn’t really look like a castle it did have two tall turrets but most of it was square, it was very impressive all the same. Paying over 17 Euro (approximately £15.40 GBP) we hoped it would be good inside. The lady at the door spoke to us in Flemish and had a small amount of English, but enough to send us on our route. It appeared quite modern considering that it was originally built in the 12^th Century, but then we found the pictures of the raging fire that had destroyed the insides completely, hence the more modern décor. It was interesting, with little or no English we had to guess at the items on display, loads of paintings of sad looking men, suits of armour, weapons – there was a cool looking pike – and the coin and medieval manuscripts collection of the last owner Doctor Van Heek. There was little to show of the long history when the Van Der Burgh family owned it. After a couple of Fanta’s and a Sprite where we watched a most peculiar party start with everyone decorated in the Dutch colours of the flag or the orange that is seen everywhere. Having been in the room a few minutes, hardly time to take a swig they were humpahhing away merrily, I wondered if they would last the night!



Feeling it was time to pitch up for the night we retraced our steps to a camping sign we had seen on our way to Huis Bergh and arrived at Camping Brockhausen, Stokkum, Holland. Having booked in for 20 Euro (approximately £18.10 GBP), we found ourselves on one of the top ten sites in Holland!!!!! Beautiful toilets and showers, with laundrette set in an idyllic forest location; we took Woolly for a walk ….



Woolly says – We saw DEER, oh and horses, Huskies, chickens and birds. It’s very quiet and peaceful I will have to try and be quiet tonight!!!!!

---