Around Deurne ... careful what you enter in the GPS

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It took about 5 hours to get from Paris to Deurne. It could have taken a lot longer if I had not realised that I had initially entered "Duerne" into the GPS, which is a town in France. Luckily I noticed my mistake, oh I also noticed there is a Deurne in Belgium - we found the one in the Netherlands with no problems.

We got to spend a few days with Lorenza's cousin, Guido and his family. Lorenza really enjoyed catching up with Guido and her Aunties and Uncle. It was the first time we had spent much time with Guido's dad and it was good to get to know him a bit. He had some interesting stories about growing up during the war around Deurne and also in Indonesia and some funny tales about when his troop ship visited Sydney in about 1945. Apparently the Australian communist party was not too happy that Dutch troops were stopping off in Sydney on their way to Indonesia. He has actually written a book with a lot of stories like this in it which would be interesting to read (shame for me that it is in Dutch).

Guido organised some interesting activities for us, including a bicycle ride through a tunnel complex ceated by years of stone cutting and block extraction (unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the place and could not take any photos during the ride). It was an interesting experience riding through a maze of tunnels, with a guide to help us. It was very funny having to put my terrible Dutch language skills to the test - as the guide called out directions and warnings about tight turns or sections where the roof was very low, the guide would shout out the warning and it would be passed down the line of riders. I did my best to warn people of tight turns, etc. At one stage they called out a warning about a tight turn which I completely misunderstood - it almost had me run into the tunnel wall, plus the rider behind me almost followed as well. An interesting experience.

We also visited Hoensbroek Kasteel, which is the oldest, intact castle remaining in the Netherlands.

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