The Netherlands

The weather improved for us in the Netherlands, we spent 12 nights exploring the country with the highlights being:

  • A lot of water

  • Even more amazing bike routes than Belgium

  • Lots of water

  • Windmills

  • Lots of Water


Our first night over the border in the Netherlands was at a Motorhome showroom, not a very glamorous place to park up with the only view being of a motorway and an industrial estate. We’d read that more wild park up’s weren’t very welcome here and we would need to be careful about where we parked up, so we played it nice and safe on the first evening.

Kinderdijk World Heritage Site - Rotterdam


We were pleasantly surprised that the weather had brightened up so we decided to take a scenic route towards Rotterdam by heading out west to the coast. We stopped for food at, “Brouwersdam Zuid Noordzee”. Despite the nice weather, the wind took us by surprise, it was very strong blowing the van about while driving on the exposed roads.


Our first proper night in the Netherlands was on a small spit going out into a lake, it was about 20 km/12 miles southwest of Rotterdam. It was very quiet, with only a handful of cars coming past to get to a small restaurant right at the end of the spit. We spent two nights here and used it as a base for exploring Rotterdam. From here we also visited the Kinderdijk World Heritage Site famous for the water management windmills. This was a very interesting place where we learnt a lot about the history of the windmills and the great importance they played in making the land usable for the farmers and local residents.


Next stop on our tour of the Netherlands was Amsterdam. We spent a few days around Amsterdam having found a nice campsite with all the facilities we needed and not far from a train station for us to travel right into the centre of town. The first day we went was a Saturday, till now the towns haven’t been that busy, however as we left the train station on the Saturday we realised Amsterdam was a bit more popular. We quickly made our way through the busy streets out of the centre of town in search of finding some quieter areas to explore.


We were interested to see the Anne Frank museum but the next slot available was on Monday evening, so we’d have to return. This meant we could see Amsterdam in the evening which was even more pretty than in the day, lots of coloured buildings lit up along the canals. We stayed quite late and took some photos before getting the train back to the van.

Sunset at Loosdrechtse Plassen

Sunrise at Loosdrechtse Plassen


Luckily the nicer weather seemed like it would last a few more days and we headed further west towards the coast and found a nice park up next to a huge beach and the sea. We were spoiled with a few great sunsets here. Although cold, the wind was unusually calm so we took some long walks along the beach. From here we went to probably one of the prettiest places we’ve been to so far.


It was a small car park next to a dock leading out into a lake - “Loosdrechtse Plassen”. We were again spoiled with a lovely sunset and the next day it was even more beautiful with a slight haze out in the lake.


This spot was just an overnight stop on the way to see Castle De Haar. A large castle set in stunning grounds which we got to explore, there were some deer, several lakes and also a hedge maze. The weather was also perfect, something we weren’t used to having in our past trips - could get used to this…

Our final stop in the Netherlands was a small village called “Giethoorn”. Known as the Venice of the Netherlands due to the many waterways going through a picturesque village. Unfortunately none of the pictures we took really gave it justice, comparing it to the google image search results, mainly because we went in December, not in the middle of summer. However it was still well worth visiting, we probably enjoyed it more because it was a bit quieter anyway.

The following day we packed up the van to leave the Netherlands, heading to Germany.