Once we left Denmark we had to find somewhere else to stay before getting to Dunkerque for the night so while John was driving I had an idea.. Searching Google maps to see how far out of the way one of the little villages on my “list” would be.. And it was about an hour off the route we were on! Yaaaay! Love it when a plan comes together.. We could see numerous camping sites (showers and booze awaited!) so a plan was made and a very giddy Mandy plotted Giethoorn into the Satnav 🙂
I do love The Netherlands, it’s so green and lush and the designs of the houses and bridges are very distinctive. We are usually in the South visiting John’s sister which has more hills than anywhere else in The Netherlands that we’ve seen but have yet to visit a place in the entire country that we didn’t like.
The roads became less busy and the landscape changed from buildings to trees the closer to Giethoorn that we drove and I was practically sat on the edge of my seat.. It had been a bit of a trek through lots of traffic in the centre of Antwerp so was really looking forward to getting there. We drove over a yellow swing bridge, over the biggest canal in the village and drove through the main outskirts with this huge canal on our left with Geese and goslings everywhere!!!! (John, bless him has to deal with me ADORING musicals so every goose I see has me singing “Gooses, Geeses, I want my geese to lay golden eggs for easter.” haha.. Ducklings is all Hans Christian Anderson.. He’s nearly got it now!!) We had a couple of choices of places to stay which were both on the other side of the canal – with 1 bridge that we could see so we had to decide as we drove if we could stay on that side the entire time and then have a look around the actual village with the canals in the morning – we found a lovely little restaurant on the same side as the Campsite we chose so we were all good! The campsite “Camperplaats Bodelaeke” was an automated, unattended site. It was 15€ a night for 2 of us which wasn’t too bad at all considering where we were. The “Check in” was a machine with a big easy to use multilingual display, this gave every bit of information you needed to get in, it even gave you an RFID card to gain access to the site itself and the toilets, showers and laundry room (I didn’t see the card at first so we had a moment of looking like the daft tourists who couldn’t get past the barrier, unfortunately the card was spat out of a slot that was above my head – the perils of being short!!) When you check in on the machine you get to choose your pitch from a lovely interactive map so you can see which are available and if you get a nice view or not, of course we chose a spot facing the canal so we could watch the boats and geese, pitched up, popped our step outside the van for the first time on this trip, washed, dressed then set off for a nice slap up meal.
We had a lovely sunny walk up the canal to the restaurant we had driven past on the wya to the site – De Eetkamer van Giethoorn – the dining room of Giethoorn. It was a lovely little place, lots of outdoor seating and big comfy sofas, dark furniture and light walls and even a kids play room in the back, tucked out of the way. English menu’s were happily provided and the staff were wonderful! We both ordered burgers and chips and a couple of beers and had a lovely meal with brownie and ice cream for pudding too!
We had a lovely evening, it was so quiet by the canal, there were others on the site so the low rumbling of conversation amongst the bird and the lapping of the water was really peaceful.
We were up nice and early in the morning to make the most of showers and whatnot again. We had earmarked a big ole carpark not too far away from where all the small canals in the village proper and set off to go see some sights!
There are lots of restaurants, cafe’s, shops, businesses, houses, museums, boat hire and camping places for such a small place but you really couldn;t feel it when you were there. It was all water and trees and small houses hunkered down with boats tied alongside and bridges – some private, some not, some with narrow bike ramps next to the steps. It was absolutely gorgeous!! Way better than any of the pictures i’d seen online and far easier to get around that I thought. We only had enough time to either walk or boat through the village so we chose to walk and grab a coffee along the way. We found a coffee shop that sold traditional dutch apple cake – John’s favourite and waffles with hot fresh cherries for me, even a resident cat to say hi to while we ate (he loved John.. which is typical as I’m the one who adores cats!!)
We had a walk up and down the canals again, checked out the stone museum which had all sorts of gem stones in their rough state or beautifully polished, made into trinket boxes or wind chimes too. A lovely shop with all sorts of handmade items like soaps and garden ornaments, traditional dutch liquorice, tea towels, cups and saucers – a veritable alladins cave! We strolled by the Giethoorn museum itself but being behind a group of school children decided to give that a miss, and amongst the trees and birds and the almost silent chugging of the (what seemed to be..) electric boats making their way further down the canal we slowly made our way back to the van, enjoying the chance to stretch our legs and make the most of the sunshine before it grew too warm again.
Would we go back? Absolutely..! This place was so absolutely gorgeous with so many choices of places to stay and eat and things to do – it’s well worth a detour if you are travelling further afield like we were.
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https://www.johnandmandy.uk/filmmaking-gear/
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