A beautiful day saw a lot more forest than prior days on the Pieterpad.
The breakfast I ordered yesterday was delivered right on time, and was simple, but tasty. (A piece of bread, two heated rolls, cheese, ham, butter, jelly, and a hard-boiled egg.) Thanks to that and not having to deal with my tent this morning, I left camp right around 9, my earliest start so far.
Back on the trail, I continued through the line of trees, then zig-zagged under a highway and followed a road for a little while until the trail turned off onto a dirt road in the space between a field and parkland.
For some reason, I got the impression that the trail felt more remote this morning than on prior days. I guess it’s a reasonable thought since the only town the trail passed through today (in the afternoon) was pretty tiny.
I passed a couple herds of mostly white cows this morning, before the trail went into what seemed like protected parkland.
A stile — one that was surprisingly easy to get over — was the first real suggestion the trail was doing something different.
In this case, different meant going through an overgrown grassy expanse. It wasn’t terribly difficult to walk through, but it wouldn’t have been fun if it was wet out.
The trail only spent about five minutes in that protected area, before jumping over another stile and rejoining a dirt road.
After passing more fields, some seemingly fallow, the trail entered a nice relatively open stretch of forest. If wild camping were allowed, there’d be some really nice camp spots here.
Then, the trail passed through a pine plantation, which I think have a kind of eerie beauty to them. With an open understory and moss covering the ground, I like the bright greenness of it all, even if its existence is entirely artificial.
Another overgrown stretch led past a small pond, and then quickly turned into a short stretch through heathland.
Then, the trail passed by a section where bomb craters from WWII had been “restored“. Apparently, allied planes had dropped bombs to lighten the load to make it easier to return to England, and over time, the craters had become unrecognizable as they became filled in with trees. So a group of students cut down all the young trees so the craters were more visible again. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t actually translate the sign when I was there; you’d think that the first word being “bomkraters” might stand out. So alas, I didn’t actually notice the craters at the time to see if they were still recognizable.
At my second break of the day, an acorn fell and hit my ear. I was just musing yesterday I expected that to happen sometime this trail; I just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly!
I passed a couple of signs today with the distance to Pieterburen (both claimed 86 km) and Saint Pietersberg (406 and 410 km). Without active effort, those signs always become dated, more useful as historical artifacts. I found it amusing how I’d apparently spent 45 minutes hiking no further from Pieterburen just to get 4 km further away from the southern terminus!
I saw a few people on the trail today, including an older couple I kept leapfrogging with. I passed them for good in a tiny town (where it seemed like maybe they’d missed a trail marker and gone the wrong direction).
Leaving that town took me past more farmland, including an onion field that seemed to be ready for harvest. At the same time, a tractor hauling a load of hay began dumping it to continue a wall that had been built up along the back of that field.
The onion field gave way to another pine forest, which contained the very first tree blown down on the trail so far.
There are quite many local trails that intersect or briefly overlap with the Pieterpad. The most prominent in this area is the Drenthepad, a long-distance loop trail in Drenthe (one of the Netherlands’ provinces).
Eventually, I reached an intersection where the Pieterpad and Drenthepad split. I turned off the Pieterpad and followed the Drenthepad to my campsite for tonight, Ergens bij Eva (Somewhere at Eva).
A recently-opened B&B with four campsites, this might be my favorite spot so far, mostly on account of the fantastic homemade frozen dinner I had (a pineapple chicken curry) rather than cooking my own food.
When I arrived, I was I initially greeted by the six chickens that live on the property, who were pecking away at the campsite I’d picked. Fortunately, I was the only person tenting there tonight, so Eva let me take any spot I wanted. I picked a different one with more light and flatter ground.
Over the course of the afternoon, the chickens roamed the property, eventually coming to my new tentsite to look for bugs to eat.
A nice breeze dried out both the tent, and my clothes. A few raindrops fell around six, so I moved from the table and chairs at the edge of my campsite overlooking the neighboring field into the “kitchen house”, and had my dinner. Fortunately, the rain never showed up, until much later once I’d turned in for the night.