Netherlands/Belgium Bike Tour Day 7: Ouddorp to Veere
Posted by Cassie, November 11th, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Today, we entered into Zeeland (“sea-land”), which is a series of islands connected by a series of bridges, tunnels, and dams. There are lot of beaches, and it is a popular place for tourists. The majority of the tourists come from Germany because their country is landlocked and does not have any beaches.
This was the first day of our bike tour where the weather was not very nice. It was cloudy with short rain showers throughout the day. It was also extremely windy! We saw a lot of windsurfers and kiteboarders taking advantage of the wind. The kiteboarders do jumps where they are several feet in the air. It looks like a lot of fun!
Windsurfers
Kiteboarders
Kiteboarders
It was exciting to ride across the exposed bridges between islands with the wind and the rain. The bridges had windmills on them, and it was so windy that you could hear the blade going “whomp, whomp, whomp” as it rotated.
Windmills on Deltaworks
Our campsite tonight could not be more different from our campsite from last night! Last night we were camped next to a wild party, and tonight, we camped next to a cow pasture. When we set up camp, the cows were right next to our campsite! The campground is run by a German man in the middle of the Netherlands. The reception sign was only in German, and the man only spoke German. We were not expecting to use our German yet, but we managed to pay for our night of camping in broken German.
Camping next to cows!
The campground was outside the lovely, small town of Veere with cobble stone streets and neat old buildings. The church was the most interesting part of the town. It looked really funny because they ran out of money to finish building the tower. Our bike book said it looked like a “stubby giant”. The church was enormous for the size of the town. The church also looked like it was heavily damaged during WWII. Some of the stained glass windows were bricked over, or they had put in several small windows instead. In contrast, the stadhuis (town hall) was a beautiful building with a lovely tower.
Church with stubby, unfinished tower
Damage to church
Marina and Stadhuis tower
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