Pieterburen to Garnwerd (16 km) on Saturday, 26 April 2008

Day one and it would not be a journey of mine if things did not go wrong.

I was supposed to transfer on station Gouda(!) to the intercity train that Elma was already travelling on. The train announcement said, cross over to platform 5 and get on the train to Utrecht, as we pulled into the station. So I did... into the stoptrain to Utrecht and not the intercity I should have been on. Elma had to get off her train in Utrecht to wait for me, or travel all the way to Groningen on her own. She waited, we met up and then we went all the way to Station Baflo where we waited for the Regiotaxi (which was half hour late!). Meanwhile, the man from the local VVV saw us standing there and regaled us with all kinds of information and he also gave us a couple of brochures to take along. That was very kind of him, we saw many of the things he described all along the route!

The regiotaxi took us to Pieterburen at breakneck speed (no wonder you never see any children outside in the little villages along the route... they had been yanked indoors by terrified parents!!!)

We started out quite late on day one and we had 16 km to walk, so we set off at a brisk pace and did not stop along the way until we hit Winsum. The pace was not so brisk at first but after the fifth group of geriatric walkers left us in a cloud of dust, we picked up speed. We managed to arrive in Winsum before a pair of very nice old ladies, which gave us some relief: we were not last!

Had some lovely apple pie and coffee sitting in the sun on a terrace in Winsum, then we continued on to the last leg of the day's journey. The first bit was fun, walking along a sloot, over fields and past some very bored horses, but after that it was less pleasant. We were walking on the verge of a very busy road with impatient cars whizzing past. Happy to arrive in Garnwerd, my tongue dragging on the road by that time, we looked for our overnight address and found it without any trouble. We then tottered off to see a bit of the old town and eat something at the local cafetaria. Uitsmijter (two slices of bread, three eggs runny yolks, thinly sliced ham, onion rings, fried mushrooms and some guilt salad), tea, glass of rose each and finally decadent ice cream on the banks of the canal sitting on a wooden bench watching the cows come home. Heaven!

We went to sleep earlier than I had done in years, around nine! Slept well, aside from the few mosquitoes that decided I was a nice snack.



For me, it was a lovely flat green countryside with many meandering little streams which (thank you VVV guy) by their very curves prove that they are the original natural waterways (farmers make straight lines, nature goes in bends and whorls) from back in the days when this province was regularly inundated by very high tides and storms.

Elma took some lovely pictures: