Leeuwarden to Leeuwarden

 Today we did a loop into the areas that I had hoped to find some family roots. It was interesting as it seemed to start at Breakfast when the lady helping at the buffet noted her family name is Van der Wal which is my Grand Mothers maiden name. Unfortunately the waitress was sure we weren’t related as she had researched her family tree and did not know of any Alidas. While our mileage was lower today we were gone for quite a while as we walked through Cementareis in the small towns we stopped in. 

The first exciting find was Westra Bike store… Unfortunately when we found the place the original owner was a Westra but the current owner was not…

We found a few older grave stones, but far and away the most common were recent. I had heard that to to land shortage the Dutch do not allow indefinite grave sites. Most grave sites are cleared out after 20-30 years. The churches we looked around were clearly hundreds of years old but the gravestones were mostly new.

The Friesian countryside is mostly farming. Think of Friesian Holstine Cows… We saw numerous examples of the old house barn today. Quite a variety of fields including corn, hay, and onions. 

This was a water control center replacing the old fashion windmills. The large water augers can easily move large amounts of water from the low lands over the dike to the lands headed to the North Sea. The lower picture is from the top of the dyke. The North Sea is 1-2 Km away. We wondered if we could almost imagine seeing it. There were no roads going further out so I can’t say what things were like out there. 

Of course what day wouldn’t be complete without a few windmills. Since leaving Bruges we have seen at least one windmill everyday and often more. We saw a few more today but did not get close enough for a good picture. It amazed us to see so many as we biked along.

We got back to our hotel with a bit of excitement… Ila’s e-bike motor temporarily stopped working for about 1 km. Not sure why it stopped or why it restarted… Just glad it did.

Peter from Tulip cycling came by this afternoon and picked up the bikes and that wrapped up our cycle trip. If anyone is interested or considering a trip in the Netherlands we highly recommend Tulip Cycling. Peter is very organized and does a great job of routing. 

Tomorrow we start heading back to home with a train ride to Utrecht for the night. 

Peace,

Dale and Ila