Explore europe in a campervan

So the Lowlands festival is over and we’ve now left Holland. We had a great time at Lowlands, not as good as last year but the lineup this year wasn’t half as good. The Friday night was the best night as Hadouken and Kooks played. Then the lineup on Saturday wasn’t that great and drinking beer wasn’t quite as much fun. Then the lineup on Sunday wasn’t great either and drinking yet more beer was even less fun. We had a good time but next year we might try a festival in Madrid.

We arrived in Holland a day earlier than the festival started so we parked the van at a campsite and got the tram into Amsterdam to do the tourist thing. We didn’t end up getting into Amsterdam until early evening so only had time for a walk round the shops, a nice meal in a restaurant and a walk through the red light district. It’s quite a strange sight to see scantily dressed ladies (and men apparently), stood in windows, while thousands of tourists all walk on by.

After the festival, on the journey down towards La Havre we stopped off at Tournai for a day. Tournai is in Belgium, near to the French border and we were a little surprised to find that most people speak French on this side of Belgium.  We visited the cathedral and wandered around the town.  The shops and restaurants were all immaculate and very stylish – we even browsed a clothes shop that was in a former bank – they had a kid’s play-area in a vault!  We stayed the night at the motorhome aire in Tournai, which was very quiet with only 2 other vans.

On the way to Le Havre we drove south down the French coast from Calais, looking for any potential kite spots.  At Wissant several people were kite-surfing, despite the fact that there was very little beach to set up and launch from.  The wind was pretty strong and there was nowhere close to park so we just watched for a while before driving on.

Although we stopped at two further towns with land-boarding potential the conditions weren’t right and it was getting late so we stopped at a motorhome aire in Fort-Mahon-Plage for the night.

And now we’re on the ferry awaiting departure for Portsmouth.  Coming home will be a new adventure really with so many family and friends to catch up with.  Not to mention job-seeking and looking for somewhere to live/park!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.