walker-online

Winter Tour 2008 – Day 2: After the night in Hamoir we got going again around 9:30 am, crossing Belgium and Luxembourg. In the afternoon after passing Nancy I got really tired and had to take a break. Obviously I had caught some kind of a cold or flu and was really not up to driving all day. After taking a nap, we decided it would be better to stop for the day and found a place for the night nearby in Chaumont. When we arrived at the camper park ‘Port Fluvial de La Maladiere’, everything was closed. We were able to get a place but could not get electricity or fresh water.

Winter Tour 2008 – Day 1: For the night I had picked two possibilities in Belgium. First we tried the parking in front of the mine museum in Blegny, but the parking was closed with a gate and drunken youth from a nearby pub wasn’t too inviting either. In and around Blegny our Garmin navigation system insisted on sending us through small local roads, which were prohibited for transit, so it took us a while to find the way back to the freeway using main roads.  Even though we set the vehicle type to ‘Truck’, the Garmin routing software has the tendency to use small secondary roads as short cuts.

50 kilometers further we tried the next camper park in Hamoir along the river Ourthe. Going up and down the hilly landscape we had to get through some heavy fog, but it helped to be able to see the route on the display of the navigation system. The camper park was a well-lit gravel pit next to a tennis court, scattered with muddy puddles. We arrived around midnight and were the only motorhome there. Just for the night this was good enough.

Winter Tour 2008 – Day 1: After having coffee and pie in Bocholt, we wanted to make some kilometers but stopped in Duisburg at the Duisburg-North Landscape Park for dinner. The landscape park Duisburg-North is a former metallurgical plant in Duisburg-Meiderich, which was shut down in 1985. Most of the plant was saved from demolition, and each weekend at night the light installation of the British artist Jonathan Park transforms it into a surrealistic post-industrial landscape. Access is free and there is also a camper park for those who want to stay longer.

Winter Tour 2008 – Day 1: This year’s winter tour was inspired by a TV program called ‘Here comes the sun’, which is all about solar energy. Some of the largest solar installations of the world can be found in Spain, and as we did some research we got interested more and more in the area of Valencia. The weather prediction for Valencia also looked promising – sunny and warm – so the main destination for this year’s winter tour was found. The other goal of course was to escape from the annual Dutch fireworks madness. Since weeks people have been firing off fire crackers again, which makes it difficult to walk Jill and sometimes hard to sleep at night.

Just before we were ready to start, Camera.nu called to notify me that my tripod had been repaired. So we slightly adjusted our plans and went north to Urk first to pick up the tripod, which is my lightweight travel tripod.  The store was packed and I had to wait more than half an hour before we were heading towards Bocholt (Germany) to visit by dad who celebrated his birthday just three days before.