Wandeling the Netherlands

Richard Tulloch and his wife conquer a Dutch trail and manage to remain married.

How exactly is this fun, my wife wants to know, screaming to make herself heard over the thunder and pelting rain. She fumbles to tighten the hood of her jacket and the gale nearly rips the plastic coverings from her bike’s panniers. I look around for shelter. There isn’t any.

We’re on a dyke by the Overijssel Canal, somewhere in the eastern Netherlands. I tug grimly at the straps on my backpack and count several beats between lightning flash and thunder. We won’t be struck dead immediately. The rain is joined by hailstones as big as - well, they hurt when they hit your head.

“We could get a train back to Amsterdam tonight,” my wife says reasonably. “Why are we doing this?”

I don’t know why. I just decided to walk the Pieterpad. The “Peter Path” is a route crossing the Netherlands from north to south. It’s supposed to give you a real Dutch experience. We’ve done the first 134 kilometres and it has been an experience. It’s rained every day, we’re cold, we’re tired and it’s still more than 350 kilometres to the Belgian border.

Read the rest of Richard Tulloch’s adventures along the Pieterpad: The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January 2008