There are many possibilities to stay for a night. From hotels in the cities or small villages, to basic campsites in the forest. Our budget isn’t very big, but camping is not for us. Therefore, we decide to stay at ‘Recreatiepark Beekbergen’, near Apeldoorn. It’s a quiet park and looks very new. You can leave one car next to your house, the others can be parked on the general parking area which is closed by a gate. The house looks great and has everything which is needed for a weekend away.

The area is perfect for walking, so the next day we decide to do exactly that; walking. There are many routes available, so we pick one and drive to the starting point. At least, that’s what we thought. The navigation told us that we are at the starting point, only to find ourselves alone, in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even a parking place nearby. Apparently, we didn’t put the correct address in the navigation. So we changed it and we were only five minutes away from the real starting point.

Finally arriving at the parking place ‘Loenense Waterval’, we see the sign of the waterfall. Curious as we are, we want to see that waterfall. A passer-by mentioned that the waterfall isn’t much since there wasn’t enough rain in the past days. It was a very rainy weekend, so we didn’t believe him. With the thought ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’, we went to the waterfall. And of course, the waterfall wasn’t much. We decide to walk back to the parking place and start the walking route.

At the house, we already picked a walking route of approximately six kilometers. It is called ‘wandelroute landgoed vrijenberg Loenen’. The description is in Dutch, but there are others to be found in English. One of my friends got the task to read the route and the information given out loud to us. The route first took us through a forest area. This included seeing some of its inhabitants; horses! We needed to say ‘hi’ and stayed there for some time before continuing on our path. We walked out of the forest, into the village Loenen.

After our walk through Loenen, the route mentioned a care farm with a teahouse. As already mentioned, we are curious and at this moment also; thirsty. Therefore we decide to have a look at this care farm. When arriving at the care farm, we see that the teahouse is very busy. There is a family paying, so we wait for them to leave. Next to tea, they also offer homemade pastries. We couldn’t say ‘no’ to these, so there we were; with tea and some really nice pastries. When we finished the tea and food, we decided to continue with the route. Outside, we ran into the residents, who were ready to go to the carnival party.

While we walk our route, we walk past a strange looking house and piece of land. We were so confused by this, that we walked the wrong way. Luckily, we recovered and walked back to the correct path. We finish the route to end at; the waterfall. We had already seen this, so we knew we were almost at the parking place.

Back in the house, we decided to have dinner in Apeldoorn. We found a good deal on socialdeal at an eatery. It wasn’t time to go yet, but the weather also wasn’t as good. Therefore, we decided to stay indoors to talk, play games and let our legs rest a bit. Time flies and before we know it, we are on our way to Apeldoorn. The eatery is called ‘de Oude Haven’ and looks like its run by man and wife. The man is in the kitchen and the wife is our very friendly host. It happens to be a great evening, there is a homely atmosphere. At the end of the evening, a party of six walks in. The host is very exited by this and goes to the man to tell him about the new arrivals. The man, probably already in the kitchen for many hours, looks baffled. This sight is so unreal, that we couldn’t help but laugh. Really, this was exactly the scene you would expect in this eatery, what a great night.

The next day, the weather was still bad. We didn’t feel like doing anything in this rain, so we decide to go to Apeldoorn. We end up in ‘klein Berlijn’, where we take an early lunch. While we are waiting for the lunch, the owner comes to us. He tells us that there are multiple boules lanes in the back of his café, if we felt like playing a game. We were interested and walked to the back. It looked great, but Boules is not our game, so we decided to go back to the table and enjoy our lunch. This was a great ending of our weekend, we are already excited for the next.