Ghalen

Thursday 9th to Sunday 11th June 2022

We are back at Cafe Holtkamp motorhome site that we last visited 3 years ago along with motorhome buddies Alison and Peter, we came here to visit our German friends Wolfgang and Arzu and their daughter Bedia.

Earlier in the year it was Arzu’s 50th birthday but she didn’t wish to celebrate then preferring to leave it until the weather was warmer,so when our invitation was received we decided to build our visit to include a tour of Holland and Germany. The celebration was held on Friday evening at a local sports activities centre with an outdoor bbq as the food.

It was a great evening many of the people there we had met at previous celebrations and they kindly chatted to us in English asking about our travels and telling us their news. Not only was the food good but there was a free bar all evening and the celebrations went on until 2 am.

The rest of the weekend was spent in a variety of activities.We visited nearby Dorsten and had a large ice cream in a glass at a specialist ice cream cafe.

Michelle and I took Layla for a walk around Ghalen village.

The weather has been very pleasant whilst we have been here and we have divided our time by being in the garden and taking a drive to visit the River Rhine where we had a cool beer.

We are always amazed by the size of the barges on these rivers, some must be 200ft long, one was so heavily laden we could walk faster than it could go against the current.

Layla had a great time diving into the river fetching a stick.

During the evening we drove to nearby Dursten to an Italian restaurant which was on an area that had been reclaimed from a coal mine and it’s industrial buildings, sounds grim but it was actually very pleasant.

This bought to an end a very pleasant interlude in our travels.