I did it!

Phew. With a day to spare I am officially a winner of the 'write a 50 000 word novel in 30 days' NaNoWriMo challenge. Final wordcount: 50 067. Words worth reading: *shudders*.

Achel

That's the name of a quaint little town in Belgium that we rode to today.

Yes, we rode our bikes to Belgium today!

We left at about 11.30 this morning and got back about 6 this evening. The ride was about 70kms round trip. It was mostly through beautiful forests with the occasional 'fiets cafes' for all the cyclists and walkers.

Of course, as I hail from a big and borderless island, it's still exciting for me to cross into another country by car or on foot or by bike!

Ahhh...the novelty will never wear off, I'm sure!

That's me and my trusty steed just in Belgium.

And here's the border police...

In Achel there was a castle that had been built in the 12th century. Unfortunately they had renovated it a number of times since then which included painting and plastering over the original brickwork.

Close up you could see underneath some peeling paint and the original brickwork was beautiful.

I won't even tell you what we ate for lunch but think of about a metre of bread with a sausage, some onion and sauerkraut. Mmm!? Of course we started lunch with a yummy dark Belgian beer. Now that was gooooood!

On the way out of town we spotted a shop so we had to go in. What a great thing that this is what they sold...

You can't go to Belgium and not buy a few chocolates! So now I'm off to enjoy them with my tea.

A bit slow...

And the 30th of November is how many days away?!

I'm going to be adding my word count to this little widget every day (or more than once a day if I'm really procrastinating). The date above won't change (editing a post doesn't change the date) but those numbers will!

Not so simple equations

1. What's 50 000 minus 2037?

2. What's 30 minus 10?

The answers are:

1. The number of words I have to write.

2. The number of days I have to do it.

At least I know I'm good at procrastinating.

NaNoWriMo. I love you.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Well, a few days ago it was happy birthday to me!

And even though I turned 31 I am still quite spoilt.

These were all my birthday presents along with all of the emails and well wishes and a JT CD which isn't in the photo because it was pumping through the stereo! I'm such a pop princess sometimes.

Nico took Friday off and after chatting on the phone to my parents for about an hour, we went to Nijmegen for lunch. Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands but then depending on who you ask, Maastricht is the oldest! I love both of these cities and it's true that both are really old! Nijmegen is on the Rhine and it is still a busy waterway for transporting goods. We saw a bunch of cars on a bunch of boats coming from Germany and quite a lot of traffic as we dined at the water's edge in a 'gezellig' restaurant.

After lunch we drove to the largest National Park in the Netherlands: the Hoge Veluwe. In the middle of the park there is the Kröller-Müller museum which holds the best collection of van Gogh paintings. It was donated to the state by an old, rich shipping magnate family who acquired a huge collection of art.

You can drive to the museum or you can use, for free, one of these:

Of course we took the bikes. It was a 10km ride each way and I have never seen so much wide open space in such a small country before.

The first kilometre or so was on a cycle path in the middle of a forest. We were surrounded by huge trees in all their autumn glory! This led into low lying scrub and shrubs which then turned into sand dunes and what looked like a mini desert?! After a while we hit forest again and in a clearing in this forest was the museum.

We wandered through the museum at a snail's pace. There was so much to see and so few people! There were sculptures and paintings from all over the world. There were also letters and diary entries from the family. And of course there was a cafe where we got a nice warm cuppa and an appelgebak!

In the evening we met Jane and Edwin at the Effenaar in Eindhoven for a couple of drinks.

It was a very happy birthday for me.