The three country shuffle to Rekem and Waldfeucht

I suspect Zagan the motorhome knows exactly where he is, even if we’re a tad confused. Since we left the free overnight parking at the mine in Blegny in the French-speaking part of Belgium, we’ve driven through the Netherlands to another free overnight stop in Rekem in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium. This morning we drove from there, back into the Netherlands, then into Germany for another motorhome stellplatz in Waldfrucht.

Our phones are constantly binging with ‘welcome to …’ messages telling us the rates for various countries we’re going through and I’m totally lost for which language to speak so tend to say ‘Hallo’ and then just smile a lot. All of this and we’ve hardly put 100km on Zagan’s mileage. We drove within 20km of the Drielandenpunt where Belgium, Netherland and Germany meet. As you know, I do love to have one foot in one country and the other in another, I guess I would have needed some sort of yoga pose to includes the third country. So while we were tempted to stop, the reviews I’d read said it was very touristy. Fortunately the rain gave us a good excuse not to stop.

With the maps out and in full planning mode, we searched for a Parkrun in the Netherlands with motorhome parking nearby. Finally stumbling upon Sittard where there is an official parking place a couple of kilometres from the start. So we’ve had a few one nighters (just like the old days) making use of free and low costs stops to get close to our destination.

We looked at stopping in Maastricht, then had a vague recollection that we’d been there before. A quick search of this blog, also known as our memory bank, and yep we’d stopped off there several years ago and didn’t really rate it. Sure things might have changed, and now Charlie the pooch is no longer with us we’d be able to go in and visit more places. But, there are so many other places to see, why go back to somewhere you didn’t like.

Instead we headed slightly north of Maastricht, in fact you can cycle or get the bus in from where we parked, to a small village called Rekem. We’ll be honest, we only picked it because it had a free parking area for motorhomes by a canal. We got there and we a tad underwhelmed. The parking was by a road bridge with a huge factory humming away on the other side of a wide canal, but it was free so you can’t really complain.

We set off for a walk into the village which was only a couple of hundred metres away. There were sign posts giving lots of information, but they were all in Dutch. We can usually get the gist of something in French, maybe German or even Spanish, but Dutch – we had no clue. Fortunately I had downloaded the Dutch language pack on my phone, so Google Translate was summoned to demystify things for us.

It turns out we were in Oud Rekem, the old part of the village of Rekem, and it was considered one of the most beautiful villages in Flanders. Sadly the water company were in the middle of digging a lot of it up, so it wasn’t looking its best. However it didn’t stop us from having a good look around. What did stop us were the tall trees and walls surrounding the Lynden Castle, a stately home that was one of the main attractions but we could hardly glimpse it.

There were also several museums showing how life was in the past – from a preserved distillery, an old pharmacy to one full of old cars. The strange thing was the village was deserted, we didn’t see a soul. There were bistros with tables and chairs ready for the hungry sightseers, but they all sat empty, it was a tad spooky. Back at Zagan I did a bit of research and the museums and castle can only be visited as part of a guided street tour, which costs €60. You can have up to 25 people on your tour, but if there are just two of you, its not really affordable.

While Jay went for a run along the canal, I walked a few hundred metres in the other direction to Rekem. It turns out this is where the people were, with bikes piled up in racks at the school, a fruit and veg stall outside the church and lots going on. It appears that Oud Rekem is pretty much a big museum, but with a few houses in it.

Our plans to spend Friday night close to the Parkrun start were scuppered when we discovered that the motorhome stellplatz was closed due to a festival. Monday is a BIG holiday in the Netherlands, so we were expecting parking places to be busy, but not closed. Instead we swung a few kilometres east to what is probably the most westerly motorhome parking place in Germany in the village of Waldfeucht.

It’s €5 to stay the night, and you simply pop your money in an envelop that is provided in the bottom of the post box, and post it. There’s a service point and even the option of hook up if you want to pay. We only managed a very quick walk around the village between showers, so didn’t see much. A poster in the butchers window says they’re gearing up for a festival here this weekend too, complete with a tractor convoy and lederhosen – we may have to pop back.

We’re so close to the border that this afternoon I went for a run to the Netherlands. That always makes me smile – even if I did get drenched in the process.

The maps are out again this afternoon as we now have less than a week left of this trip. After several one night stops, we’re hoping to find somewhere we can stay for a couple of nights. I can’t believe we did almost a year of one night stops when we were first touring, these days we like to take things a bit more slowly.

Ju x