Adventures in Otterlo

After Flo convinced me to take Friday off work (well, actually I forgot to book the day off as holiday), our weekend away got off to a typical start... stuck in traffic on the motorway after some Volvo driver decided to test out the famed car's safety features by driving the car into the back of a lorry. Stupid Volvo drivers!

Fortunately, we weren't delayed long and arrived at our splendid little hotel located just on the outskirts of Het Nationale Park De Hoge Veluwe. After quickly acclimatising to our hotel room, we realised that it's not pleasant staying in un-airconditioned rooms in the height of global warming powered summers and so ventured out straight to the National Park.

The park operates a "white bike" system, whereby lots and lots of white bikes are maintained within the park's grounds which visitors can utilise as and when they please, simply picking one up and dropping it at the designated area. Apparently this social scheme was tried out in Amsterdam one time, but failed miserably since everyone just knicked the bikes. However, I'm happy to report that in the park the system works great, although it's amusing to see how quickly people become attached to their chosen bikes... we actually saw people hiding them when they had to leave them behind to go off the cycle path to view a monument or garden.


The scenery in the park is surreal and varies from vast, sandy baron wastes (as above) to dense coniferous woodlands, complete with wild deer and boar (the grounds did once belong to the Kröller-Müller family as a hunting retreat, the reason that they built their meagre hunting lodge in the centre of the grounds, pictured below). Also located throughout the park are strange wooden cut-outs of little girls (also pictured below). This is presumably to entertain the many Belgian visitors to the park?



While cycling through the park, Flo rediscovered the delight of cycling zonder handen on the bars! The entire cycle back to the entrance of the park was to a sound-track of giggles and exclamations of "look, no hands!". The benefit of this behaviour was that we did get to spot lots of deer, since they were presumably so startled that they made an equal amount of noise as they scarpered deeper into the woodland. After a long day of driving and cycling, we headed back to the hotel and enjoyed a well earned four course meal at the hotel, finishing off the night with Flo teaching me how to play the apparently popular game of Rummikub.

Saturday was spent... cycling. It was supposed to be a reasonable 45 kilometres, but probably ended up being more like 50 km. It showed us again how diverse the countryside is in this part of Nederland, through deciduous woodland and farmland along the Heidi route (I kept thinking of the classic TV programme with Heidi running through the grass with the alps in the background). We got very hot and sweaty and had lunch at a lovely refurbished castle, complete with ducks in the moat.

We returned to the National Park this morning to have a look around the Kröller-Müller Museum, located inside the park. They have a large garden at the museum in which there are a huge collection of statues and sculptures. It was very relaxing walking around and viewing the displays, but I admit that I started to get concerned as Flo began airing her thoughts and reactions to the art pieces...


...apparently this is a statue made of used hormone injection needles...


...these are follicles...


...and the title of this piece is how the Dutch refer to an ultra-sound scan.

It was at this point where I thought it best for us to return home, back to some daily routine, since our minds were obviously being given far too much time to wander!

You can see more pictures from our adventures in Otterlo here.