{"id":10,"date":"2017-02-20T19:16:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T19:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/?p=10"},"modified":"2017-03-01T18:49:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T18:49:15","slug":"the-countdown-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/2017\/02\/the-countdown-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"The Countdown Begins…"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

My next holiday is fast approaching. In less than 2 weeks, I will be driving nearly 400 miles from Gloucestershire to the Netherlands for a long weekend away.<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the first weekend in March I will be staying on the island of Schouwen-Duiveland<\/a> in the South Western Dutch province of Zeeland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why drive? Because that’s half the fun of it! Plus, I will always have my own transport, so I can go pretty much where I want.<\/p>\n

I’ll break the journey out there in to 2 halves. On the night of Thursday 2. March I’ll drive after work to Kent, where I’ll be staying in a hotel just off the M26 motorway, within 45 minutes’ drive of the Channel Tunnel.<\/p>\n

The following morning, I will head down to the Tunnel before breakfast. I’ll eat breakfast while in the car on the train. I’ll then drive from Calais to Zeeland – hopefully making it to my acommodation in about 3-4 hours (traffic permitting).<\/p>\n

Once I cross the border, things get interesting: There’s the 6.5km Westerschelde Tunnel<\/a> to go through, then I’ll have to pay the toll for that (easier said than done in my right-hand-drive GB car). After a short stretch of motorway I cross on to the island of Noord-Beveland, and then over the 5.5km Zeeland Bridge<\/a> on to Schouwen-Duiveland.<\/p>\n

Over the course of my stay in Zeeland I’ll visit several towns and villages on the island, I’ll go round a few museums and might walk along the beach if the weather isn’t too bad. On the Sunday I’ll go on a day trip to the Dutch capital Amsterdam, just under 100 miles away. The plan is to use the city’s Park + Ride facilities which are within easy reach of the A10 – Amsterdam’s Orbital motorway – or in British terms: the Dutch version of the M25! I can then travel cheaply via bus or tram in to the city centre.<\/p>\n

On the Monday, I’ll leave NL after breakfast and make the entire journey back to the UK. Stupidly, I’ve booked the Eurotunnel at such a time that means I get back in to Folkestone late afternoon and will be hitting the M25 at rush hour. My plan is to sit in a service station off the M20 for an hour (maybe more), and to not go anywhere near the M25 until after 7pm.<\/p>\n

Documentation – Sorted<\/p>\n

Passport – Somewhere around here…<\/p>\n

Euros – Yep<\/p>\n

Petrol – Expensive<\/p>\n

Tot ziens!<\/p>\n

FH.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My next holiday is fast approaching. In less than 2 weeks, I will be driving nearly 400 miles from Gloucestershire to the Netherlands for a long weekend away. During the first weekend in March I will be staying on the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,3,4],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-driving","tag-driving","tag-netherlands","tag-road-trip"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/nlroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}