Day 6 - Maasbracht to Arcen

The day from Maasbracht to Arcen started out like all the others before and I was even quite pleased that it would be my first day of relative silence since I had replaced my ratting mudguard.

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However, within 30 minutes of starting out from the campsite, it started to rain and kept up raining; sometimes harder, sometimes not, but never letting up for the entire day. When I say day, I really mean the whole day.

Not only did it rain for the leg that I was cycling, but rained even after I arrived at the destination, and continued to ran until well past six that evening. What made the day a bit more trying was the fact that this leg ran through a massive forest just north of Venlo, which the path followed all the way to Arcen. People loved that forest, all the locals kept asking me if I wanted to spend more time in it, but I am afraid with the mud and the wet, it took all my zenitude to make it to the campsite.

Luckily, when I arrived at the Minicamping Nabij de Fossa I felt like I had reached salvation of sorts. I had not held high hopes for the campsite as I could not find much information about it. But boy was I glad I was wrong; the lady that greeted me when I arrived asked me where I had come from and when I said London, she said that it was a long way to ride in a day and that I should probably be used to the rain. Good thing she had a sense of humour.

Also, the place was magnificent; clean as only the Dutch could do, pleasant and best of all, the place had an enormous recreation room that had sofas, a television, books, comfy chairs, everything. On top of that, yes, it even gets better, the shower facilities also had a laundry room where I was able to wash and dry all my cycling gear. 

The host of the campsite, the same lady that joked with me before, allowed me to spread my gear out to dry in this rec room, to use the washer and dryer and to even take a nap on the sofa while I waited for the rain to stop. Which, like |I said earlier, never really did. When she came to ask me to pay for my night, I asked, that since it was raining and I hadn't the courage to set my tent up and sleep in the rain, could I please spend the night in the rec room. She leaned forward and wispered, "It happens". So, I got to sleep on the sofa that is in the middle of the photo just above this paragraph and watch "Midsomers Murders" on the TV.

That said, the day hadn't been all rain and gloom, it was the first day that I rode a ferry, the first of many as it would turn out, and the landscape became a bit more countryfide.