Loon op Zand

Today we went caching in Loon op Zand. About the caching details you can read here
First we walked from the car to the nature area.

We passed by some farms.

And the walk brought us to an area called "Loonse en Drunense Duinen", that consists of marshes and sand dunes.

The weather being a little bit windy but with the sun in the sky lovely to be outside.

The dogs weren't allowed to run freely everywhere.

But where they could they enjoyed that a lot.

Happy Birthday Toby

Today Toby had his birthday. He became 4 years old. We had a little celebration and of course a cake.

Toby and Brego awaiting the cake.

Toby the birthday boy enjoying his half of the cake.

And Brego eating his half.

A little movie that shows the dogs eating their part of the cake very peacefully.

Toby laid himself down to enjoy the last part of the cake, well he's an old boy now, just kidding of course.

Snow in the Netherlands

When we awoke on Monday we opened the curtains and saw that it had snowed in the Netherlands. The whole week the temperature stayed below zero and therefore the snow stayed around. Toby loves laying in the back garden with his belly on the snow.

And Brego enjoys playing with a soccer ball even when snow is laying around and the ball is almost frozen.

In the weekend our niece and nephew came to sleep over and they wanted to go caching with us. Here you can see Tommy walking around with the GPS receiver.

The dogs are having fun in the snow. And what a nice weather it was with the sun out there.

Here is Mila posing in the forest.

And here you can see us all walking around on a frozen stream.

And Brego has a strange habit when he is on the ice. The next movie tells it all.

Bearded Collie Walk, Leende

While on holiday a friend of us suggested to organize a bearded collie walk close to our home. It is a forest where dogs are allowed to walk freely. We thought that was a good idea en together we agreed to let it happen on the Sunday after our holiday.
And so it happened about 20 Bearded Collies were present with their bosses.
When the dogs are released they are always very happy and they start running with each other.

We walk about 7 KM in the area, that is a mixture of forest.

A couple of open meadows inside the forest, where the dogs start running every time we arrive at one.

And there are also two sand hills.

White sand which for a bearded collie owner is good news, since they don't get to dirty with this kind of sand.

But the most part is forest area.

Christmas Holiday, Germany

The last destination of our Christmas holiday was in Kalkar Germany, just across the border in Germany.
Although a holiday park is located there, we didn't visit that, because we came here to enjoy peace and silence. We were hoping for a quiet new-year arrival without a lot of fireworks.
We walked to the historical town of Kalkar, that was just about a small KM away from the camping site.

The dogs could run free for the first part.

But of course when we arrived at the town itself they had to be on the leash.

We did a tour around the town, and one of the points to visit was this Jewish church, where we actually were invited to enter the church (with the dogs, since they were Gods creatures as well). We politely refused, since there is always a chance that Brego could mark one of the benches with his urine.

We visited different areas in town, and a what we noticed was a lot of nice buildings.

And last but not least we visited the Dutch Windmill that is present in the town.

On the last day of the year we walked towards an area nearby with dunes, not exactly like dunes at the sea, but dunes created by the river Rhine a long time ago.

At this old tree remains we needed to make a picture with the dogs and our GPS. But the dogs almost couldn't sit still because the liked the hoar-frost that was on the tree.

On the next picture it is visible that the area was frosted all over.

On the first day of the year 2009 we took the bikes again to drive towards a castle in the neighbourhood. Since we were the only visitors on this part of the camping site the dogs could run free once in a while.

The castle Moyland that we visited on the background.

And on the way back we came across this little chapel.