Our fall trip ended as they all do when we dropped François off at the storage. We had plenty of time in the morning to wrap up a few things to prepare François. The place we stayed in Stein was nice, a lot of farmers in the Netherlands seem to have set up side businesses as campgrounds. This one is nice and very new. It made for a good place to spend the last few days.
The one issue with the small campgrounds is that in all three we have stayed at the final kilometer or two to get there are on dike roads. Netherlands is rightfully famous for its systems of pumps and dikes that have allowed it to reclaim a lot of land. This land makes for great farm land. The dikes are pretty tall and narrow and usually there is water on one side. The single lane on top is two way and there are pull outs to allow vehicles to pass. People manage to get around each other using the pull outs and driveways of the farms and homes .
As we were leaving google routed us on a dike road for about 7 kilometers. We were doing fine until I came to a point where there were road signs saying restricted to vehicles less than 2.2 meters wide. François is about 2.4 meters wide. I sat there contemplating what to do. The narrow road did get a slight bit narrower but I thought we would make it. At that point luck intervened and a tractor pulling farm equipment went by me that was wider than François. I took off after him figuring if he could make it we certainly could and I had the added benefit of having him clear other traffic out of the way as long as I stayed close.
Things were going well until I saw a line of cars going the same direction as us stopped on the dike ahead. After a few minutes of idling I saw the farmer get out of the tractor and go ahead to see what was going on. He came back in a few minutes and asked me to follow him into a drive way to get out of the road. We both had to back across a narrow bridge into someones driveway.
He then set off to help direct traffic while Ton and I talked to the owner of the home whose driveway we had occupied. After 20 minutes or so the farmer came back and asked if I could move further down the road to another farm. When we got to the farm we had to get a couple of cars to move so we could go back by the barn and turn around. With the help of the owner of the farm we turned François around and when we were pointed in the right direction the semi-truck had gone by and it was smooth sailing. This whole event took about an hour, and I was impressed about how nonchalant everyone was about the whole thing, the homeowner and farmer were totally nonplussed to have us show up on their property. I guess it happens enough that they are used to it.
The rest of the day was uneventful.