Today the weather was very nice, way too nice to sit inside all day. After discussing a little what we could do, Marion and I both liked the idea to go cycling a bit. So I checked if we could borrow a bicycle for Marion and luckily we could (we really have to get bicycle for her here so we don’t need to borrow one all the time).
We went in the direction of the town of Castricum…
In the picture above the route we went. On my iPhone I have a app that tracks through GPS the route you follow (it is made for running, but it works for this as well). When we left home, I activated the app and the picture above is the result. The numbers show the direction we went, but because some parts of the route are overlapping it is a bit unclear, but I think it will show where we went.
First funny thing was that in Castricum there was year fair. Exactly a year ago I decided to go cycling on the same day. Last year I visited the fair, but this year we did not, because neither of us was in the mood of having many people around us.
Right after Castricum we found a small town called Bakkum. That name brought back some memories. In the past my family did go there for holidays. Too long ago for me to have any memories of it, but I can remember that my mother told about it. I never realized that this town called Bakkum was here.
From there we went straight into beautiful nature area that would lead us to the dunes and the sea. I have to admit, I love this area near Heemskerk, but it is even more beautiful over there. I think that is mainly because it is there all more wide and more spacious.
While I was making some pictures, suddenly Marion tapped me on my shoulder and pointed to the other side of the road while making me clear not to stay silent. There was on some distance a roe
watching us. I was able to quickly some pictures before the roe decided to leave us weird creatures behind. Not the best picture, but still I am very happy that I was able to make it.
We meant to go “Castricum aan Zee”, but somewhere we must have taken a wrong turn. We ended up with this very steep path leading over a rather dune. We could hear the sea behind it and we both wanted to see the sea. So we went for this steep path…. which turned half way up into very fine dune-sand where I sank till over my ankles in away. This made the way up very hard. My condition could be a bit better, but Marion’s is good. But both of us where completely out of breath when we were finally on top of the dune… but we made it and there was the sea…
We sat for some time on the beach enjoying the views of the sea. We chatted a bit. Somehow the sea always helps me to clear my mind. After a while we decided to go head in the direction of home again, but first we had to get over that dune again because our bicycles where on the other side and from this side the path up was just as steep.
Once back with our bicycles we made us on our way home. Not in a hurry, but just in the direction of Heemskerk again. Back home the app on my iPhone told me that the complete trip was a little more then 32 kilometers. Enough to make me feel some bones…. :).
Back home we drank some refreshing. Took a shower and slipped into something more comfortable. After “chatting” a bit, Marion started to pack her things because she would leave later this evening and I moved to the kitchen to make a nice dinner for us.
For the very first time I made a dish with mussels. A challenge I only dared to do after consulting Miranda, but she was right. It is really not that hard.
Basically I fried some mushrooms, garlic and cayenne pepper in hot olive oil. I added some white wine and made it all boil and mixed the washed mussels to it. As Miranda warned me, don’t cook the mussels too long. 3 Minutes is more then enough.
After 3 minutes I removed the mussels from the pan (throwing those mussels that did not open away). To the pan I added in pieces cut tomato and parsley. Let this all cook for 10 minutes. Added some linguine that I prepared in another pan. At last I added the mussels back again and made it all nice warm again. I served to it a baguette and a green salad.
It all tasted just wonderful. The bowl on the table contained just a part of all the mussels I prepared. We managed to eat about 1.5kg of the 2kg mussels that I prepared. Not bad at all. We were really hungry after such a active day 🙂