Something that I wanted to do for a while now but which was always postponed because if the weather is great I'd rather go biking and if the weather is really bad it's too far and hazardous a drive. Returning to the Oosterschelde, in the province of Zeeland, the Netherlands. I have spent many a fine day here when I was still deepsea diving. We would dive on the change of the tide and spend the 6 hours in between just relaxing or enjoying the local horeca. I have been wanting to go back and do a long bike-ride there but obviously this should be done in the summer. Now there is too much wind and today also a lot of rain riding up to Wemeldinge and coming back over Goes. The Antwerpen circular drive was very treacherous with a very wet tarmac and a lot of cars going all over the place all at once. Riding up the 125K distance I just put the car on cruise-control because I wanted to save fuel. Not sure if I could tank in the Netherlands I also didn't go to the Oosterscheldebrug or Neeltje Jans. A couple of highlights I also want to include in my bike ride should it ever happen. For now I drove towards Wemeldinge and stopped at a location called 'the tettekes' . Here there were only a couple of cars - all Belgian licence plates - and I saw some divers exiting the water. The tide was low.
I took a couple of pictures and rode on along the levee road towards Wilheminadorp and the nearby diving spot 'Goessche Sas'. No divers here except for a couple of Dutch people who looked like they might go in the water later. The rain had stopped so I took a couple of minutes to look out over the expanse of the Oosterschelde, an estuary formed by blocking the sea entrance by means of huge waterworks. In early days it was one of two mouths of the Scheldt river. This river now enters the Northsea through the Westerschelde mouth. The entire region of the Oosterschelde has been made a National Park in 2002 and is known for its diving and delicious mussels. I rode back with the feeling that I must return here soon , fully fueled, and ride the extra distance towards the Oosterscheldebrug and the Neeltje Jans waterworks.
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