Young Travel Writers 2015

Benjamin Yates, 8

Last updated 23rd July 2022

Author: Benjamin Yates
Age: 8

We went to a campsite in Holland called Duinrell. We got there by bus, plane, train and a taxi. We camped in a kind of tent hut. A tent hut has a wood floor but has a fabric roof and walls. My bedroom was tucked up high in a cupboard – it was the cosiest room in the tent. At Duinrell there was an indoor water park and a theme park. The water park was my favourite place because it had a double ring slide you could go on with two people and a scary drop slide that hurt a little when I hit the water.

On the first day we hired bikes (there were also go-karts that looked great fun!!!) from our campsite to cycle to Madurodam, the mini village at The Hague. It was a weird place because we are normally small in our city but we felt big like giants now. I tried to stop the water from flooding out of the dam. There were lots of other things for kids to do. One of the things was to put out the fire from a floating oilrig.

While we were at Madurodam we bought a bouncy ball to play with when we got to the seaside. The beaches were soft and big and we cycled for ages through the sand dunes to get back to Duinrell. I liked cycling in Holland because it was very flat, there were lots of separate bike paths and the bikes got ‘right of way’ so we didn’t have to stop for any traffic.

We were having our dinner at the Duinrell buffet restaurant one night when we heard some loud music starting.  We wondered where it was coming from so I went downstairs and discovered the music was a disco!!!  Also there was air hockey and four mini bowling alleys.

The next day for lunch we went to the pancake house just outside Duinrell. My pancake had ham, cheese and pepperoni, but it was all hidden underneath. I really liked it because it had toppings on it and it was much better than the pancakes we have in Scotland.

In The Hague there was a famous artist called Escher.  He drew very clever pictures.  One of them is a waterfall going down but the waters flowing up! We went to the museum showing his art.

At school I was reading about windmills so we cycled to see a real working windmill in Leiden.  When we were cycling there, we got stuck in a big crowd of people watching the Leiden marathon.

On the last day we went on a boat tour around Amsterdam. We saw the Anne Frank museum, where Anne was hiding with her family in the war. I think everyone should go to Duinrell if you like cycling because it’s fun and a very good place to cycle.