Fun fact: Vincent van Gogh’s mother is buried there.
Turns out I had beautiful nature in my backyard all along. These are the dunes just south of Katwijk, which is just a half hour bus ride from me.
i went for a walk but it was far too cold to take out my phone, so here is a picture from my back door. it’s up to my knees in some places!!
Car needed a run, so I drove to Risley Moss, a small nature reserve about 20 minutes from the center of Manchester.
Must have been about 15 years or so since I last visited, and in that time it’s barely changed. Of course, I have changed, so it comes with all of the usual baggage: it’s smaller than I remember, with the sounds of traffic on the motorway nearby ever present. Still, it was very pretty and spending time in an actual green space away from the city center was refreshing.
There was also this graffiti, featuring Bob and a figure who appears to be MF DOOM?
Hey it’s that place where the robot news lady from Deus Ex Human Revolution lives
Honestly glad they’re finally doing something with it.
I still can’t get over how pretty it is even relatively close to residential areas. But I went on a bit of a bus trip into North-Vancouver and visited a dam.
It’s genuinely staggering for me, as someone from the Netherlands. That I can take an hour long public transport bus and get into something like this. I’ve had to cry at least once due to the realization hitting me that I have this kind of nature that I’ve always loved so close, instead of having to drive 13 hours and take a ferry to get to Norway or something similar. I also had to cry a few other times due to everything that’s happened to me in the past year and now being here of all places.


























