In June, it was time to try and go travelling again! Despite all rules and regulations, we decided to drive to the UK to visit friends and family. We had to spend 5 days in quarantine upon arrival – a time period that got extended when the mail service lost my day 5 test-to-release… In the end I ended up paying for a really expensive additional test to get myself released. Overall, I did 4 corona tests in/for the UK and spent 8 days in quarantine despite the fact that I’m fully vaccinated. So annoying!

Once released, I took a train to Reading to meet up with my friend Andi who I hadn’t seen in 7 long years! It was really good to connect again and spend some relaxed days together.

One day, we went into Reading and checked out the few sights that the city has to offer. Some old ruins and buildings and an interesting museum. If you’re in the UK for tourism, Reading is definitely not the place to stop by… but if you find yourself there for one or the other reason (like myself), then it’s a nice town to see!

Another day, we went on a day trip to Oxford which is an easy 1h train ride from Reading. I expected a pretty old city, but what I didn’t expect is to find such an overwhelming amount of beautiful buildings and streets to wander through! One day was almost not enough, we actually ended up rushing a bit…

It felt a bit like a town straight out of a Harry Potter movie and I definitely could have spent a couple more hours there. Unfortunately, some sights were still closed due to corona regulations, so we mainly walked aroud and looked at old historic buildings from the outside.

After a couple of days of freedom in the UK, it was time to hop on a plane to Alicante, Spain, where I had booked a one-week rock climbing course. Fortunately, Spain accepted my vaccination certificate and I didn’t have to quarantine or do any extra tests this time! I spent a week in a beautiful villa in the hills North of Alicante, with beautiful views…

I very much enjoyed the quiet atmosphere and relaxing evenings up there. I also had to get a lot of administrative things done to prepare my next chapter in life (more about that soon), so the evenings and the rest day were never boring and actually filled with work. Annoyingly, I also had to find a way to get tested before returning to the Netherlands, which was not that easy given my remote location and that I was only going to be in Alicante on the weekend where a lot of things would be closed. I did eventually find a solution with a quick test immediately before my flight Monday noon, but it felt a bit risky and I was definitely nervous until I got my (negative) results!

Enough about corona bullsh*t rules. The climbing itself was really good! I had booked a performance coaching course combined with an introduction to trad climbing. So part of the week was focussed on improving my climbing technique while 2 days were spent on trad. While it was fun to learn something new (trad), I wonder if I went into it a bit too quickly, given that I had only started climbing not too long ago. In hindsight, I should have probably just taken a full week performance coaching course as my climbing skills definitely improved, but I felt like I definitely could have used 2 more days of coaching.

However, by the end of the week, I definitely felt like I had improved my technique and learned a lot. I didn’t have enough time to improve my max. send grade, but I did validate my improvement a couple of weeks later in Berdorf when I sent my first 6c (+).

After the course, I had 1.5 days to see Alicante which kind of turned into one full day, as I ended up being too hungover the next day to do anything else but show up at the airport for my quick test and flight. But Alicante is small anyways! You can actually easily see everything in one day. I started the day a little later than intended with a walk through the old historic quarter ‚El Barrio‘. Cute little streets, flower pots and lots of steps! Really pretty and some nice views over the city as well!

The views only improved when I walked up higher to Santa Bárbara fortress which thrones above the town. It was quite a sweaty hike up in the summer heat, but the fortress was nice to see and the views were beautiful in all directions!

After a late morning coffee and snack, I then explored the harbour area with a pretty promenade and great views with the fortress sitting in the background.

Despite the high temperatures, I gave Playa Postiguet a miss, as I was by myself and didn’t have anyone to watch my valuables. I walked around town a bit more, past some old buildings and parks – but realised soon that there was not that much more to see and that I had ticked off the most beautiful parts of the city already!

In the evening, I met up with some people in the hostel and went to watch the football world cup finals. Loads of fun, especially as everyone migrated to the beach afterwards and the whole thing turned into a beach party! So good to have some fun again after all the lockdowns and rules. Next morning, I headed to the airport and was pretty happy to get negative test results so that I could get onto my plane back to Amsterdam.