After finishing the Pieterpad in summer 2018, I did some more walking in Zuid Limburg, which as well as the Krijtlandpad brought me into contact with another long-distance route through the Netherlands, the Pelgrimspad.

This runs from Amsterdam, via 's-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch), to Maastricht. It takes a more westerly route than the Pieterpad, so you come through rather more "characteristic" Dutch scenery - polders, canals, windmills, big rivers - in the northern part of the route, then the Kempen (heath) country of North Brabant before you get into Limburg. It's fun to start in the middle of the busy city of Amsterdam and fight your way out into the country (although it doesn't really get properly peaceful until Day 3, when you're walking along the upper reaches of the river Amstel). Also unexpectedly fun to discover on Day 14 that you've just walked from Schiphol to Eindhoven Airport...

There's also an alternative end section that instead of finishing in the city of Maastricht takes you on to the Belgian border and links up with other international routes, including the Camino de Santiago. 

My Walk

I walked the first few stages of this route in Autumn 2018, then picked up the thread again about six months later. As of the beginning of May 2019, I'd completed about three-quarters of the walk; the rest was done in the next couple of weeks, apart from the stages in the Maas valley (Thorn-Roosteren-Sittard) which I probably won't do this year, because there's a major civil engineering project going on there to make the river more flood-tolerant, and by all accounts the walk won't be much fun until that's all settled down a bit.

The stages in the table are those I actually walked - as usual I made a few small changes from the suggested stages in the official guidebook, mostly for reasons of public transport accessibility: 

Day Pt No From To km km total Walked
1 1 1 Amsterdam CS Schiphol Oost 18.8 18.8 19/09/18
2 1 2 Schiphol Oost De Kwakel 12.4 31.2 20/09/18
3 1 3 De Kwakel Aarlanderveen 16.9 48.1 22/09/18
4 1 4 Aarlanderveen Reeuwijk 16.3 64.4 08/10/18
5 1 5 Reeuwijk Haastrecht 18.4 82.8 09/10/18
6 1 6 Haastrecht Groot-Ammers 16 98.8 11/10/18
7 1 7 Groot-Ammers Hardinxveld-Giessendam 23 121.8 04/04/19
8 1 8 Hardinxveld-Giessendam Rijswijk NB 18.9 140.7 05/04/19
9 1 9 Rijswijk NB Nederhemert Noord 21.6 162.3 08/04/19
10 1 10 Nederhemert Noord Drunen 16.8 179.1 09/04/19
11 1 11+12 Drunen Den Bosch 29.2 208.3 10/04/19
12 2 1 Den Bosch Haaren 18.9 227.2 16/09/18
13 2 2 Haaren Middelbeers 20.3 247.5 23/04/19
14 2 3 Middelbeers Steensel 21 268.5 24/04/19
15 2 4 Steensel Heeze 23.7 292.2 26/04/19
16 2 5 Heeze Maarheeze 25 317.2 29/04/19
17 2 6 Maarheeze Weert 14.7 331.9 30/04/19
18 2 7 Weert Thorn 26.4 358.3  03/05/19
19 2 8 Thorn Roosteren 13.4 371.7  
20 2 9 Roosteren Sittard 18 389.7  
21 2 10 Sittard Voerendaal 24.9 406.6  07/05/19
22 2 11 Voerendaal Schin op Geul 21.6 436.3 10/05/19
24 2 13 Schin op Geul Maastricht 22.1 458.3  13/05/19
24a 2 14 Cadier en Keer Mesch 13.9 472.2 14/05/19
24b 2 15 Mesch Visé 11.7 483.9 14/05/19