After the Roar: Finding Quiet Beyond the Dutch Grand Prix
Our family has bonded over F1. Since Drive to Survive, we've each chosen our favorites, and we keep a family group chat devoted to discussing races even when we're scattered halfway around the world from each other. We fly team flags when our team wins — Mercedes for Ben, McLaren for Mollie, Ferrari for M and Jen. So when Eric and I decided to try life in the Netherlands a year ago, and then learned that The Last Lap would run at Zandvoort in August 2026, we knew Christmas 2025 gifts were easy.
No matter how many races you've watched on a screen, nothing prepares you for the thrill of being there in person — the ground actually shakes when the cars come through. Engines, ratchets, announcements you can only half hear because another car just roared past. Orange smoke. Tens of thousands of people packed into grandstands built into the dunes. Drones, helicopters, your racing idol scootering to his car. The smell of fuel, fried food, and spilled beer. Exciting. Exhausting.
In short, the Dutch Grand Prix does not do quiet, in any sensory way. So we had to find quiet for ourselves.
I've always found water calming — it's part of what I loved about Milwaukee and Chicago when we lived there. So when we planned the trip, we planned a getaway spot too: Thalassa Beach Houses, half a mile from the circuit. Just over a rise in the dunes, down toward the water, and then a peaceful stroll, with time to notice the waves, a lone sailboat near the horizon, the shells, the sand drifted up against the fences.
One particularly glorious moment of reset: storm clouds had rolled in from the North Sea, heavy and grey, stacking up over a strip of sand that, an hour earlier and a few hundred meters away, had been full of flags and noise. Out here, it was just wind, the clouds, and the tide going about its business, as if nothing loud had ever happened nearby.
Back at the house, we sat on the deck wrapped in jackets. We talked about the day. Or we didn't. We just were.
It took a while for the race to actually leave my head. My ears are still ringing now — Wednesday — if I'm honest. And I keep seeing my grown children and grandchildren soaking it all up: cheering for Lando because Mollie and her family couldn't join us, empathizing with Max Verstappen after his crash so early in a race that mattered so much to the Dutch. I think this weekend will stay with me for a long time.
This is, in a strange way, exactly what CaminoSapiens is about. Not the routes, not the mileage, not even the walking itself, really — it's about the instinct to step out of something loud and fast and into something slow, wherever you happen to find it. Most of the time that's on a long trail somewhere. But it's also about embracing the Formula 1 of life, with all its crashes and its bluster.
We went to Zandvoort for the race and its chaotic energy, and we got that. But we also came home with memories of grey clouds over empty sand — and a reminder that the beauty of life is in embracing all of it.