day 6

Hurrah, we have left Abdji de Westerburcht!

A german friend of ours (Hello Thomas if you are reading) commented that once you had cycled round a bit of Holland then there was no need to do it again.  The planners of our routes clearly didn't feel the same as at several points of the route today we had the "didn't we cycle this in the other direction a day or two ago?" conversation.  The answer was yes we had. As we are effectively taking circular routes on a circular tour so it would have been quite an achievement not to, and the recycling has at least mostly been in a different direction.

One thing that was very different about today's route was the visit to Kamp Westerbork. This is now a memorial to all those who passed through it on their way to concentration or labour camps.  Although the buildings have been pulled down, the outlines have been preserved to give some idea of layout and scale.  Today the sun was shinning, the birds were chirruping madly there were several parties of school children having their history lessons having arrived on swarms of bikes and I found it very difficult to imagine the horror and fear.  Ed is going to put together a post with some of the photos he took.

The ride itself was more woodland trails, so a bit dull to hear but great fun to do.  The best bit was arriving at the hotel for the night, Landhotel Diever (website is in Dutch with no English translation) is wonderful.  It has been the only hotel that has taken our bags to our room rather than leave them in reception (not even in a lugage store but by the reception desk).  To be fair it is the only hotel we have had a ground floor room and the bags are really heavy (since we didn't have to fly the packing light thing went out of the window.)  The food was just delicious, the staff were lovely the surroundings ... well, have a picture instead.

We hope to make it back here again one day.

Day 5, and a few thoughts on hotels...

Day five is brought to you in association with...



Somewhere on one of those official documents that we all have drawerfuls of, I have one, possibly a driving licence, wherein the issuing body has decided to use only the first part of my name and replace the rest with random characters, thus EDWARALOO. I mention this only because I was reminded of it by the start point for yesterday’s ride which moved us fom the overnight stop at Dwingaloo to Westerbork via a circuitous oute that you will have ead about elsewhere. (The R key has gone a bit intemittent, soy.)

While I'm talking about Dwingaloo, I meant to put this closeup of the "onion" atop the chuch in yesteday's "view from the hotel" picture, so hee it is:



I have taken to iding with a camea slung round me all the time, now that I have woked out how to do it without geatly increasing the isk of stangling myself if something bad happens, this means I am able to grab views of the oad ahead and surrounding scenery without having to stop and fumble in a camera bag each time, thus scenes like these:







I am however getting ahead of myself as they are from later in the day. The rain in the picture at the top of this post, (which also doubles as the "view from the hotel window" picture) and the fact that we didn't have to have our luggage ready for collection by 9am, and Sarah displaying some cold symptoms all conspired to mean that we didn't get on the bike 'till well after midday. I took a wander around Westerbork in the rain in the morning, and found the windmill of the day for you as I know that that is all you came by for:


(If I'd thought to do a video instead of a still photo you could have enjoyed the old piece of dishwasher revolving as a water feature at the rear right of the scene.)

I don't know if Jackie White is reading any of this stuff, (or anyone else for that matter? Hello, is there anyone there?) If so, here is the town library, directly opposite the windmill above:



As always, click image for larger version, and yes, every library we've seen has been as pretty

By late morning the rain was easing off and we ventured forth. The planned trip today was a round trip of about 60km, but we decided that we would head off to a preserved village (Orvelte, Google for it, I only took a 'phone camera as it was raining) for a look around and see how we felt after. Very pretty, filled with plenty of subversive shops designed to part simple townyfolk from their punishingly expensive Euros (or YoYos as they're known in parts of Ireland apparently.) Happily we were reasonably safe as the Tandem has limited capacity to bring home a life-sized Noddy Holder themed elf:



We did a circuit of the village in a light drizzle, Sarah decided that she was feeling much better for being out and about (feather pillow allergy we now think,) so we made off for the national Hunebed centre. We headed to the café on our arrival for a meal of spicy brains:



Unfortunately, despite arriving before the place closed we had spent enough time in the café that we weren't allowed in. Ho hum. We'd spotted a potential eatery in Orvelte so it was back there for supper thence home for a shower and bed...

Ah, yes, I was going to do something about hotels, but it's late, and I need my bed, so I'll be brief.
That shower and bed, were sadly both located in the “Abdij de Westerburcht.”
Imagine if you will a hotel decorated entirely by someone who wanted to create a Bavarian Gothic castle feel, but whose only experience of such things was derived from Disney films. We are in a small broom cupboard at the back of the hotel with a good view of next door’s garden shed for an outlook. Frank would go home from a stay here with all his prejudices about “abroad” safely intact.



I’ve just run “Abdij” through Google’s online translation thingy, and I’m surprised to learn that it means “abbey,” not “mock-Gothic monstrosity” as I had assumed. Behind the fibreglass stonework and the school-drama-dept standard castle doors there is a very ordinary 1970s Dutch hotel, and absolutely no evidence of any abbey. Happily I can report that the three other hotels we've stayed in since starting this adventure have all been lovely.

(I'll let Sarah do Hunebeds in a future post.)

Night night,

Dear Doctor...

Ever since I took up tandem cycling I have been accompanied on my rides by a disembodied voice. Usually the voice tells me which way to go and comments on the pretty flowers. Just occasionally it tells me that I'm going too fast around a corner.
This morning the voice told me to be grateful that it wasn't singing "The Mouse That Lived In A Windmill." Should I be concerned..?

an excuse by way of explanation

The observant amongst you will have noted that the posts about the ride are going up a day or two behind the stats.  This is mainly due to the poor internet facilities at the hotel and the fact that by the time we have booked in at the hotel, showered and eaten I'm ready for bed and Ed has his brain full of editing the pictures he has taken along the way.  Now we are at the end of the first week I shall get some catching up done.

day 4

I don't know if there is an Esmerelda living in Dwingeloo, but the church bells rang on the 1/2 hour for her all night.  Apart from that and the ridiculous internet arrangements we have enjoyed our stay here.  This morning we got to try a Dutch tandem that was arranged so I could sit on the front for a change.   It would have been fine but for Ed throwing his weight about on the back!

Todays ride was a figure 8 through the Nationaal Park Dwingelderveld and then onto Westerbork for two nights stay there.  The Park is mainly wood trails around a central scrubland with a few lakes in it.  The weather at long last has improved and it was gloriously sunny and warm.  Navigationally the highlight was the closed cycle path along which we were supposed to cycle.  There was a diversion in place that would have taken us on the path planned for later in the day, so we bravely ignored that and relied on a main road to miss out the closed section.  Easy!  Having nearly completed the second loop we came across a second diversion  This meant we missed a bit more forest trail for main road, a real shame as they are such fun.

I can't keep the suspense up any longer.. The reason we have refused to change the computer to km is (small pause for fanfares and champagne corks)

Not the greatest picture, but that is the odometer clicking over 1000 miles. That is since we have owned it, not while we have been away.  1000 miles on a bike. 1000 miles on this bike. It feels like a real landmark.

Now for the windmill of the day

This windmill had been quite heavily restored and was open to the public at weekends only so we missed the opportunity to see inside.   

day 3

The strangest thing about setting out this morning was knowing that we wouldn’t be coming back to Hotel de Harmonie.  Tonight’s stay is at the Hotel Wesseling in a small village called Dwingeloo. 

The route through country roads and forest trails looked confusing ‘till I realised that the map provided (which covered four separate sheets) had been copied from two different maps and reproduced at four different scales with overlap between some and gaps missing on others.  Not a problem, the written notes should sort it out. So I sat down with the written notes and was able to place 28 out of 65 of the waypoints on the map. Those not found included ones that related to entering and leaving village signs which could be any distance from the village marked on the map and those following a particular cycle route which wasn’t marked on any of the maps. 

There are a large number of competing cycling organisations here, and a vast number of cycle paths. Each of these groups publishes maps of suggested cycle tours, and so almost every junction on a cycle path has at least five posts each with at least one of the competing colour coded route markers on it.  There are so many different ways of marking cycle routes.  The ones marked on the maps that we’ve been given are ANWB numbers that may appear on small cream and red mushrooms or on blue and white striped sign posts.  You can tell the difference on the map because one has a Y-ended marker the other has a dot, so you have at least half an idea of what you are looking for.  There are also normal road signs which are red on a white background just for cyclists.  There are green numbers in green circles which appear to be leisure routes and there are also hexagonal signs which seem to be regional interest routes, then there are the coloured post, the painted stones, the…  Our notes seem to use the hexagonal signs and ANWB numbers.  There are distance markings on our notes, but they are in km and our bike computer is in miles.  We won’t change it for reasons that will become apparent in tomorrows post.  Also on two different routes covering the same bit of road, the distance covered is different, not by a lot, but by more than the difference between some of the notes.

By the time you are actually at a point it is usually not too difficult to work out which sign post you are looking at, unless you are at one of the junctions that has the same number as the one at the junction 10m down the road, which also has a road name the same as the junction you are standing at. This happens quite a lot as the cycle route that follows a particular road has the same name as the road it follows, even if they are some distance apart.

If I have made it sound difficult, it hasn’t been that bad.  A few minutes head scratching provides a solution which, when wrong, is easily corrected by turning round and going the other way.

Anyway the ride today was my favourite so far.  The woodland trails were just lovely, both the scenery and the trail itself which was covered with crushed sea shells.  The only down side today is that we have managed to rip a hole in the bottom of one of the panniers.  We haven’t lost anything fortunately but we are having to be careful about how we pack it as the thread that was in the hotel sewing kit may not hold it ‘till we get back to the gaffer tape in the car.

Apologies...

...for the lack of new entries, we have fallen foul of assuming that internet access would be widely available here, but sadly not. We have a few days of entries ready, and will hopefully be able to put them up this evening, in the meantime, here is the view from our room at the Hotel that we stayed in on Sunday night: