and it’s at times like these that nothing less than a red-hot monkey bath will do…
Also,the sea coast of the Friesland (where the Fresian cows come from) region is spectacularly pretty and we highly recommend it as a destination.
Tandem at Gibbs Hill Lighthouse, Bermuda
Thursday, 9 June 2011
Day 13, an alternative perspective...
Jackpot! A hotel room with a bath! Showers are all very well, but after 45 miles on a bicycle saddle, at least one part of you feels like
and it’s at times like these that nothing less than a red-hot monkey bath will do…
Also,the sea coast of the Friesland (where the Fresian cows come from) region is spectacularly pretty and we highly recommend it as a destination.
and it’s at times like these that nothing less than a red-hot monkey bath will do…
Also,the sea coast of the Friesland (where the Fresian cows come from) region is spectacularly pretty and we highly recommend it as a destination.
A word in your ear about the Goat Economy, Sir?
Are YOU doing YOUR bit for the Goat Economy?
How about YOU?
You’re probably exempt, though
Most Dutch TV is imported, and they don’t dub any of it into Dutch, they just subtitle it, so all Dutch TV users are immersed in various foreign languages spoken by native speakers everytime that they turn on the box. This, along with simply wanting to, is widely held to be the reason why it is quite hard to find anyone Dutch who isn’t more or less fluent in English, and a good many have German and French too.
But what about the Goat Economy?
I don’t know if “The Good Life” was ever shown here, but if it were it might explain the Dutch national obsession with Goats and, to a lesser extent, sheep, chickens and the occasional deer, rabbit or ostrich (although that could have been an emu, it’s so hard to tell…)
As a rule Dutch houses seem a little smaller than ours but they compensate by using open-plan arrangements to maximise the use of the space. The big difference seems to be that the houses all sit on bigger plots. You rarely see terraces of houses outside of town centres, and if you give a Dutchman a piece of land, he will buy a goat or three. Even in built up areas, just a few streets from the main street you will find houses with their front gardens fenced off and a range of livestock observing you as you pass. These gardens don’t need to be large, 5m x 3m seems to be enough to support a couple of goats or sheep and a few chickens. The goats seem entirely happy as long as they have some kind of structure to climb on, and generally look quite smug as they look down on you from the top of an old picnic table or some such. If he doesn’t keep livestock the other animal of choice is the horse / pony. There are 6 million people in Holland, and I suspect that there is a horse or pony for nearly everyone. Mostly this is out in the country, but we have seen horses and ponies kept in modest front gardens in town, sometimes with a goat or two for company. Whilst on the subject of horses, the Dutch seem to have mastered the art of breeding tiny horses, (as distinct from ponies, which are probably the most common horsey-type creatures here.) These tiny horses are small enough that you would have no trouble picking one up and running off with it, they really are no bigger than a large dog. I’ve been trying to get a good picture for a while but they’re quite furtive beasts...
Breakfast update
It seems that I may have been a bit harsh on the hotel in Schagen. Apparently there was a griddle type thing tucked away near the raw eggs, presumably to allow patrons to fry their own?
This weeks's breakfast quote:
“Blast, I seem to have covered myself in Laughing Cow…”
This weeks's breakfast quote:
“Blast, I seem to have covered myself in Laughing Cow…”
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
day 13
I thought I booked a cycling holiday. My buttocks seem to concur with this. Ed thinks it is in fact an eating holiday, which we have done plenty of (for those who want a little more information before they vote), but I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time on boats today.
So the day starts as usual with a continental breakfast, though a little sparse compared to those that we've had recently. What was odd was that it was at 7.15, and served in the very same posh Chinese restaurant that a few hours before had provided us with a very good chinese meal. We even sat at the same table...
The ferry trip from Enkhuizen to Stavoren took about an hour and twenty and left the harbour at 08:30.
The townsfolk of Enkhuizen turned out in force to give us a good send off in spite of the weather.
Yep, we had to be stood on the quay breakfasted, checked out and ready to leave by 08:15. That is in the morning, and we're an hour ahead of you lot too, remember... Fortunately it was calm enough for me to nap on the way over so I missed most of it but I was awake to see this
We're told that the total flock numbered well into the thousands. They apparently live on an island locally and are the bain of the fishermans lives as between them they eat 10,000 kilos of fish a day! Although not an uncommon sight for the regular ferry users I had never seen anything like it before.
It took 15 minutes or more for the whole flock to go by, flying much faster than a boat that was itself doing nearly 20mph in a column several birds wide they stretched from horizon to horizon for the whole quarter hour.
Also on the ferry were a party of school children off on a cycling trip. Surprisingly this improved Ed's experience as one of the parents is a baker and provided cake, so much cake they were giving it free to anyone on the ferry.
The second boat was a trip of a couple of minutes across a canal that they didn't want to build a bridge over. You pressed a bell and shortly the pilot got his shoes on, came out of his house, drove the boat over, picked us up and took us back across. All for the princely sum of 1 euro. Marvelous. I might be exagerating to call it a boat, more sort of a motorised raft with railings.
Today's route took us along the edge of the lake, but the wrong side of a dyke so we couldn't see it, and then across country to Oudemirdum. Longest route so far and we are begign to feel it. Usually the fidgeting in the saddle doesn't start till about 35 miles but this week it is nearer 25 necessitating some extra stops along the way. One of these stops included lunch. As breakfast had been very early and somewhat shorter than our usual hour due to the unseemly time it had been taken we stopped at a riverside cafe. There was a busy lifting bridge which we sat and watched till we fell asleep pretending to do crosswords.
The maps and notes seem to have been a bit better so far this week, but maybe I'm just getting used to them. We have been suffering again at the hands of road works though as we keep coming across bits where they are relaying the path or a bridge is broken and they don't always put up diversion signs leading us at one point to be crossing a field and ending up the wrong side of a canal.
Still we made it, and that meant that I got to eat my favourite dessert of the holiday so far, a pina colada sorbet with ginger marmalade and sugared cashew nuts. So who's up for dessert at mine when we get back? One just for Lara, the bread served with our salad (the first and only time both Ed and I ordered salad as a main!!) came on a board with a herb butter, rock salt and a shot glass of olive oil to be served with 2ml pipettes, just like in chemistry at school. We were too busy eating to get a photo, but will try and remember tomorrow.
And finally, wotd.
An unusual one this. We've been here for nearly two weeks now and have seen more windmills than you could possibly imagine, and that's ignoring the vast windfarms that have appeared all over the North Sea coastal regions. At several points during the last few days riding we've been able to see four traditional 'mills in the view, and one on the horizon was actually going round. Thus far they have all been of one type, where the cap goes round with the sails to face into the wind and the rest of the structure is fixed. Todays wotd is our first post mill, where much of the mill is sat on a central post and so most of the building turns to face the wind. It was also comparitively small.
Sorry this one has taken a while to post, we're having internet trouble again...
So the day starts as usual with a continental breakfast, though a little sparse compared to those that we've had recently. What was odd was that it was at 7.15, and served in the very same posh Chinese restaurant that a few hours before had provided us with a very good chinese meal. We even sat at the same table...
The ferry trip from Enkhuizen to Stavoren took about an hour and twenty and left the harbour at 08:30.
The townsfolk of Enkhuizen turned out in force to give us a good send off in spite of the weather.
Yep, we had to be stood on the quay breakfasted, checked out and ready to leave by 08:15. That is in the morning, and we're an hour ahead of you lot too, remember... Fortunately it was calm enough for me to nap on the way over so I missed most of it but I was awake to see this
We're told that the total flock numbered well into the thousands. They apparently live on an island locally and are the bain of the fishermans lives as between them they eat 10,000 kilos of fish a day! Although not an uncommon sight for the regular ferry users I had never seen anything like it before.
It took 15 minutes or more for the whole flock to go by, flying much faster than a boat that was itself doing nearly 20mph in a column several birds wide they stretched from horizon to horizon for the whole quarter hour.
Also on the ferry were a party of school children off on a cycling trip. Surprisingly this improved Ed's experience as one of the parents is a baker and provided cake, so much cake they were giving it free to anyone on the ferry.
The second boat was a trip of a couple of minutes across a canal that they didn't want to build a bridge over. You pressed a bell and shortly the pilot got his shoes on, came out of his house, drove the boat over, picked us up and took us back across. All for the princely sum of 1 euro. Marvelous. I might be exagerating to call it a boat, more sort of a motorised raft with railings.
Today's route took us along the edge of the lake, but the wrong side of a dyke so we couldn't see it, and then across country to Oudemirdum. Longest route so far and we are begign to feel it. Usually the fidgeting in the saddle doesn't start till about 35 miles but this week it is nearer 25 necessitating some extra stops along the way. One of these stops included lunch. As breakfast had been very early and somewhat shorter than our usual hour due to the unseemly time it had been taken we stopped at a riverside cafe. There was a busy lifting bridge which we sat and watched till we fell asleep pretending to do crosswords.
The maps and notes seem to have been a bit better so far this week, but maybe I'm just getting used to them. We have been suffering again at the hands of road works though as we keep coming across bits where they are relaying the path or a bridge is broken and they don't always put up diversion signs leading us at one point to be crossing a field and ending up the wrong side of a canal.
Still we made it, and that meant that I got to eat my favourite dessert of the holiday so far, a pina colada sorbet with ginger marmalade and sugared cashew nuts. So who's up for dessert at mine when we get back? One just for Lara, the bread served with our salad (the first and only time both Ed and I ordered salad as a main!!) came on a board with a herb butter, rock salt and a shot glass of olive oil to be served with 2ml pipettes, just like in chemistry at school. We were too busy eating to get a photo, but will try and remember tomorrow.
And finally, wotd.
An unusual one this. We've been here for nearly two weeks now and have seen more windmills than you could possibly imagine, and that's ignoring the vast windfarms that have appeared all over the North Sea coastal regions. At several points during the last few days riding we've been able to see four traditional 'mills in the view, and one on the horizon was actually going round. Thus far they have all been of one type, where the cap goes round with the sails to face into the wind and the rest of the structure is fixed. Todays wotd is our first post mill, where much of the mill is sat on a central post and so most of the building turns to face the wind. It was also comparitively small.
Sorry this one has taken a while to post, we're having internet trouble again...
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
day 12
Schagen to Enkhuizen. An odd combination of countryside, the first section was all short straight dykes and country roads with loads of wild life and windmills.
The second section was 14 km on a single straight road through the suburbs. The promised rain failed to materialize, so being British we are going to complain about that and the fact it lead to both of us now being a little on the lobster side of healthy.
We arrived quite early giving us a chance to buy ferry tickets for tomorrow's jaunt across what used to be called the south sea untill they built a dyke transforming it in to an immense inland lake.
Enkhuizen is incredibly pretty so it was a joy to be able to wander around it. There is so much to see and do here and not enough time so it is definitely on our list of places to come back to.
Bizzarely the hotel tonight is a Chinese resturaunt and we are now in the happy position to tell you that Dutch Chinese food is certainly the equal of good English Chinese food. Superior, even, if you include the fact that with your fortune cookie you also get a piece of high quality nougat and a hazelnut praline choclate. You will also be pleased to know that the fortunes are equally baffling (and they were in English as well as Dutch). Whilst I enjoyed recognition with
"Your endeavours succeed because you work hard."
Ed had the mildly alarming
"Get Ready! Next week will be great!"
It might make heading home a bit easier knowing you are going to have a good week when you get there. Hmm.
I am sat on the bed writing this with the window open and outside a gaggle of teenagers have gathered, one of whom can burp "yabba dabba do" loudly and convincingly in a rumbling bass, some things are the same the world over.
Have some birds and stuff....
The second section was 14 km on a single straight road through the suburbs. The promised rain failed to materialize, so being British we are going to complain about that and the fact it lead to both of us now being a little on the lobster side of healthy.
We arrived quite early giving us a chance to buy ferry tickets for tomorrow's jaunt across what used to be called the south sea untill they built a dyke transforming it in to an immense inland lake.
Enkhuizen is incredibly pretty so it was a joy to be able to wander around it. There is so much to see and do here and not enough time so it is definitely on our list of places to come back to.
Bizzarely the hotel tonight is a Chinese resturaunt and we are now in the happy position to tell you that Dutch Chinese food is certainly the equal of good English Chinese food. Superior, even, if you include the fact that with your fortune cookie you also get a piece of high quality nougat and a hazelnut praline choclate. You will also be pleased to know that the fortunes are equally baffling (and they were in English as well as Dutch). Whilst I enjoyed recognition with
"Your endeavours succeed because you work hard."
Ed had the mildly alarming
"Get Ready! Next week will be great!"
It might make heading home a bit easier knowing you are going to have a good week when you get there. Hmm.
I am sat on the bed writing this with the window open and outside a gaggle of teenagers have gathered, one of whom can burp "yabba dabba do" loudly and convincingly in a rumbling bass, some things are the same the world over.
Have some birds and stuff....
Schagen church tower, home of the musical bells
Tower at what was the entrance to the old port at Enkhuizen.
I like the way the anchors give it a slightly "caddish" appearance.
And not forgetting the ever popular Windmill of the day feature, (something like "molen di dag" in Dutch I think. It was very cloudy when we passed this so picture is not the best, sorry windmill fans. Someone lives in it and so we couldn't get as close as we have been to some of the others.
There is also a big steam pumping shed directly behind it which issomething we've not seen before.
Chimney isn't actually bent, just lazy photography...
A few thoughts under the general heading of “Breakfast”... and music...
The continentals do supply a decent sized breakfast, which we are making full use of. We substantially underestimated the amount it would cost to keep ourselves fed for more than a fortnight, so we are tending to wade in heavily to whatever is on offer of a morning. Nature seems to have “blessed” me with a system that copes well with what Formula 1 types would call a “One Stop Strategy,” wherein I eat enough at breakfast to see me through the day. Sarah is coping less well, due I suspect only to a shortage of storage space.
The typical continental breakfast contains:
A hard boiled egg (and I do mean hard)
A round of bread and cheese
A croissant
Some yoghurt, possibly taken with a fruit salad
Several types of sticky fruit cake / sweet bread
More bread, this time with sprinkles and / or Nutella (or similar)
Fried bacon and (usually rubbery) scrambled eggs
Diverse buns
Cereal
Orange juice
Coffee
Herbal tea
As your breakfast correspondent I have found it necessary to sample as many of the above as possible whenever they are offered.
No one hotel has achieved perfection at breakfast time, but with a vista of curled-up cheese slices and fizzy fruit salad the “Abdij de Westerburcht” certainly underachieved. That said, it made a welcome change to be entertained there by a loop of Cheesy Listening / Lounge Singer / Big Band renditions of such classics as “Without You“ and 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love” while we attempted to eat our own body weight in cheese on those two mornings. Before you point out the obvious contradiction I should let you know that the previous three breakfasts had been taken against a background of “Now that’s what I call Music ’86,” and that was in two separate hotels.
I once worked with a Dutch electrician who referred to the channel ferries as time machines, as he felt that every time he came to England on one it was like going back in time. Having heard what the Dutch choose to listen to I’ve got news for him… To put it another way, I thought that the day would never dawn when “The Wind of Change” by The Scorpions would be the highlight of my musical day, but that day dawned at about 6am Dutch time on Tuesday 31st May, 2011.
Saturday, June 4th, 2011. Today’s breakfast taken to “American style soft-rack ballads of the 80s & 90s” which I had assumed to be another “Now that’s…” style collection, but which in actual fact is a radio station. Is there no part of the day at which the Dutch consider it inappropriate, or at the very least, bad form to subject the plucky but unprepared English traveller to “The Wind of Change” without at least an hours warning? It seems not.
*Stop Press*
At this morning’s breakfast in Schagen there were no fewer than four different egg choices on offer; Hard Boiled; Soft Boiled; Rubbery Scrambled and Raw. Yes, that’s right, raw. I tried two, and raw wasn’t one of them. In my world, there is only one circumstance where it is acceptable to offer someone a raw egg to eat unless you are a quack doctor, and that is when you are serving it atop a steaming pile of my favourite Scandinavian dish, Pytt i Panna. (Don’t try this at home; I am an experienced professional, trained to deal with such things.) Pytt i panna is a high calorie food intended for use in the Swedish winter… This is the best online recipe that I could find for it, but it's wrong in one key detail, the egg should be cracked open but left in it’s shell and placed on top of the food, cooking gently (in theory) on the way to the table. Sarah estimates about 4000 calories per serving if done properly.
Pytt i panna recipe
.
The typical continental breakfast contains:
A hard boiled egg (and I do mean hard)
A round of bread and cheese
A croissant
Some yoghurt, possibly taken with a fruit salad
Several types of sticky fruit cake / sweet bread
More bread, this time with sprinkles and / or Nutella (or similar)
Fried bacon and (usually rubbery) scrambled eggs
Diverse buns
Cereal
Orange juice
Coffee
Herbal tea
As your breakfast correspondent I have found it necessary to sample as many of the above as possible whenever they are offered.
No one hotel has achieved perfection at breakfast time, but with a vista of curled-up cheese slices and fizzy fruit salad the “Abdij de Westerburcht” certainly underachieved. That said, it made a welcome change to be entertained there by a loop of Cheesy Listening / Lounge Singer / Big Band renditions of such classics as “Without You“ and 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love” while we attempted to eat our own body weight in cheese on those two mornings. Before you point out the obvious contradiction I should let you know that the previous three breakfasts had been taken against a background of “Now that’s what I call Music ’86,” and that was in two separate hotels.
I once worked with a Dutch electrician who referred to the channel ferries as time machines, as he felt that every time he came to England on one it was like going back in time. Having heard what the Dutch choose to listen to I’ve got news for him… To put it another way, I thought that the day would never dawn when “The Wind of Change” by The Scorpions would be the highlight of my musical day, but that day dawned at about 6am Dutch time on Tuesday 31st May, 2011.
Saturday, June 4th, 2011. Today’s breakfast taken to “American style soft-rack ballads of the 80s & 90s” which I had assumed to be another “Now that’s…” style collection, but which in actual fact is a radio station. Is there no part of the day at which the Dutch consider it inappropriate, or at the very least, bad form to subject the plucky but unprepared English traveller to “The Wind of Change” without at least an hours warning? It seems not.
*Stop Press*
At this morning’s breakfast in Schagen there were no fewer than four different egg choices on offer; Hard Boiled; Soft Boiled; Rubbery Scrambled and Raw. Yes, that’s right, raw. I tried two, and raw wasn’t one of them. In my world, there is only one circumstance where it is acceptable to offer someone a raw egg to eat unless you are a quack doctor, and that is when you are serving it atop a steaming pile of my favourite Scandinavian dish, Pytt i Panna. (Don’t try this at home; I am an experienced professional, trained to deal with such things.) Pytt i panna is a high calorie food intended for use in the Swedish winter… This is the best online recipe that I could find for it, but it's wrong in one key detail, the egg should be cracked open but left in it’s shell and placed on top of the food, cooking gently (in theory) on the way to the table. Sarah estimates about 4000 calories per serving if done properly.
Pytt i panna recipe
.
Monday, 6 June 2011
day 11
Still no maps. Hotel reception was going to phone the company for us when they had finished checkouts and so on. I emailed them just in case reception forgot..
We do have some route notes that were sent to us before we left England, but leaving the hotel and relying on them? It was due to rain heavily from lunchtime and all afternoon. Did we really want to go out, risk getting horribly lost and absolutely drenched to boot?
No we didn't so we stayed in, so here is a brief musical interlude:
It's a recording of the bells in the church across the square from the hotel. Currently covered in scaffoldng but still chiming a tune every 15 minutes through the day. When we first arrived we thought it was rather fun. After an hour we were saying "I hope that doesn't go on all night," fortunately it stops at ten pm. It seems to play different tunes at different times during the day. So far we have had "Tulips from Amsterdam" and "Que Sera Sera" as well as many we couldn't name. Anyone know the tune posted? (Sorry about the quality of the recording, it was done with the voice memo function on an old mobile, they do sound much more musical in reality.)
Only kidding (about the staying in, not the bells sady). The hotel lent us a map and off we went. The countryside here is very different, more up and down. Not hills exactly, but today we cycled along the dykes which are about 5 m above the surrounding land. This gave us a great view of windmills, both ancient and modern, sheep and fields. One very big view was over the North Sea as we came along the sea wall. One interesting varient on the thatched roof theme is the part thatched part tiled where on one face of the roof the thatch is cut away into a pattern showing roof tiles. We are assuming it is a purely decorative thing as we can't think of any useful purpose other than cost reduction. We are assured that thatched rooves are not the cheap option.
Heading back inland took us across some dunes which were massive and fortunately had good paths on them so we didn't get too much sand in our nice new chain. It is a bit too late in the season for fields of tulips but there was one hint of what it might have looked like.
We do have some route notes that were sent to us before we left England, but leaving the hotel and relying on them? It was due to rain heavily from lunchtime and all afternoon. Did we really want to go out, risk getting horribly lost and absolutely drenched to boot?
No we didn't so we stayed in, so here is a brief musical interlude:
It's a recording of the bells in the church across the square from the hotel. Currently covered in scaffoldng but still chiming a tune every 15 minutes through the day. When we first arrived we thought it was rather fun. After an hour we were saying "I hope that doesn't go on all night," fortunately it stops at ten pm. It seems to play different tunes at different times during the day. So far we have had "Tulips from Amsterdam" and "Que Sera Sera" as well as many we couldn't name. Anyone know the tune posted? (Sorry about the quality of the recording, it was done with the voice memo function on an old mobile, they do sound much more musical in reality.)
Only kidding (about the staying in, not the bells sady). The hotel lent us a map and off we went. The countryside here is very different, more up and down. Not hills exactly, but today we cycled along the dykes which are about 5 m above the surrounding land. This gave us a great view of windmills, both ancient and modern, sheep and fields. One very big view was over the North Sea as we came along the sea wall. One interesting varient on the thatched roof theme is the part thatched part tiled where on one face of the roof the thatch is cut away into a pattern showing roof tiles. We are assuming it is a purely decorative thing as we can't think of any useful purpose other than cost reduction. We are assured that thatched rooves are not the cheap option.
Heading back inland took us across some dunes which were massive and fortunately had good paths on them so we didn't get too much sand in our nice new chain. It is a bit too late in the season for fields of tulips but there was one hint of what it might have looked like.
When we got back to the hotel the maps for the rest of the week were waiting for us so we should be able to procede on our adventure with only minimal unplanned diversions.
A couple of pictures of Schagen for you:
The hotel
A tower from an old castle with the church in the background.
and finally, the long awaited return of WOTD
A detail view this time as most of the other pictures have got large spots of water on the lens.
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