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.
Would Frank like it?
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