dmorg.org

Seventy!  Suddenly, the Kustroute (and the Netherlands) is almost over. Do we continue around the coast, on EuroVelo 12 now? Or cut directly across country to Hamburg, a saving of a couple of hundred kilometres? About four days fewer, so that may be the way to go. We're also starting to consider options for our return to London. Bev has booked a flight from Prague in about four weeks time. I have a similar flight reserved while I decide whether to extend my trip by a month or more. It's complicated by travel and health insurance which is simple for 90 days (away from Canada) but gets more difficult to extend. And bloody Brexit means that I am limited to 90 days (starting from July 7th) in the European Union. Is it worth all the effort for one extra month I would get in the EU? Two extra months would get me to Turkey, outside the EU... A couple of nights ago we found a nice room in Bad Nieuweschans. Strangely, the border between the Netherlands and Germany seems to follow a rive...

We're in the last few days of our jaunt through the Netherlands and it's time for some decisions. Time is passing quickly, more quickly than we're traveling: Prague may be out of reach given the time we have left. Unless we suddenly develop much stronger legs and tougher posteriors. An unlikely happening.  There seem to have been fewer cute little Dutch villages to ride through for the last couple of days. Or  maybe they have just been spaced further apart.  But, overall, the surroundings continued to impress. One village had an interesting main street that gave an excuse to lift sore bottoms off unyielding saddles for a while, and to do some photo-tourism. Through the window of an old semi-derelict house on the main street of the village. It's strange to think that I once found wind-turbines to be ugly, a blight on the landscape. But I have come around, enjoying them for their relatively harmless energy production. Not as nice as the traditional old windmills, of cours...

What a splendid day! Out of the campsite with a quite dry tent by 1100. Gentle riding north through sand dunes and woodland. Quite a few other cyclists, mainly old day trippers on ebikes or roadies pushing hard. Wildrooster is not what it seems; it is a cattle guard/Texas gate! In the late afternoon, on the outskirts of Den Helper, accommodation was looking to be a bit of a problem. (It has been a frequent concern since we are in high season.) We were on a bench, on the sloping concrete covered side of the magnificent dyke keeping this part of Holland (Nord-Holland, I think) above water (not literally, since the land is below sea-level), Bev looking for a place to stay on her phone. I headed over to dyke to see what was on the other side; a couple upper-end hotels by the looks of it. I went into the first one. Of course, they were full. But the wonderfully helpful lady at 'receptie' called another hotel and we suddenly had a room at Hotel Land's End, three or fo...

The ride across Amsterdam was very pleasant and stress-free, now that navigation was working in our favour and because there were cycle paths everywhere. Almost too soon, we were out of the city and heading north-west, back to the North Sea and the Kustroute. Rain arrived in the night, complete with lightning and low rumbling thunder. It's always a pleasure to hear raindrops on the tent fly, not so much to find water inside the tent. There was some dampness in the morning. And the rain was forecast to last most of the day. It was an easy decision to stay put, eventually emerging from our tent a few minutes before noon.  But I only exchanged the tent for the shelter of the barn where I could sit more comfortably. And watch the rain fall, it sometimes fading to almost nothing then returning with a vengeance. This should be bringing a smile to farmers' faces. In the mid-afternoon, the skies lightened and we risked a walk to the nearby dunes that...

Maybe even a real rest day! I woke earli-ish (around nine) but then I napped and it was suddenly just shy of eleven - perhaps I'd needed some extra zzz time. Then a metro and a bus transported us to Molen van Sloten to view a working windmill. Very much more interesting than it sounds!  When draining an area of marshland, a canal is first cut around the area. Then a windmill is built on a high part of the marsh, to pump water into the canal for removal to the sea. When the higher part of the marshland is sufficiently drained of water, a second, lower windmill is built to drain a lower section, pumping water to the first, higher windmill and then on to the sea. And so on. The horizontal rotation of the mill blades' axle is converted to a vertical rotation down this square axle using a couple of cog wheels. An Archimedes screw (disconnected today because there has been no rain for weeks and there is no need to pump water) is able is able to move 60,000 litres/min.  I am a little...

A good night in the tent but it got very warm very early and I was dripping by the time that the tent was stowed and we were ready to head out and explore more of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. I entered "current location" and "Mercure Amsterdam City Hotel" into  https://cycle.travel  on my phone, generated a route away from the coast to our Amsterdam hotel, downloaded the gpx file, opened the file in my Wahoo Elemnt app and passed it to my handlebar cycle computer (a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt). It sounds complicated but in a few minutes the route was in my cycle computer, ready to guide us through our day. To pre-empt any complaints that fellow cyclists sometimes direct at those who 'depend' upon electronics to navigate, let me state that I have used old-school paper maps for navigation for the last half century or so. It is, no doubt, a handy skill to have. But modern technology does have many advantages: it tells me where I am currently located and where to turn...

We spilled off the ferry, somewhat bleary-eyed, at 0700 English time after a short but comfortable night. We'd had a meal after the ferry got under way at 2300 and we're in bed before 0100. An announcement that breakfast was being served came much too early at 0530 and was ignored but there was no getting back to sleep. After a while, our phones recognised that we were in a different country and connected us to the local network. We decided that den Haag/The Hague was a suitable destination for our first day on the continent, and off we wobbled. Beautifully wide cycle paths led us out of the Hook of Holland and northward. After playing in the traffic in England, this felt like a different planet. Bikes everywhere. Mostly passing us. More than half were electric. We mostly followed the coast route (LF Kustroute, also part of EV12) before heading off route into town. After settling into our hotel, we went for a wander around in search of dinner. A hole-in-...