It was a fantastic ride and a fun adventure. Here is a rough approximation of our route and an alarmingly accurate map of where we slept.
- Day 1. Getting to the route from Oud Ade.
- We got our bike legs on, and rode from Oude-Ade to Gasperplas (and through a herd of sheep!). The stormy weather that night made us reconsider our plans for camping most of the way around.
- Day 2: Gaasperdam-Volendam
- The trailer thingie broke, but we fixed it in Amsterdam. We then made our way to the touristy town of Volendam, where we watched the Dutch under-21 team win the European championship.
- Day 3 – Volendam to Medemblik – 70km
- Made our way along the coast to beautiful Medemblik, stopping along the way at the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen to learn all about the Zuiderzee and the building of the giant dike to close it off.
- Day 4 – Medemblik to Makkum – 63km
- Across the Afsluidijk (the giant dike previously mentioned). Tracy is filled with Dutch pride, and we make record time with the wind at our backs. We eat a wonderful dinner in a fancy restaurant. The best day of the trip, and that is saying a lot.
- Day 5 — Makkum to Ossenzijl, in the wind and rain.
- 40 mph winds and driving rain and a flat. This was a rough day. We did it, and the cabin was great.
- Day 6 — Holy crap! — I mean, Ossenzijl to Elburg.
- We make workmanlike progress towards our goal, and eat tasty fish and eel in Kampen. Our progress is interrupted when the trailer fix from Amsterdam fails, and we end up falling upon the mercy of Mevrouw Greveling. Everything works out, and we end up asleep that night in a warm bed feeling very lucky. Elburg seems to be our Coutances for this trip.
- Day 7 — Elburg to Huizen
- We get the trailer fixed and head out. We make speedy progress and end up in Huizen, a disconcertingly modern city.
- Day 8 – Huizen to Oude Ade, via the Amstel-Rhine Canal to close the loop!
- Final day, where we go through the fortified city of Naarden, close the loop, and then head back to Oud Ade triumphant!
Woo! We are done and alive! Almost 500 kilometers covered over the course of 8 days!
We began the day in Huizen, a disconcertingly modern city after all the old stuff we’ve been through. We were determined to set out early and make it back to Oud Ade in a reasonable amount of time, and so after breakfast we said goodbye to our friendly hosts and set off and were on the route at 9:10. It was a wonderful place to stay and were wonderful people. They were big Ajax supporters (Asterdam’s team, and the Dutch version of the Yankees) and Tracy’s whole family is Feyenoord (Rotterdam’s team, and the Dutch version of the Red Sox), but Tracy managed to restrain herself from singing Feyenoord fight songs until we were well on our way out of town.
This was a day of castles! We saw two of the most famous ones in the Netherlands — the city of Naarden is a fortified city built on the only road leading to Amsterdam (before the land was drained), and we also passed by the Muiderslot, which is a very castle-ish castle. Naarden was cool to ride through, and the Muiderslot was neat to see, even if only in the distance. Before we knew what was going on, around 11 am we rolled across the Amsterdam-Rhine canal and completed the route!
Hooray!
It came upon us as a surprise, and it also came immediately after the only real road-riding we had to do the entire trip. Dad, you must go biking in Holland. They have good coffee and good apple pie everywhere, everyone knows how to drive a car when there are bikes on the road, and the bike path system was so extensive that Tracy and I actually got a little indignant when we were forced to ride on seldom-used backcountry roads instead of solely on dedicated paths. Also, the only hills you encounter are about 30 feet tall — the distance from the bottom of a dike to the top of a dike — and they build hero-worship monuments to their civil engineers.
After saying hooray, we continued down the canal to retrace our way to near Gaasperplas and then do the first day backwards. We saw lots of downed branches and toppled trees, which continued to convince us that we had managed to do this awesome trip in some pretty strong conditions. We made our way to Abcoude, where we stopped at the local bike store (and indeed at every other bike store we saw) to ask if they had a 100 psi 20″x1.5″ tire. It turns out that nobody sells them anywhere because it is so unusual to have a high-pressure tire of that size. Everyone has 40 psi tires, but nobody has 100.
Oh well, instead we stopped for lunch, and while we were parking a guy came out and said (in English) “Hey! I just wanted to take a picture of your Bike Friday because mine is parked right down the street!”. Whoah. It was kind of surprising to hear American English after 7 days straight of it being my and Tracy’s secret language, and it turned out that there was a big group of American cyclists in the middle of their lunch in the pub we were going to eat in. After saying hello, we sat down and ordered coffee and fries and soup and uitsmiters and settled into our lunch.
We finished lunch and then rode through Uithoorn and called Tracy’s gramdparents telling them we were looking for “logies met ontbijt” (bed and breakfast), and asked if they had a room for the evening. It turns out that they were not yet full up at L&O van der Gaag, so after a quick stop for ice cream we pedaled on, with just one more stop for coffee and apple pie (koffie en appelgebak), we were back in Oud Ade at 4:50 pm, after covering almost 80k.
I was going to say that it was a big day or perhaps a long day, but looking back I see that they were all big days. Some were long because of distance, others because of winds and rain or because we saw so much or because the streets were windy or because lodging was so hard to come by or because the trailer hitch failed or because the tire blew out or because the temporary crappy trailer hitch failed. It was a fantastic trip. When we have ready access to the internet again one of us will compose a summary post with day-by-day maps. For now, I think I will just end it with:
Het was een hele goeie rit.*
* It was a very good ride.
We had breakfast courtesy of Mevrouw Greveling at 8 AM, the better to get to the bike store around the corner bright and early — they opened at 8:30, and sure enough we were there by 8:45. Only the hardcore old guys were there, and they leapt to the challenge of the broken trailer hitch. I learned the Dutch word for “hose clamps” (hey, this is valuable information) and when the rest of the crew arrived, our heroes actually sent someone out to get hose clamps before eventually making us a sturdy plate steel approximation of the piece that had broken. Awesome! We bought a spoke wrench out of gratitude and would have bought a spare tire if they’d had one, but 20 by 1.5 and 100 PSI turns out to be a tricky size, or so we learned repeatedly for the rest of the trip, when we stopped at every single bike store we saw just in case they had a spare for us.
Anyway. We returned to Mevrouw Greveling’s house and changed back into our bike gear and hit the road with a quick stop for bread and cheese and apples (yes, I made sure to get the lady’s address because boy oh boy is she ever getting thank-you postcards). Then we wound our way back through Elburg to the route, which took us to our detour through some lovely fields near the water (the Veluwermeer, to be exact). We sheltered under some trees during a brief hailstorm (see picture) and continued on all the way to Harderwijk, where we stopped for bread and cheese on one of many little beaches where windsurfers and kiteboarders were casting off and taking advantage of the strong winds coming over the water. The previous night’s weather reports had predicted gusts between wind force 3 and 5, much milder than Tuesday’s gale-strength 8(!) Anyway. In Harderwijk we called about the night’s lodgings, and found out that most of the places we’d thought to stay past Spakenburg were already full — both Eemnes and Blaricum had no lodgings to offer, so we looked past them to Huizen, where we finally lucked out. Then we double-checked the map and discovered that we had a pretty long day ahead of us — 50 to 60 kilometers left to go, for a grand total distance well over our self-imposed limit of 70-odd kilometers. Eek.
Then, to make matters briefly worse but eventually better, the freaking Germans caught up with us. You know, the ones we’d resolved to dust on Tuesday? Yeah, they hadn’t had a breakdown to slow them down. You can bet that motivated the hell out of me for the next 20-odd kilometers at least, and Peter was kind enough to pedal along. We blasted through Bunschoten and Spakenburg and made the ferry at Eemdijk in record time. Once across, I realized to my delight that our surroundings were really starting to look like Holland again, and took <a href=”a picture to celebrate. We followed the route along the outskirts of Eemnes, and eventually had a late lunch of tea and soup for me, and coffee and apple pie for Peter, followed by a cup of soup when mine proved irresistably delicious. And then we were on our way again.
Despite having told our hosts in Huizen that we had the wind against us and probably would not arrive until 7 or 8 PM, we rang their doorbell at 6:45 PM (probably thanks at least in part to my fanatical need to outrace the Germans). We parked our bike and filthy trailer in their back shed and took much-needed showers, before eventually braving the neighborhood shops to find dinner at an Italian restaurant. Mom, I ate pasta with red sauce, and it was delicious. Please do not disown me. Peter had the house tortellini, and we felt deliciously carb-loaded up for the following day (also I was a little floaty with exhaustion from our exertions). We returned to our lodgings and immediately fell asleep.
So we got kind of a late start today after yesterday’s exhausting efforts, and by the time we got back into Ossenzijl just after noon the local bike store was closed for their lunch break. Crap. No spare tires or tubes here. However, we did have an absolutely stupendously delicious late breakfast/brunch at Café Restaurant Stuitje — the house “uitsmijter” (literally translated, “bouncer” but think “fried egg sandwich with delicious trimmings”) featured three eggs topped with cheese, fried bacon, onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, and probably more that I’m forgetting, all on top of toast topped with thinly sliced ham. Yum. Peter and I had one each, and were very, very happy.
After that we rolled out of town on full stomachs along a narrow bike path that followed the Kalenbergergracht to the town of Kalenberg, through the Weerribben national park. We bumped over lots of little bridges designed to rotate to the side for passing boats, and Peter was basically every kind of awesome navigating such tricky terrain. It was slow going, however, and so we were glad to finally reach smoother riding, especially when it took us past a place called Het Waeter, where we stopped for coffee and appeltaart for Peter, and a pannekoek for me. Yum pannekoek. I will describe this delicacy at far greater length on TracyFood some time, but for now, imagine a really big plate covered with a very thin pancake (but thicker than a crèpe) that tastes like the very best comfort food ever.
Unfortunately, during our coffee break, the wind turned. I had arranged for us to lodge at a bed and breakfast in Nunspeet, some 70-odd kilometers from Ossenzijl, but by 2:30 PM, with over 50 kilometers left to go, we were starting to doubt we’d make our destination for the night. So we called the B & B back to relay that information, only to be reassured that we were welcome to arrive relatively late at night. We thanked them, and said not to worry if we didn’t come by, which turned out to be very much the right thing…
Pressing on, we left the route briefly in Blokzijl, to inquire if there were any bike stores nearby, but the VVV (tourist information center) could only direct us to the next town, Vollenhove. There, we managed to acquire spare tubes, but not spare tires or the loan of a pump with a gauge with which to determine whether the rear tire was finally inflated to the correct pressure. (We sort of got the brush-off, really, so we moved on.)
Still fighting the wind, which alternated between head-on and coming at our side, we struggled through Sint-Jansklooster and Zwartsluis, at which point we realized that the next big town, Kampen, was only 14 kilometers away, and our destination some 20 kilometers past it. It was 4 PM, and suddenly reaching our goal seemed possible again. We resolved to stop for dinner in Kampen and refuel before blasting on (or getting blasted, depending on the wind).
In Kampen, we crossed the main bridge and spotted a boat moored at the waterfront advertising IJsselmeer paling (eel), and even Kamper paling at that. Dine on local delicacies? Don’t mind if we do! And we did. Deliciously. Turns out the boat had a restaurant on board as well as Paling-en-Vishandel Reumer, a fish market specializing in eel, with some of the freshest product in town (more on that in just a bit). For dinner I had IJsselmeer paling fried in butter, with fries and a garnish of side salad, and Peter had the “verrassingsmenu” — surprise menu, three kinds of fish, breaded and fried, also with fries and side salad garnish, but also with coffee and ice cream for dessert. It seemed like a daring choice, and a lot of food, but it turns out he needed the calories and ate all his lekkerbek, scholfilet (flounder), and kibbeling (on the one hand, it was very nice of the cook/server to tell us what kind of fish they were, and on the other hand, I still only know the English names for one out of the three.) I was hard-pressed to finish just my eel (there was so much I suspect it may have been multiple eels) and most of the side salad, but had to leave some fries behind, even with Peter’s help. After dinner, I went down into the hold to use the head, only to duck back upstairs for a camera to prove that we were eating the freshest fish in town — there were entire tanks of eels down there, and a whole setup for cleaning them and getting them ready for the kitchen upstairs. Awesome.
Then after a pleasant chat with Reumer fishmaster Jan (possibly Jan Reumer, although I didn’t ask), we were back on our way, full of newfound fish-fed energy. Kampen seems like a really cool city, full of medieval architecture and generally radiating a sense of history we’re coming to associate with Hanseatic League cities, which we have resolved to visit more of (Stavoren, I am looking your way). But we had 20-odd kilometers to go, and so on we went.
Until the trailer fell off the back of the bike.
AGAIN.
Dammit.
We were outside a little nowhere place called Noordeinde when it happened — blink and you’ll miss it, but our Zuiderzeeroute guide book informs us that the town church was built with the stones from another church that was destroyed in a flood — however, our guidebook also claimed that there were lodgings to be had in the town, and we did not find them. So on we went, very slowly, because the trailer was now attached to the bike with a random strap from our camping gear which had served as a makeshift clothesline after my laundry adventures of the night before (the dryer alternated between blowing hot air on the clothes and tumbling them, but never both at once, and plenty of beeping and needing to be reset all the while, until I ran out of coins and resolved to just hang everything that was still damp out in the cabin to dry). So that was a little dicey, especially when the trailer hitch got caught in the spokes of the rear wheel after a speed bump and knocked the rear brake open. Eeeek. A friendly bystander told us Elburg was just 7.5 kilometers further along the road, so on we limped.
We passed a bed and breakfast on our way into the city, but they were full. Inside the city the streets were cobblestone and too scary to ride with the trailer as barely-secured as it was, so we walked. Outside the VVV office there was a map with a list of other possible lodgings, and we started calling them, starting with whatever was closest and not entirely ridiculously priced. At first it seemed like no one was answering the phone, but at last I got through to someone: Mevrouw Greveling of the Meeuwenmaatstraat.
“You’re calling awfully late,” she said (but in Dutch, of course).
“Yes,” I said. “We’re traveling by bike and ran into a little trouble and had to walk a ways. We had reservations in Nunspeet but I had to call them off.”
“In that case,” she said, “I am so gastvrij (hospitable, welcoming) as to offer you a bed for the night.”
At this point I began the first of many heartfelt thankyous. We followed her directions into her neighborhood, got lost, were redirected by a lady walking her dog, and finally arrived at Mevrouw Greveling’s house, where she and her friend Henk welcomed us and earned our eternal gratitude many, many times over.
“Peter,” I said, “the phrase you need to learn is ‘Wij zijn u eeuwig dankbaar.’” (We are eternally grateful to you.)
There was tea. And cookies. We had showers and got recommendations for bike stores and hardware stores, both within less than five minutes of walking, as well as a shortcut for tomorrow’s ride. And now there is a soft bed, with bathroom really near by. Tomorrow we get up early and have breakfast and visit the bike store and sort stuff out. But in the meantime, and for the rest of our lives, we are so very happy to have been rescued like the strays we briefly were.
Greetings from Camping De Kluft, in Ossenzijl, right at the edge of the Weerribben national park, where Peter and I were happy to score lodgings in a Trekkershut — a teeny little private cabin with bunkbeds and even a little fridge and stove. Also there is a covered front porch, perfect for sheltering Pepé from the rain, and did I mention it’s warm and dry in here? After the day’s adventures, there’s pretty much nothing better. So. About those adventures.
We woke up at Pension Tabak in Makkum, to the sounds of rain. Eek. However, we packed the suitcases and reassembled the trailer in time for an 8 AM breakfast with the German tourists from the room next door, also biking the Zuiderzeeroute. Our goal for the day soon became: beat the Germans. But it was raining pretty hard, so we retreated to our room after breakfast and caught the 9 AM news, which confirmed that the weather for the day was indeed predicted to be terrible. Large chunks of Britain, for instance, were entirely flooded: there had even been two deaths by drowning. Eek. But at least the prevailing winds were in our favor, so we checked out with our hostess and rolled out of town.
We made Workum (the next town south) in record time, and record wetness. Head winds are Peter’s Kryptonite: wet and cold are mine. At least we had a tail wind, right? A few kilometers further, we took shelter in a bike tunnel under a big road and at Peter’s insistence, I changed into dry (if dirty) socks. We pondered an inland detour, away from the coast, where the winds were supposed to be worse (we’d been glad to be following a dike, which sheltered us from the worst of it) but then the Germans appeared in the distance and we had to move. Our next stop was in Hindeloopen, where the owner of Hotel-Café-Restaurant De Brabander actually opened her door to say that they were indeed open, but she’d battened down all the hatches on account of the fierce weather. We had coffee in the “bruin café” adjacent to the restaurant, and resisted her offer of a room despite the weather, which treated us to a spectacular display of rain while we sipped and waited it out inside. (Also, the Germans passed us during this time, but at least we had the satisfaction of being warm and dry when they weren’t.)
We overtook the Germans a few kilometers further, resolving to leave them in our wake (the weather made it feel like we were sailing, okay?) Then we planned an off-route shortcut past Stavoren to guarantee our lead. Maybe that’s cheating, but it saved us riding into the wind for about an hour, and did I mention we beat the Germans? Go Team! Stavoren, we will be back to see you some time when the weather isn’t quite so out to destroy us. We hear you’re on the Elfstedenroute, which follows the path taken by skaters on the Elfstedentocht race when Friesland freezes… it would be awesome (and incredibly hardcore) to ride that in a day some time. Anyway, speaking of Friesland, I’ve always tried to be careful about not saying “Holland” when I mean “the Netherlands” but this trip has revealed two things to me:
1. I need to be really attentive to those differences, because Friesland really is a different place from Holland (the provinces of Noord- and Zuid-Holland),
and:
2. I’m a Hollander. Friesland is okay, don’t get me wrong, but ever since crossing the Afsluitdijk it’s felt to me like the rest of the trip is just about going home.
Here’s Peter with more about the trials and tribulations of getting back to Holland.
Peter here, so we decided not to head into the strongest headwind I’ve ever encountered and instead shortcut across the peninsula. This was a very very good choice. We continued with the winds at our side and sometimes ended up keeled over at dramatic angles. We continued to tack our way to the coast, where we put the wind at our backs and flew to our first possible ending place, Lemmer. Along the way, our bike developed a worrying twitch that happened every wheel revolution. Once every revolution, the handlebars would twitch left. We decided to visit a bike shop in Lemmer, who tightened some loose spokes on our front wheel and pronounced it okay. We were skeptical, but were unable to feel the twitch anymore.
Until we were heading out of town.
Then it was back with a vengeance. We would have been flying, but I was keeping us slow so as not to aggravate the problem. Then, the actual problem revealed itself when the rear wheel had a blowout. It turns out that the rear wheel was under-inflated, which had caused the rear tire to die, and the failed sidewalls failed to prevent the tube from exploding. This was manifesting itself as a weirdly compressing rear tire, which was causing the front to twitch like the end of a whip.
Crap.
So we are miles away from town on either end, and the light rain is coming sideways, and it’s time to change a tire and tube. Fortunately, we had a spare of both, and with a little cursing everything managed to be put back together in about 45 minutes. Those little tires are really hard to get on the wheel, especially when it’s cold and everyone is sopping wet. Many cars passed us by, and one stopped and asked if anything was wrong, which helped restore our faith in humanity.
So, now, sopping wet and cold from all the standing around, we head back into the wind and the rain for our day’s destination: cabins in Ossenzijl. Along the way, our rear tire starts making more noises, so we stop and pull out a half-inch piece of flint that had embedded itself in like a thorn. Dreading the consequences of this new flat (we were out of tubes, but did have a patch kit), I pulled out the stone.
And then a miracle happened: the tube was okay. This seems like a small thing writing about it the next day, but it felt like the best thing in the world at the time. We were out of tubes, and waiting around for a patch kit to set up was going to be hell, so it felt fantastic to dodge that bullet.
We then pulled into Ossenzijl around 5 PM and got into our hut, and Tracy collapsed for two hours while I went out and surveyed the area and bought some comfort food and laundry tokens. I brought the food and laundry tokens and laundry soap back to the hut, we ate them, and exchanged tasks. I collapsed for two hours while Tracy went out and did laundry. We then proceeded to sleep like logs.
Overall, we ended up pulling our trailer through extreme winds and driving rain for around 70 kilometers, which is probably the most hard-fought 70k of the trip. I will never forget being so far tilted over into the wind that the wind shadow from passing cars would force complicated maneuvers to prevent us from falling over. It was an epic day.
(Peter again) Today we rode from Medemblik to Makkum, across the Afsluitdijk! After the museum exhibit about building the giant dike that closed off the Zuiderzee and how it was an achievement that united Holland, it was great to see the actual thing. It was, in fact, so awesome that Tracy says that every other paragraph of this entry should simply be the word awesome, so I think that’s what we’ll do.
Awesome!
After delicious breakfast at our pension Het Merelnest
we made a brief excursion to the harbor of Medemblik and discovered that to do our laundry would cost 5 euro and take over 2 hours. Rather than lose precious time and our favorable wind, we headed out through town at the crack of 9:30, stopping briefly at a Spar grocery store for some bread and cheese and oranges.
Awesome!
We headed out of Medemblik, almost losing the way but recovering with aplomb, and we headed out into the new polders/farmland created by the Afsluitdijk project. The wind sped us north, and we passed through a beautiful nature reserve, in the middle of which was a monument in memory of 1945 when the retreating German army chose to blow up the dike. We emerged from the forest and, ate some lunch, and hit the beginning of the Afsluitdijk just before 1 o’clock, all the time being chased by a powerful and favorable wind.
Awesome!
The Afsluitdijk seems to have been Holland’s moon project, or perhaps their Grand Coulee Dam. It was an amazing achievement of science, technology, and politics all working together, and involved all three of those being worked to their absolute limits. The famous cliché in the Netherlands is that China has its great wall, and the Netherlands has its great dike. We passed through the locks on the west side, the Stevin Sluizen, and were at the monument 10 kilometers away in 20 minutes. That’s a sustained speed of 30km, while pulling a trailer.
Awesome!
The monument was impressive as all heck. There is a big heroic realist statue of the civil engineer that designed the project looking out over the dike that he didn’t live to see completed. The only marker on the statue is his last name, and the dates he was alive, because everyone in the Netherlands knows all about Lely. There was lots of other heroic stuff like that, including a frieze of people hammering things into place with the (translated) motto: a people that lives, builds for its future. We climbed the tower, looked out over the North Sea/Waddenzee, and then got back on our bikes and continued to fly down the 90 meter wide, 30 km long strip of land.
Awesome!
Biking along the Afsluitdijk is like a textbook lesson in the principles of perspective. The road, bike path, and indeed all visible land, form perfectly straight lines that go directly towards a vanishing point on the horizon. The road is perfectly straight, and perfectly level, and the land on either side is unchanging in profile. It’s a Zen experience. As we settled into a rhythm, we found ourselves going faster and faster and becoming more and more like a freight train. If there isn’t a race from one end of the dike to the other, there certainly should be. The road is so flat and straight and good for biking it’s almost like an unwound velodrome.
Awesome!
We quickly reached the locks on the other side, the Lorentz Sluizen, and we headed south towards Makkum feeling like we had done a pretty special thing. We reached our planned stop 2.5 hours ahead of schedule, thanks to the helping winds. After moving into our room and waiting out the rainstorm that chased us all day, we decided to have a big fancy dinner in celebration. I am sure that there will be a TracyFood post about it, but I had the best fondue I’ve ever had (including the fondue I had in Chamonix, France, in the shadow on Mont Blanc) and also had a fantastic rhubarb creme brulee. Now, with full bellies and an accomplished feeling, we head towards the flopover day of our trip. Tomorrow, sometime midday, we will have gone so far around the Zuiderzee that we will no longer be heading away from Oud Ade, but will instead be heading towards home.
Awesome!
Peter here. Whew. Today was a very long day. The distance wasn’t long on the scale of long rides, but everything is longer when there is a trailer and a headwind involved. Also, we stopped for 3 hours in the middle to go to a museum. All in all, we ended up pulling into our lodgings (another cheap-yet-wonderful B&B) around 7:30, sopping wet and very tired.
So, again we we will start at the beginning, and then go through the middle until we get to the end. Then stop. We began today at Noemie’s Pension House in Volendam, which is just south of Edam (where there’s cheese!). We woke up happy after watching the Dutch under-21 team win the cup last night and then staying up late Internetting it up. We ate breakfast (bread and cheese and meat and jam and eggs and tea and chocolate) and then finished packing up, bought tasty bread rolls and cookies for lunch, got listings for places to stay in Medemblik, and headed out. The parking lot outside of our room had become a fleamarket/farmers’ market while we slept and ate, but that didn’t stop us. We headed north through first Edam and then then Hoorn, both of which were celebrating their 650th (!) anniversaries of being a city. Hoorn looked like a fun city – the Zuiderzeeroute takes you through the oldest heart of every city you go through, and the heart of Hoorn was quite nice.
After Hoorn we passed a whole pod of kiteboarders and discovered what was meant in the quote from our travel guide:
How strong is the lonely cyclist who, bent over his handlebars, forces his way against the wind? You will come to learn that, along the straight road along the IJsselmeer dike.
We proceeded to fight a truly fearsome headwind until we finally turned inland and proceeded along through more beautiful agrarian Holland. For a country that bills itself as the densest in the world (excepting city-states like Singapore and Monaco) there sure is a lot of farm land. The dikes along the coast are scenic to ride along (there’s a bunch of pictures that attempt to prove the scenicness of it all), the lowlands are the place to be if you want less wind.
After eating all the bread rolls, we rolled into scenic Enkhuizen, with a plan to eat some fish and see the Zuiderzee Museum. We did both! Tracy had IJsselmeer paling (eel) and I had Dutch sushi (nieuwe haring). And it turns out that today was the final day to see the special exhibit all about the building of the Afsluitdijk (the giant 30km dike that closes off the inland sea). It was a fantastic museum, and Tracy has much to day about it. I will restrict my comments to simply saying that large works of civil engineering are pretty inspiring, and that when constructing an earthen dike, turbulent flow is a very scary thing.
The museum and food ended up taking the better part of 3 hours, so we were running late when we headed out to finish the final 35k of our journey. We powered through the countryside, but ended up hitting the stupid time of the day in Andijk, so we went to the restaurant and got fried food and ice cream. It’s sure good that we did, but it turns out that the cafe we went to was pretty much the only open cafe anywhere in the surrounding area, so everybody who was in the stupid time of the day and needed food was there. This concentration of stupid was truly astounding, but we can’t complain too much – we were, after all, part of the problem. The fried food perked us up, and so we headed out towards Medemblik along the top of the IJsselmeer dike with new resolve and more energy, right through the bigass rainstorm and the headwinds of doom. After circumnavigating Medemblik’s local castle, we pulled into our B&B. Now, after tea and beer and tea, it is time to retire for the evening.
If you find yourself thinking of planning a cycle vacation in Holland, we highly recommend the B&B route. The “campings” are not particularly camping-like, and it’s nice to have a bed to sleep in. Particularly in this time of the year – it’s raining pretty much every day, and busting out old, damp gear to sleep in at night just isn’t appealing. So even if you plan on camping, try to alternate with rooms. They are pretty cheap, and they are dry.
Now, it is time for me to stumble into bed.
So Peter posted about yesterday’s adventures, crashing rain and all that excitement. Today it’s my turn. This morning we woke up at Gaasper Camping, just outside of Amsterdam, very glad to be just slightly damp:
instead of completely soaked, like the people who had to move their tent out of the spot next to that light pole (later seen occupied by — I swear I am not making this up — a happily quacking duck):
Peter started slowly breaking down camp, and I went for a shower (campgrounds in the Netherlands have “modern” bathrooms but the hot water is pay-to-play, in this case with tokens purchased at the registration desk) but returned in time to stuff sleeping bags and hand things over to the Suitcase Master in a somewhat-orderly fashion. Then we checked out of the campground a little after 9 and headed off, along the outskirts of Amsterdam, where we followed the Amsterdam-Rhine canal north:
until we met up with the Zuiderzee Route! (Along the way, we passed a fire truck pumping water from a canal in the Diemerbos up into the Amsterdam-Rhine canal — I guess our campground wasn’t the only place flooded by last night’s downpour!)
Are you sick of pictures yet? I bet you’re not as sick of them as I am of obnoxious German tourists. Turns out I freaking hate those guys. Especially the really loud drunk ones partying outside our pension house and getting in the way of our walk back here from the fabulous Café de Poel, whose staff were kind enough to host us, a few regulars, and quite a few random other tourists who wandered in off the street to watch the Netherlands under-21 national soccer team thoroughly trounce the Serbian opposition to become the 2007 youth champions of Europe tonight. Awesome! Also, Hertog Jan beer is pretty delicious. But that’s getting way ahead of the story. (And if you’re not sick of pictures, you can see plenty more by clicking on any of the ones that appear in this entry or over in the sidebar to the right.)
So. We followed the Amsterdam-Rhine canal north to the outskirts of Amsterdam, where we took a bit of a wrong turn towards the heart of the city that felt nigh-disastrous when our fricken trailer FELL OFF THE BACK OF THE BIKE! Holy crap, were we ever not expecting that eventuality, let alone prepared for it. However, after a few confusing encounters with friendly-ish police and city traffic direction workers, we stopped for brunch at Eetcafé Langenblik, where we took shelter from more pouring rain, ate really well (I have quite a bit of TracyFood to write about our meals on this trip), and got directions to a nearby bike shop. From there, we were sent to a hardware store a few doors down, where Peter found The Guy (you know, every hardware store has at least one) who actually made us a reasonable facsimile of the part we needed — that and a roll of duct tape cost us 2 euros. Fan-fricken-tastic. You can see the repair job on Flickr, and it should be fun to tell the Green Gears guys all about this little adventure — especially since it ended well. (Oh, and the Belgian UEFA under-21 team’s tour bus passed by while I was on bike-watching and rainstorm-dodging duty outside the hardware store, which was pretty cool in a random brush-with-sorta-fame way.) At last, after some twists and turns revealed us to be deeper into Amsterdam than previously suspected, we got back on the route.
We crossed the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal three hours after our fateful turn into the city, glad to leave the denser urban areas for more rural parts interspersed with wildlife preserves. Of course, we stopped in the very next little town for coffee and broodje paling (a roll with smoked eel — yummity yum yum yum!) That was Durgerdam, and the place was called Petit-Restaurant Westend, and they lured us in with a sign:
There’s more pictures on Flickr, oh yes. After Durgerdam, we turned inland for a short ride through a little place called Ransdorp (blink and you’ll miss it) and into a stretch of road between fields populated by some very happy, healthy dairy cows and sheep. Many Dutch dairies proudly advertise which companies buy their milk, and this is how I learned that some of these farms supply products to the makers of Henri Willig goat cheese, which I used to sell at Sundance. So that was exciting. Eventually we passed Henri Willig’s main production center near Katwoude — I keep wanting to call it a factory, but “factory farm” has a very specific negative meaning for U.S. readers, and this was not at all a bad scene. But I’m getting ahead of myself, and anyway I have some serious TracyFood to write about how the Dutch farmlandscape makes me want a big ol’ grilled cheese sandwich fried in butter, and maybe even a glass of milk to wash it all down (readers, I never drink milk, so these urges really freak me out even as they make me drool at the thought of such deliciousness). For now, let me tell you about Monnickendam.
It’s a nice little town, Monnickendam. Quaint, even. Our approach from the south, along the Gouwzee, and for a short stretch between that body of water and another called “de Poel” to the east, is downright spectacular. But turn into the heart of the old town, and the main drag is cobblestony and narrow — the perfect place for an outdoor market that’s entirely impossible to ride a bike through, even towards the end of the day when they’re breaking everything down. We walked, dodging cars and pedestrians, until we got to the part of the street that was still closed to car traffic on account of the market, at which point we were finally able to get back on the Pushmi-Pullyu and ride on. Hurray for riding on!
Riding on brought us through Katwoude, a community which takes great pride in its agrarian roots, or at least in rallying around them to oppose the building of a “bedrijfsterrein” — some kind of business park, judging by the Hart van Katwoude website whose address we saw on many, many “Agrarisch Katwoude” banners on prominent display on many houses here. I’m pretty sure I side with the Katwouders here — sprawl bad, beautiful green farmland good. Especially with their suggested alternatives — build in Monnickendam (yay density!) or at least remodel existing farms instead of building new stuff. When the heck did I turn into a land-use planning geek? But I digress.
After Katwoude, we grooved along the coast into Volendam, feeling like rock stars for getting there right at 4 PM despite the long delay in Amsterdam, especially since we’d told our pension house hosts to expect us between 5 PM and 6 PM. Of course, it took us 45 minutes to find Noemie’s Pension House (Ventersgracht 11, “English Spoken — A Decent Place”) because our route took us right through the bustling tourist trap harbor of doom! Turns out it’s an extra action-packed Volendam weekend, with music performances right on the water and stuff. Craziness. We got ice creams from a vendor who had nothing left but the banana-flavored stuff, which I sadly cannot recommend. Call it an exception to yesterday’s “always get ice cream” rule — when in doubt, stick to the soft-serve, which is much better in the Netherlands than similar-looking stuff in the U.S. and I have no idea why, except that well, I’ve seen a lot of Dutch cows who do seem really happy.
And that’s all I can think to report about Day 2 of our trip! Hup Holland and Go Team Pushmi-Pullyu! Woohoo! Okay, time to sleep. Our pension stay includes breakfast, but only between 8 AM and 9 AM tomorrow, with checkout time at 10 AM.
Hello! Peter here. If it’s not marked otherwise, it’s probably mostly written by Tracy. So, we are sitting in our 2.5-person flashlight tent and the rain is smashing down. There’s thunder and lightning, and we are dry and protected, and the folded up bike fits in the vestibule (see pictures for proof and a slightly-manic look on my face). Heck, we made it into the tent before it really started coming down! And a good thing, too. It really is raining and thundering extremely loudly. So, that’s the end of the day, which is in the Gaasperplas campground about 15km outside of Amsterdam. Now, let’s take it from the top.
We woke up this morning at Tracy’s grandparents place in Oud Ade. We packed up the trailers, and after a leisurely breakfast of bread and cheese and chocolate and tea, headed out at the crack of 9:45. (Wow. Just when I thought it couldn’t rain any harder, Holland proves me wrong — time to fire up the windmills, guys!) We waved goodbye to Oma and Opa van der Gaag and went from Oud Ade towards the neighboring town of Rijpwetering. It was a pleasantly familiar start for what would prove to be a wonderful day of cycling (“fietsen” in Dutch). In order, we went through Oud Ade, Rijpwetering, Roelofarendsveen (how’s those for real Dutch names, eh?), went along the Braassemermeer (Braassemer (some kind of fish) Lake), took a ferry to cross a 30 meter wide canal in Oude Wetering, went past Leimuiden, Bilderdam (where we made a silly backtrack along a very skinny bike path), followed the Amstel River to a dairy selling locally produced ice cream (which we sampled, of course — bread and cheese and fries and ice cream will be themes to watch for on this trip…) and then continued along the river to Uithoorn (which was an even skinnier path where we had to dodge sheep!), and finally took our first long break of the day.
We spent a little over 2 hours in Uithoorn – we bought a SIM card for the cell phone so we could make reservations, we ate a bunch of cherries, we went to the VVV/ANWB (kind of like a cross the between AAA and a local tourist information center, and we ate a wonderful lunch of bread and cheese and salami whilst looking out over the Amstel. If you are ever boating or biking in the area, there are free toilets and showers in Uithoorn. We called ahead and made sure Gaasperplas had enough room for us, and then headed out to finish our journey. (holy crap this is a storm. I saw lightning and only counted up to 3 before the thunder hit)
From Uithoorn, we stopped following the Amstel, and instead followed a much smaller canal and followed the landelijk fietsroute (LF) signs. The landelijk fietsroute network is a bunch of really nice bikepaths that link all of Holland. They are like a giant grid across the country, and are totally great. We followed LF2 to LF7 and then took another 30 meter ferry and came across a sign showing the extensive bike route network in Utrecht. A little later, we stopped and had tea and (yes) bread and cheese at a little shop thaat also ran a bridge over the local canal, which I believe was the Oude Waver.
After that, we continued to Abcoude and stopped for ijs (ice cream) and kroket (deep fried somethingorother) and not nearly enough patat met (fries with mayonnaise-based fritesaus). Lesson learned – we are hungry and using up calories. Always order the large fries, and probably order two of them. Also, an extra ice cream would not go amiss. Abcoude seemed like a really cool little town. While we were eating a dutch couple came up and started chatting with us (and by “us”, I mean “Tracy while Peter struggles to understand but just ends up a bit lost”) and they said that we were very close to our eventual destination.
So, we headed out, confident that we were near, and sure enough, within 45 minutes we were pulling into Gasperplas. We set up camp, decided to hide the bike in the vestibule, and right as we finished all that it started to rain. Now, we are hiding in the tent waiting for the rain to slow down, upon which we will get some food in our bellies and go to sleep, feeling like we had a good day.
Lessons of the day:
- You may think that a path is skinny, but there are always skinnier paths, some of which also have sheep to dodge.
- The end of the day truly is “stupid time”. Be careful of any decisions you might make. We are fortunate that the tent is so easy to set up, because we were pretty unprepared for complications. Folding the bike almost did us in.
- Always stop for ice cream. And maybe french fries.
- Holland totally rocks the pastoral ideal. And it does this even inside the triangle created by its three largest cities. They must have a lot of land use planning.
Greetings from Volendam, the Netherlands! A quick summary of this week’s bike adventures are as follows: we arrived on Monday and, in an effort to keep ourselves awake, put together the Pushmi-Pullyu (hereafter known as “Pepe” for short). On Tuesday we went to Leiden for a whole mess of tourist-type information, including a truly fantastic bike atlas of the whole country. On Wednesday we rode a 70-kilometer route described in one of the books purchased the day before, and concluded that we could probably count on covering 50 to 70 kilometers when pulling the trailer, weather permitting. Speaking of the weather, on Thursday it POURED, and we were very glad to have declared it a “rest and get organized” day, in which we only rode the bike on a little errand two towns over (to get a bell, which would have come in handy a few times on Wednesday’s ride). Then, that night, after the rain made it clear we would not be running any more errands, we packed for our big adventure, which started on Friday morning.
As soon as I’ve posted this entry, Peter will upload his summary of Friday’s accomplishments, written last night at Gaasper Camping, just outside of Amsterdam, and just after we finished setting up the tent right in time to escape another ferocious rainstorm. Today we broke camp and rode from just southeast of Amsterdam to Volendam, where I’m writing this from a private room in a pension house on a little square not far from the incredibly tourist-trappy harbor heart of town. All is well — I’m off to take a shower while Peter uploads pictures and more about yesterday, and after that we’ll find ourselves some dinner and perhaps a friendly bar to watch the UEFA under-21 soccer championships (hup Holland!) If all else fails, that link should take us to free live web coverage — super sweet!
-
Recent Comments
Marcy on A test ride, eastward from Oud… A test ride, eastwar… on Ronde Ijsselmeer – Day 1… Tracy on Holland 2009! Laura Staum on Holland 2009! TracyFood » Mo… on Day 4 – Medemblik to Mak…
-
Tracy, Peter, and the pushmi-pullyu
More Photos
