From Holland to Belgium

Aug 22 -- Day 55

In the morning, we woke up to strange movements outside our tent, as though great vehicles were slowly moving past. In our early-morning stupor, we were quite confused until, "Meuhhh!" Oh, right. Cows from the adjacent field.

Why won't it stop raining?
While we had gone to bed with golden sunshine, we rose to cloudy and drippy skies. Nothing dangerous to bike through, just a steady, soaking rain. What the hey, we weren't made of sugar, and there was no sign of it letting up, so we zipped into our rainjackets and set off.

It didn't stop. All morning.

Eventually, we stopped for tea in what looked like an old man's club. The town looked like it had woken up to the rainy morning, looked sleepily out the window, and hit the snooze button. The four or five people in the pub looked like they had fallen out of the Dutch version of Cheers. We sat at the bar and ordered tea, which the barman produced perfectly à l'anglaise (with milk). His English was nearly perfect, and we marveled over how a man of his age living in a tiny town in the middle of the Netherlands could still speak English so well. I mean, most Americans our age don't speak a foreign language (and certainly not well) and most people's use of a language peters out once one has been living in a small town where that language is not natively spoken. We were impressed.

We got back on our bikes and continued onward, following the route's signs with warriness and a whole lotta trust. The path wound up and around, and sometimes we could've sworn we were going in circles, or at least polygons -- east, north, south, west. Would we ever reach Belgium? The sun was covered by a thick blanket of low-lying clouds, and our inner compasses were soon spinning in circles.

Fabulous Roadsigns for Bikes!

The landscape, as picturesque, flat and pastoral it was, soon became monotonous. All the houses looked strangely perfect. Cow, sheep, canal, cow, sheep, house, canal, cow, sheep, canal, tree, goose.... No wonder pot is legal here -- there's little else to do.

Even the sheep, who in most countries are quite skittish, we laid back. These guys didn't even want to get up off the path for us to pass:




Turn your lawn into a sweater
All that being said, we were really impressed by the fact that nearly every yard (even those in towns) seemed to have a least one or two animals grazing complacently away. What a good use of resources! Not only do they mow the lawn for you, they generate milk or eggs or even clothing for you.

Mobile Milkers
From time to time, we'd pass a cow pasture that had a strange-looking shed sitting there amongst them. We realized that, rather than herding the cows from their long and narrow strip of pasture between canals to the milk-shed, the farmers bring the milk-shed to the cows! Again, Dutch cleverness.

The friendly Dutch
We stopped in one small town for lunch. For nearly thirty minutes, we wandered around, searching for a grocery store. Our budget was a bit strapped, and we passed the green grocer's and the cheese shop (the large stacks of orange wheels seemingly emitting beacons of warm light) with curiosity and reluctance. Several people gave us directions, but still we remained lost until -- tada! -- we found it hiding behind main street. Goods in hand, we found some quiet church steps to picnic upon. Not two minutes later, a man walked up to the church and said something to us in Dutch. It's not that close enough to English to understand easily. He repeated himself in English, "In the garden, it's better," he said, directing us behind the parish hall. There, we found a little table on a patio: "You can here sit." He asked about our trip, and we explained that we were cycling and were living in France. He smiled and went back into the parish hall. Shortly afterwards, a few other men joined him, all greeting us warmly and asking about our journey. To another, we mentioned that we are Americans. We considered how we might have confused the men, who must have thought that someone had misunderstood us -- were we from France or the U.S.? Well, both. What a complex question that becomes when living abroad.

Line coming out of a cheese shop

During our search for food, we stumbled upon the train station, in front of which were curious small boxlike constructions. Joe quickly figured out -- these are parking garages for bicycles! How clever! Compact rectangles you can lock your cycle into while you're away, protecting your car from both theft and rain (of which they seem to get lots).

A Garage for your Bike!

I forgot to mention that, in Amsterdam, everyone locks up their bikes with these MASSIVE chains. We were a bit nervous locking up our bikes with our smaller-gauged cables, which, fortunately, no one was inspired to clip.

Dutch Delights
We purposefully went through Gouda, home of that delicious creamy cheese. Mmmmm.

Mmmmm...gouda!

Our other favorite: stroopwafels! Take two thin, waferlike waffles, spread some chewy caramel between them, and voilà! Really, they must put crack in them too.

Stroopwafels!

Typical Dutch Cruiser

Retro Car Culture
We stopped to snack in the town center, and we noticed huge, land yachts we hadn't seen since the U.S. Beautiful, huge classic landcruisers dating from the 1970s, these cars must cost a fortune to drive just a few kilometers, and we figured were probably a sign of wealth here.

Kinderdijk
A UNESCO World Heritage Site -- a huge series of huge windmills built 1838-1840 to move water 1.5 meters.



Really, this country must be in a love-hate relationship with water. How do they manage to do it? They have canals everywhere for transport, but, being below sea level, are at risk of being flooded at any minute.

Here, you could see the modern pump churning away -- a real Archimede's Screw!



Dordrecht
One of the coolest-looking cities we've cycled through yet. It's a shame we didn't have time to stop. I will be back!

Papendecht
Sucked. It seemed to consist of little more than a big mall with horrible piped-in music, and it didn't even have a restroom.

Bicycle helmets? Really?
We noticed that we seem to be about the only ones wearing helmets here. We've even spotted people sniggering at us. Well, really, when you cruise about on flat, bike-only paths at speeds of less than 10 mph, perhaps you don't really need one.

Not a square-inch of dry land to be found
The sun came out as we left Dordrecht (via ferry!). Ah, sweet, golden rays. We were on the edge of De Biesbosch National Park, and so we ventured in in search of a campsite for the night.

The whole place was wet. Really. We looked for nearly half an hour among the planted aspens, and to no luck.

We ended up just outside the park among some willows where, believe it or not, the land was dryer. We dove into the tent to escape the mosquitos, though it didn't take long for the wet to soak up through the tent floor.

During the night, we were awakened to flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder. "Please don't strike a tree, please don't strike a tree," I thought as the rain pummeled the tent.

This was my last night of camping.


Aug 23 -- Day 56

On to Belgium!
Our alarm woke us up to yet still more thunder and rain, so we went back to sleep until it stopped around 9 or 9:30. By then, the sun was shining and no clouds were to be seen. Joe dried the tent beyond the reach of the sheep who'd begun to graze near us, and then we continued on our way.

Let Op! Dremples!
My favorite Dutch sign.

Hondenpoep. Another great sign.
We stuck to the bike paths, which got us a little lost from time to time. Finally, with little more than a sign announcing the border, we were in Belgium! No border control, no gates, no nothin'.

Just fairtrade signs:


The bike path system (with its lovely signs for bikers) continued, but became road from time to time. Straight, straight road. From time to time a slight incline. We put away the kilometers. We got slightly lost and had to follow road signs.

Sadly, we didn't get to cycle through the fabulously appelated Bergen-Op-Zoom.

"Hi, could we couchsurf with you?"
Couchsurfing is a marvelous thing. There's this worldwide network of people who offer couches or are in search of couches, and they're all connected via the website www.couchsurfing.com. It all started with some guy who wanted to travel, but didn't want to stay in a hotel, and so he networked with his friends to find couches to sleep on. He met interesting people, and got the idea of setting up this system, which has become the couchsurfing phenomenon. We had tried to couchsurf before, but it had never worked out. Finally, we got in touch with some guys, Nils and Boris, in Antwerp, and zipped on down to meet them. www.couchsurfing.com

After cycling through the edge of Antwerp for nearly forty-five minutes, we finally found the gorgeous city center. We waited for Nils to come and find us at the Hilton Hotel, surrounded by preparations for a beer festival. Nils rolled up on his cruiser, and we all hit it off immediately. We mounted our cycles ("We don't need to wear our helmets here!")to go when

CRASH!

both my tires got caught in the rails of a tram, immobilizing my forward motion. My toes were stuck in my toe clips, so I couldn't stop myself from falling at a ninety-degree angle -- BAM. It all kind of happened in slow-motion. Pain shot up my side, and I pulled myself out from under Hygina in a bit of a daze. About seven people dropped what they were doing and immediately dashed over to see if I was alright. "Uh, English?" I said. "Do you want to sit down?" a man in a security uniform asked. "No, I just need to walk it off." A woman looked at me kindly and handed me my sunglasses. Joe gave me a much-needed hug and explained to Nils, "We've been biking for nearly two months, and this is the first time she's fallen!"

We walked a good bit before cycling through the quiet side streets to Nils' and Boris' place. Which was huge. Three floors, two cats, and a garden for four boys. Our minds quickly calculated how much a place like this would cost in Paris, and immediately stopped trying to depress ourselves. The place was warmly decorated and covered in crazy paintings (both on canvases and doors or walls) -- one of the absent roommates was a painter, and Boris, we learned, is an industrial designer. Nils introduced us to Boris, who was in his room composing experimental music on his computer. Woooowwwww. They showed us around and then left us to our own devices for the time being.

"We're so glad we came here!" we whispered to each other.

We cleaned ourselves up, and then, after we all had consulted the kitchen cabinets, decided to go out to eat something. Kebab and, that Belgian specialty, frites, washed down with that other specialty, good beer! "We think this is 5-10% meat," Nils said. So, practically suitable for vegetarians, right?

Boom chick-a-boom!
Back at the flat, we asked Boris to show us how he makes music, which he did gladly. We were all quickly sucked in to his spread of synthesizers and mixing boards ("They're old-school, but I can't get myself to throw them away."), and the various software that was ticking away on his PowerMac. He showed us the new software he'd just started tinkering with, Nodal, whose graphic interface makes the music LOOK as cool as it sounds, as the little circles and arrows blink and change colors with the progression of measures. He played some music he'd made recently, and showed us how he manipulates sounds and rhythms, stretching and layering them. Wowwwww. You can check him out at www.hetlamgods.be.

700 Beers? 700 Different Beers?
"Do you like beer?" they asked.

They then took us to this nearby bar. Small, warm and cozy on the inside, we sat down near some teenagers to déguster. The waitress brought us a giant folder listing all 700-odd beers available. Cinays, budweisers, weises, krieks, beers even dating back twenty-five years! Bottles lined the walls. The further back in the place you went, the closer you got to the walk-in fridge, and so the colder it got.

On the first round, I chose a Carolus Christmas beer and Joe had a Timmerman's Berry Beer, then we both had a La Chouffe. Mmmmm!

We talked about travel and politics. Nils had just returned from spending a month in the US and Canada ("The best part? Whale-watching off the coast of Massachusetts."), and Boris had spent quite a lot of time in South and Central America. The boys explained to us the tensions between Flemish and French Belgium, which had been sandwiched together into a country to create a buffer zone between France and Germany by the British after the Napoleonic wars. The Flemish part is wealthier and carries a bit more than its share of the country's finances, which is one point of contention. Another: the Flemish are required to learn Flemish, French and English at school, whereas the French Belgians (in their Frenchy ways) only learn French. The boys said they like being in a country where you have this meeting of two cultures, and that it has a lot of potential to be something amazing. However, the country has its fair share of extremists who want the two parts to separate, and Antwerp is home to the Flemish ultra-conservative party. "The other parties signed an agreement in the 1950s to never collaborate with this party, though, so there's no danger of it coming to power," Nils explained. Apparently, though, it was a good thing I had requested English and not French after I took my fall!

Obtainium
The boys found a lovely chair on their way home.

Aug 24 -- Day 57

We chilled with Boris and his girlfriend Anne the next morning. She's studying graphic art and illustration, and so we had a great time talking about art and music. After breakfast, we shipped out and headed towards my friends in Waterloo!

Sunny day!

Joe gets a flat on a gigantic bridge over a gigantic body of water (uh, the Rhine...):



Oh, frustration
This was my last day of biking, and boy was it hell. We were utterly spoiled by the Dutch path system, standards that the roads between Antwerp and Brussels did not live up to. Ramps up and down sidewalks had angles we had to dismount to descend and ascend; rather than smooth asphalt or concrete, paths were often jumbled squares of cement that bumped and jolted; sometimes a path would randomly end, and we'd have to backtrack a mile or two to take another way; sometimes the road was under construction and we had to bike off-trail; never again did we see our fond cycling roadsigns, either. Plus, there was a headwind. Get with the program, Belgium!

We finally made it to Brussels, which started off flat -- ooo, pretty skyscapers, ooo, NATO buildings -- and quickly became hilly. Like, big hills. We dug 'em. We'd missed topographical relief. The city was bigger than we were expecting, and we hit Friday afternoon rush hour traffic, but still managed to make our way to Waterloose Straat. We turned right onto this and cycled on and on until it led to...Waterloo!!

Victory lap down the Chaussée de Waterloo! I sprinted like I had yet to sprint, and soon my friend's building was in front of us. Samantha and the 'loo crew welcomed us warmly with a huge pasta dinner, and it felt like home.

August 25 -- Day 58

Our two-month mark! Yahoo!

Joe got to sleep on a blue velvet couch. How cool is that?

Sam, Molly, Luke, and Chris taught us about Flight of the Conchords, a fabulous show on HBO about a novelty duo act from New Zealand trying to make it in New York City. Their song "Foux de Fa Fa," about made us die with laughter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5hrUGFhsXo

"That lady, she just makes waffles all day long??!!" Oh yes. And boy, are they delicious. "Fresh, piping, and made at the Carrefour!"

We also stocked up on our faves, stroopwafels.

That night, we had a super-yummy dinner over at Molly's, with veggies and herbs straight from the garden -- mmmmmmm!

August 26 -- Day 59

We got up early to take Sam to the car mechanic and to serve as interpreters in case she needed help explaining the problem. Her boss, our friend Kempton, came to pick us up, and on the way back, we swung by an authentic windmill. Huge, man, huge!

Later that evening, Sam took Joe and I to downtown Brussels. The city lit itself up, and we wanderered about the old buildings and public places, enticed by the smell of waffels and frites. We also saw the mannikinpis (apparently made after the likeness of some small boy who decided to wee in a rather posh place) and the vonikapis (the girl's version, made in the 1980s).




Dinner: mussels and fries, mmmmm!
After dinner: again, more beer. Sam took us to the Delirium, which had about a million beers on tap. Oh, so good.



Back at home, we watched part of Hot Fuzz, a fantastic cop spoof made by the same guys who brought you Shaun of the Dead. Oh, to be seen!

We wished farewell to Chris, Molly, and Luke, who were headed to Valencia, Spain, to take part in the world's largest tomato fight. Craziness that we love!

August 27 -- Day 60

After our last breakfast of croissants and chocolate pain (oh, really, pains au chocolat), Joe and I parted ways. I decided to stay longer in the 'loo while Joe biked back to Paris. It was sad, and I wanted to finish the trip by bike, but I would be leaving Europe and my friends in a week, and wanted to spend as much time with them as possible. And thus, the HASPB had come to an end. Our glorious trek together was over. And what a trek it was!

From this point on, I don't know exactly what Joe did, but can recount that he pushed himself hard, and even made it back to Paris before I did, though exhausted!

I visited with Sam for a few more days, and got to see nearby Louvain, the ancient university dating back to the 1300s that trained minds like Erasmus. While there, I visited the ancient Beguinages, which were small, self-contained communities of nun-like women (I say nun-like because they weren't exactly nuns) who wanted to keep their own property and govern themselves after their husbands had died (dating from 13 c. - 20 c.), and met a local artist worth mentioning (Antoon Verbeeck), whose series "Lonely Subjects" is definitely worth a look at (www.antoon.be). I also spied in town a sign for our old bike route, and reminisced.

August 23 -- Day 61

I found that I couldn't get Hygina on the trains back to Paris, so I had to wish my companion farewell in Waterloo. Sam is taking care of her for me. It's just a bicycle, but I will miss her.

The 'loo crew wished me goodbye at the train station, and I was going back to Paris...

The rest of England...and back onto the Continent!

Hallo all, Hilary here, chronicalling the final chapters of the HASBP. Come along as I weave my tale...

August 16 -- Day 49


Surprise! We're still here.

Saturday, Duncan picked up Nancy and the Moge at the airport and surprised them with breakfast at Colin's. We surprised her with our presence.

We shared (what we supposed would be (though we'd all become accustomed to the unexpected)) a final breakfast à la français together and wished everyone goodbye again.

Fun and unusual boardgames learned about in Oxford and P. Risboro
Let us pause for a small parenthesis here. The Oxford and P. Risboro gang have enlightened my heretofore paltry knowledge of boardgames with such classics as:
- The London Game (navigate the Underground of London as efficiently as possible, dodging randomly closed stations and switching lines as rarely as possible. Make sure you visit Mornington Crescent to pay homage to everyone's favorite zaney radio quiz show, I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue.)
- The Cooking Game (kind of like "Go Fish" meets "Clue" -- turn in dizzing spins about the house, picking up ingredients at the garden, front door, and the pantry, and dialing up your neighbor to request (read: steal!) ingredients from your him or her. Goal: to create legitimate recipes, but left with random foods, to create something convincingly edible)
- Colditz (collect equipment and plot your nationality's escape from this infamous Nazi prison -- will you dig a tunnel? Do you have clippers to get through the barbed wire? Watch out for the guard! Historically accurate -- based on real escape-attempts!)
Thank you for showing me that there is more to this form of entertainment than the makers of Monopoly and Parcheesi had convinced me.

On the road again...
We made it farther than we had on our previous attempts to leave P. Risboro, but boy, were we in for a hard day of biking. Colin had warned us about the hills we were biking through, but our bodies, spoiled by two weeks of cream teas and delicious shepherd's pies, just weren't sure if they could handle the pain. A few times, our bicycles became pushbikes again as we struggled up hills, armed with rudimentary maps (courtesy of Google, the Sustrans website, and Colin's printer) that didn't show elevation. Nonetheless, it felt great to be back on the road, and I lost myself in my thoughts in the rhythm of the cycle.

The Comedy of Errors, continued.
We weren't free of our troubles, either.

Struggling up some steep hill too busy with traffic with little shoulder, my chain flung off as I over-shifted the gears. Frustrated and hot, I slipped it back, got back on, and kept going up the hill.

After a few hundred more slow feet with less-than courteous drivers passing (would it be so difficult to move over??) -- Thunk! -- I went forward, but Hygina didn't. Cue primal scream.

My bags, strained by nearly two months of bearing the weight of all my stuff, had buckled and bent in towards my back wheel. The last thing I wanted was for my spokes to go the way of Joe's, so a few modifications of the bags' internal structures (i.e. flipping over the stiff inner panel that provides each bag with rigidity) cleared up that trouble.

So why did my rear wheel keep giving me trouble? A quick diagnostic showed that the fender had bent close to the tire, grating down on it. Okay, so I bent it back.

A few miles later, same problem. I bent it back some more.

Apparently, this wasn't good enough for my tire, who decided to take things into her own hands.

A few miles later, while biking up a hill -- CRUNCH!

I hopped off and looked back -- the back three inches of the fender had been eaten off by the tire. Goes to show that sometimes problems do solve themselves.

"Uh, I think we're heading back to Great Missendon."
Despite the difficulty, the biking was pleasant, the hills were beautiful and kept the cycling interesting. We stuck to the trusty Sustrans trail as much as possible, as it proved to take us through great scenery (lovely farms and towns) and on more-or-less safe roads. However, even with our map, we managed to get lost when the signage got a bit vague. Joe noticed first when we started heading back towards a town from which we'd just come an hour before. We ended up going three miles in the wrong direction, which became six miles (ten kilometers!) covered for no real reason, which is a lot when you're worn out and trying to make time.

Ah, well, we rested in a small town next to a duck pond and pondered the species staring at us expectantly as we munched oats and chocolate. Ah, the trusty old diet.

The Magic Roundabout
We had fond memories as we passed through Hemel Hempstead (yes, that really is the name of a city), where we had been only days before while wheel-hunting. Somehow, we navigated the magic roundabout. This is the real name of this oddity of traffic design meant to confound and scare the blazes out of any who dare to enter its orbit. People here refer to it in normal sentences, Harry Potter-style: "So, turn left, and at the magic roundabout, take your first exit..." "Wait, what?" one might reply to such a statement with a snigger, which is met in turn with a sober look that seems to say, "What? Don't tell me you haven't heard of one."

On the video game version of this trip, you earn fifty thousand points for successfully navigating the magic roundabout.

The magic round-a-bout is like any other roundabout, except that it's a crazy wheel of confusion and death. It has two rings of traffic (one nestled snuggly inside the other) that spin traffic in opposite directions about its axel! The roads leading to and from this two-dimensional gyroscope are two-directional themselves, so, once you manage to get into the thing, you have traffic coming at you from around a curve and from the sides. The only magic part about it is that you make it out on the other side, alive and going in the proper direction. This monstrosity of urban design must be the offspring of some Frankenstein of urban design, who hoped to create a more efficient system and ended up screwing it all up. Imagine the insanity with me for a moment.

Okay, it wasn't too bad.

That takes the cake
Once out of the On the way up what promised to be our last gigantic hill, I saw Joe stop ahead of me on the bike path. I burst into laughter as he explained, "I was just biking up the hill and I heard a clicking sound. All of the sudden, I had no seat." Sure enough, his bike seat had fallen off, as "The bolt just sheared off!"

I waited at the top of the hill with our bike bags in a little park under a big tree while Joe sped off to find a bike shop before the clock tolled 7 pm. I plotted possibilities for us, should he return empty-handed (take a bus or train to meet our ferry in Harwich? Call Colin -- again? Camp here and wait until a store opens on Monday?), but he showed up about an hour later, happily endowed with a saddle. Apparently, he nearly didn't get it.

"I went to the first shop, and they didn't have any saddles. So I went to the second bike shop and made it just before closing. I was standing in line when I realized that I had left my wallet at in my bike bag! I explained the situation to the cashier, and she hemmed and hawwed, then went to the backroom to ask what to do. Who comes out but the guy we talked to the other day about my wheel! He said, 'Oh, it's you! Just take it.'" Wow, here's a holla out to the generosity of Steph at the bike shop in Hemp Hemelsted.

We biked a few more hours that evening until we got to Hatfield, camping in a little patch of woods near a blackberry patch. Like black bears, we gorged ourselves on dessert from Mother Nature and lay down for the night.

August 17 -- Day 50

Up and at 'em, we were simply trying to cut the distance between us and our ferry. The hills the day before (plus our getting lost) had kept us from getting too far the day before, and still had nearly ninety miles to go before our ferry left on Monday. Right, we couldn't think so wishfully. Joe texted Nancy back in Oxford to see if she could change our ferry to Tuesday.

In the meantime, we had a bit of a day. In our hurry, we got on busier roads and rode on a widish shoulder, but broken glass soon got the better of my innertube. While changing the tube on the side of the road, we realized that we had only one patch left between the two of us, and at the rate we were popping flats, that wouldn't last long. Sure enough, five minutes down the road, I hit some more glass and -- sssssssss.

At the next town, we stopped in vain at a sporting goods shop (balls and sneakers? that's fo-shizzle for people who play games!).

Saved by the Irish, yet again
We found our way back to our favorite Sustrans route with the help of a woman and her exhuberant dog, and, trusting the signs and our inner compasses, got off those bleedin' highways and onto backroads again. Not too far out of town, we were cruising on a lovely one-lane road, when we came to a junction -- which way to go? We were heading west, but the sign was vaguely pointing to the east. We were consulting our map when along came a fellow biker. A small man of about 65 or 70, his muscles rippled under his spandex. He opened his mouth, and what would come out but the most detailed directions in the loveliest Irish accent you'd ever heard. "Tell ya what," he said, "I'll go that way m'self a bit and show ye the way." And so the three of us cycled slowly off (towards the west, in the end). He asked us about where we'd been and what we'd done, and then went on to tell us how he'd come here in 1960 and had simply never left. Retired now, he cycles two or three days a week with a local club, and they always end the day's trip at a pub in town. "Man, that's the way to retire," said Joe to me, as we left the kind man at a crossroads.

Around about seven pm, we were tired and feeling the pangs of tea withdrawal. We stopped at the warm and cheerful Duke of Wellington pub (catching a few looks for our sweaty and dirty atire) for a tea or a squash (cordial with water, refreshing!), then found the nearest spot of woods to crash in for the night...near a dog kennel and some blackberry bushes. I felt a swift breeze that promised rain.

A notable street we passed


"The Street"


August 18 -- Day 51

Sure enough, the sky delivered us precipitation in the morning. Joe, unable to get comfortable, woke up in a puddle. We got out of there as quickly as we could and decided just to bike on in the rain -- we had just about forty miles to cover -- piece of cake!

Joe had another flat in his rear tire as we left Peverly Hatfield. We pulled off an old patch from another innertube that was busy taking up space in my bag to patch it. 12 miles to Colchester.

It went flat again.

And again.

We stopped at a roundabout, where Joe decided to swap the innertubes on his tires. While doing this, he realized that the flat innertube actually had two holes, one right next to the other, as though a nail, in its zealousness, had punctured it twice. He glued the patch over the two holes, and we held our breath the remaining four miles to Colchester.

Ah, Colchester, "The Oldest Recorded English Town," where we stopped to buy more innertubes and patches (whew!), to check the internet, and to eat lunch in the park near a very imposing castle. Again the strange looks.

The Hobo Look
Okay, perhaps we'd come to deserve it. Or I had, at least. Strapped over my bike bags with bungee cords were various pieces of laundry that needed to dry, and my tin bowl was hooked and drying over top of that (what? I'd rather not pack it wet into my bags!). Plus, my hands were a bit dirty from changing innertubes.

It rather made it all the more fun.

Again with the Tourism Office
It took about four people and a manager to figure out where the bike train continued from here, but we found it again as we left town. "They probably don't get that question much," Joe figured. It would appear that way.

The trail followed the river for a while, and we were blissful. It was stress-free biking for miles -- no cars at all, just quiet trail. In the darling little town of Wivenhoe, it started to rain, but we pushed on, eager to get to Harwich. We lost the signposts for the bike trail and got back onto backroads.

Wivenhoe

We wound around and about, stopped to ask directions of a railroad-crossing guard. He wasn't quite sure where the trail was, but said that he'd seen it when conducting the train before. "You'd best get along now, I have to close the gates for the train coming," he said.

About nightfall we finally saw the sea, and we pushed on til Harwich. We found the bike trail here again, more detailed this time with distances noted, but it pointed in the wrong direction. It was dark, but we were determined to find the port from which we would disembark before going to sleep, as we didn't want to be hunting for it in the early morning. Turns out it was about a mile or two in the opposite direction from which the sign pointed. How devious!


August 19 -- Day 52

We caught the ferry early in the morning. This time, we were sailing with the Stena Line Company on a very blandly-named ship, the Britannica. Oh, yawn. They got nothin' on Irish Ferries. No theme, no literary or cultural tradition. That being said, it got us across the North Sea, we found handicapped bathrooms to wash ourselves in, and, though, I was slightly green at the gills, there were no tossed cookies.

Something must be said, however about the miniscule size of their teacups! This was the last opportunity we had to drink a proper cup of English tea, but we refused to imbibe out of principle, the PAPER cups being about the size of a thimble. Really.

We watched the field and track portion of the Olympics, and were pleasantly surprised to see three Americans take home all three medals for one of the events.

The Netherlands! A bikers heaven!
Ah, Holland, land that the Puritans fled from to go to Massachusetts! Why would anyone leave thee? Country of windmills, perfectly-spoken foreign languages, legalized pot, and bicyles! Really, if marijuana weren't already their state flower, the bicycle would be. Were it a plant. You get what I mean.



On top of it, the people are lovely! You'd think the Dutch would jealously guard this strange Utopia, but no, they smile and kindly help you along, even volunteering help when you simply look lost, and in English from the get-go.

Leaving the (very clean) port, we biked straight onto the smoothest, loveliest path we'd yet seen. The signage was clear and marked the distances, and we set off up the coast towards Amsterdam. We zinged through sand dunes and past flower-filled greenhouses and *ding! ding!* were passed by the most beautiful cycles we'd yet seen. Everyone was on a cycle here, and you would be too, were your towns and cities connected by a vast, accessible, well-maintained system of cycling highways. Yes, dear friends, CYCLING HIGHWAYS. No cars in sight. Just cycles and the occasional roller blader (they look so silly!). At one point, we heard an approaching car behind me, when vroom! My mistake! Five cyclists passed me at top speed. Wooooow.

We passed through the Hague and got a bit off-track, but sooner or later got back on the trail and into a national park. Here, horse trails and footpaths snaked around as well, and it was only after a little while that we realized that "Fietspad" meant "bike path."



The Dutch language, we found, is kind of like English spoken in some really thick East Anglia accent, to the point that they just started inventing other words. Really. We managed to deciper quite a bit from signs, food labels, and other literature, but it would have been difficult without a given context. At the entrance to the park, we saw a sign that said something like "Ticksen" and "Lyme." That was easy enough to figure out. (At some points, we were very amused by the way the Dutch seemed to absorb other languages: we saw one sign that seemed to use German, English, Dutch, and French in just four words, "Verboden Parkerin aan Trottoir" (Forbidden Parking on Sidewalk). How very different from the protectionist Académie Française, which (angrily! furiously!) struggles to protect French from the influx of English vocabulary.)



Camping on a grassy knoll in a pine forest, we kept our eyes peeled for the creepy crawlers as we listened to the wind in the tree-tops.

August 20 -- Day 53

Is that a mole?
Joe had four ticks actually feeding on him the next day, and I brushed two off of myself. Coming from the rural southeast, these guys were nothing new to me, and I showed Joe how to pull them off gently with the pair of tweezers I'd packed. These guys were particularly dangerous, because, as I later found, they didn't itch even after being attached to you for hours. This meant careful searches and conversations that began with, "Wait, is that a freckle?" and "Can you check this spot for me?"

Crash! into me, hey-hey...
With the fierce ocean's wind at our backs, we continued up the dunes all morning, then turned right at some small town, and headed straight into Amsterdam.

We got in right at evening rush hour. We weren't even in the center for five minutes, when I caused a pile-up. Unused to heavy bike traffic, I didn't realize that five people were tailgating me. Up ahead, Joe shouted back to me that he had a flat. I whipped my bike off the path and onto the sidewalk to stop, and the next thing I knew, I turned back to see some woman, shouting at me in Dutch, and a confused tangle of bicycles and people. Shaken, I said, "I'm sorry?" "You didn't signal, you just stopped!" she said. "It's her fault!" she declared to the others. On hindsight, she shouldn't have been so close to me, but everyone was okay, and Joe and I helped some girl (who'd been cycling in a mini-skirt and high-heeled boots while chatting on her cell phone!) straighten her handlebars. "It's okay," she said, "Thanks! Bye!" Joe gave me a much-needed hug.

Why, yes, we do have a tire pump
We found a lively campground that Joe and Colin had both stayed in before (at separate occasions) loaded with young internationals. After showers (a luxurious seven minutes!), we were planning our brief stay over dinner (curry saurkraut...one of the more interesting grocery-store finds), when a young man came up to us: "Scuzi! Have you got a tire pump?" He smiled incredulously when I ran off to fetch it out of my bag, saying, "You are the first people I've asked! Wow!" He went on to introduce himself as Stefan, and he explained that he and his girlfriend Jana were from Bavaria and were biking around the city as well. The four of us chatted for nearly an hour before we went our separate ways, Joe and I off to the town center.

August 21 -- Day 54

City of Bikes
Everyone rides a bicycle here, and Amsterdam boasts that fact. Signs brag about how the city is "pedaling its way to being green" (despite the fact that they have NO RECYCLING PROGRAM), and associate intelligence with cycling. I saw a businessman in a suit lined with red silk cycling near the central train station; girls in small skirts and heels; mothers and fathers with two kids on the back and room for cargo in the front (beats a minivan any day). All these cyclers, however, meant that we had to change our focus as we navigated the streets: once we only looked out for cars; now we had our eyes and ears peeled for bikers, pedestrians, cars, trams, and buses.

Joe's new wheel, despite its newness, had been squeaking since we left Colin's place, and so I parked Hygina while he got his Peugeot fixed. The woman clucked her tongue and told him to come back in half an hour. Apparently, the spokes (those devilish things!) were loose again. We strolled around the city, watched some hiphop artists spin on their heads in a square, found the Aushwitz memorial, and picnicked on melon.

The houses here are very much worth a paragraph. Back in the day, property owners were taxed on how much square-footage their house took up. To maximize the usable space, Amsterdamers minimized the size of their staircases, making them super-steep to the point that one practically crawls on one's hands and feet as one is climbing up. In order to get furniture to the upper floors, they hoist their couches and settees in through the window via a rope and pulley system. One problem: how to keep the family four-poster from slamming through the lower glass panes on its way up to the third floor? Solution: build the house at an angle. Perhaps it's the entire building or just the front façade that's leaning, but many houses here are therefore crooked.

(They also have huge glass windows without curtains or shutters, so you can see right into people's offices, living rooms, and kitchens -- all very neatly kept).

Other very cool form of housing here: houseboats on the canal! Don't like your neighbours? Don't like your city? Pick up and go!

We left the city around 5 pm and headed into the country. It took us a while to escape the city sprawl, and once we were in the country, we picked up our bike highway again and found ourselves amongst farms, farms, and more farms. We sprang upon our first good plot of woods (which was quite narrow, really, and had more than its fair share of mosquitos), and settled down for the night to the screams of mice by our heads.

To be continued...

No, we haven't fallen off the face of the earth!

Hello readers!

My apologies for not having updated the blog sooner. Joe and I actually reached the end of our saga recently, and there are stories to be told, yarns to be woven, mittens to be knitted! However, I must kindly beg your patience, as I will not be able to sit down for a few more days to relate our tales.

Stay tuned in, there's more to come!

Biker ever-extraordinaire,
Hilary